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What's the best reverb plugin, and do I own one that's any good?

And with a shockingly sub-par user interface for people who aren't already familiar with the hardware in order to transfer their learning. The interface is the #1 reason I didn't buy it. At least it can be resized now - it had been awful to even try to use at all.

If someone is looking for something simpler, an interface mimicking old Lexicon hardware is not it.

The old Exponential interfaces were actually decent because they were logically laid out and most things you'd commonly need were in the main view. The preset browser was actually pretty easy to use, as well, because of how it was organized and easy to filter it down. It didn't look pretty, and the text was too small, but, as a UX designer, I can say it was still a reasonably solid interface.

I have Nimbus and R4, but long since deleted from my computer due to audio glitches. Otherwise I'd still be using them.
So you won't go out with her unless she's pretty to you? Last I checked we listen with our ears, not our eyes.

I don't even understand the interface and with a few tweaks it gets the most polished and incredible sound ever.

It's modeled on the original, so if you don't like how the original looks, you won't like it.

I don't like the UI either.

But it's an amazing reverb and if I can get great results with 5 minutes of fiddling, it's worth it for anyone.

And no I don't work for Relab or get kickbacks; I just support great tools.

My other fav is 7th Heaven Pro. Dream.
 
So you won't go out with her unless she's pretty to you? Last I checked we listen with our ears, not our eyes.

I don't even understand the interface and with a few tweaks it gets the most polished and incredible sound ever.

It's modeled on the original, so if you don't like how the original looks, you won't like it.

I don't like the UI either.

But it's an amazing reverb and if I can get great results with 5 minutes of fiddling, it's worth it for anyone.

And no I don't work for Relab or get kickbacks; I just support great tools.

My other fav is 7th Heaven Pro. Dream.
I’m a professional UX designer and researcher. Usability of tools matters. That includes appearance.
 
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I’m a professional UX designer and researcher. Usability of tools matters. That includes appearance.
I won't argue with you on looks. I love good looks!

But simply to dismiss a product out of hand because you think it's ugly, when it's function is audio, seems a bit silly. It's a fantastic reverb, and it's appearance is iconic for it's day.

In any case, I respect your viewpoints, thanks for sharing.
 
I'm right there with vitocorleone123. I'm a full-time graphic designer and the UI plays a big part in what I will and what I won't buy. It's seems trivial to someone who doesn't care one way or the other on how something looks, but its a HUGE distraction to us who do.
Well I do care and I do UI design daily as part of my job. But I choose not to let that prevent me from using a great tool.

In any case, it's good there are other choices. for you then.
 
Well I do care and I do UI design daily as part of my job. But I choose not to let that prevent me from using a great tool.

In any case, it's good there are other choices. for you then.
I'm kinda jealous! LOL!! I just can't get past some of 'em. But like you said, if the interface looks like it was slapped on as an afterthought but sounds incredible, I might still try it, but then I'd more than likely look for something similar but with more care put into the entire package.
 
I'm kinda jealous! LOL!! I just can't get past some of 'em. But like you said, if the interface looks like it was slapped on as an afterthought but sounds incredible, I might still try it, but then I'd more than likely look for something similar but with more care put into the entire package.
There’s some plugins that just are too awful to use. Like the Massenberg ones. Ugh. Most plugins are tolerable, but some are just…. Like…. There’s tons of people around who can design better for cheap if only the engineer would cough up the cash and check their ego.

I have a pretty reasonable tolerance because, as was said, the sound matters, too 😅
 
I can be snobby on UI design too.

Here's the backstory. Recently there was a big sale on the upgraded Relab 480L. Supposed to be the best repro out there yada yada.

I bought it, because, I have GAS, and I almost bought a real Lexicon 300 back in the day (glad I didn't tho!).

So I went to use the thing, and within about 30 seconds had dialed in a gorgeous sound, and I had no freaking clue what any of the sliders actually meant (respect to Release and vitocorleone23). But I remember thinking, wow, this is so...polished, so, premium, so, nice! Wonder what the heck the sliders really mean?

In any case to your points, agreed the UI matters, but in this particular instance my bumbling usage produced some amazing lush and polished reverb with nary a thought as to how to use it "right." So I forgave all.

And when I design, I take GREAT pains to ensure my products are gorgeous as well as functional. So touche.
 
My favourite reverb now is 7th Heaven Pro, though I also sometimes use Cinematic Rooms Pro too. I'm not a tweaker and usually just use presets and sometimes change some things just a bit..) I've found that on orchestral stuff I mostly like how 7th Heaven sounds - it might be not as realistic as Cinematic Rooms - but it just sits prettier with the orchestra for some reason and enhances it in a sweet way..! I also have Nimbus, Phoenix, R4, but somehow their presets didn't appeal to me (they are kind of "invisible") and I'm preset guy..!)
 
If you want a reverb for orchestral music that sounds good and is really easy to use, try East West Spaces II.

Here’s the default GUI:
23DF30F1-4B2A-428C-BAFA-6E1FD3E7FF59.jpeg

There are just the most needed controls plus a picture of the acoustic space to give you a sense of the sound.

The browser is logical in layout and quick to understand and use:

73FBA8A7-A410-4F25-B9FC-1306EE79494A.jpeg


Then if you want to tweak things a little, there‘s a separate page for that:

25810B6B-C2BB-4D7D-96B2-2D11274C03B4.jpeg

A major thing about this reverb is that they captured impulse responses from specific positions within some of these spaces:

C9C2DD41-B360-439B-A89E-383346F4DD0C.jpeg
I have had other reverbs, Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven Pro, now sold, for example, but it’s just so easy for me to get the sound I want in a particular situation from Spaces II that I more or less always end up using that.

They also captured the sound of some high quality hardware units which are available as well and which sound amazing, i.e. Digital Hollywood Hall or whatever that preset is called in Spaces II.

I love this plug-in as you can probably tell :)

PS. It’s often on 50% sale because East West has a policy of having sales all the time. So don’t buy it for full price. I think you can even test it with 1 month of their subscription service so if that sounds interesting then read up on it.
I tried it out through one month of the cloud and I loved it. It's a gem. They have sampled the MGM Scoring Stage, which is why I wanted to demo it.
 
Depending on what you want, the Valhalla ones are good for a great sound out of the box and then tweakability to taste. There's something satisfying about a small company doing a simple, focussed offer with affordable pricing and no semi-permanent sales. Personally, I went with Valhalla, as I wanted primarily the 80s colour that it brings to things, but I road-tested Room which essentially allows you to create a clean space very quickly. You can do similar things with both, but I felt that for darker reverbs, Vintage was the more natural choice. From your list, I really like Raum as (for want of a better description) it's a very musical sound that you get from it. I know a few people who despite not being fans of NI did pick that one up. Ymmv of course, but hard to go wrong with Valhalla.
 
For orchestral, Samplicity Berlin Studio is the one to beat (not only sound, but concept and workflow). MIR is even more advanced, but superexpensive, and complete overkill for most people. Berlin Studio does what MIR does, but more streamlined. That's a good thing. Less room for error.

Other reverbs are fantastic, but don't have this concept in mind (I think). The concept separates them from every other reverb.

But, Berlin Studio is made for orchestral. It solves a specific problem to a specific group of composers. It might not be needed for everyone.

Fantastic, more traditional reverbs are RC48, Spaces, H-Reverb (don't sleep on this one!), Valhalla Room, Cinematic Rooms...

In fact, the choices are endless. Can't go wrong with any, really. With traditional reverbs, it really comes down to preference of sound. They're all really good, mostly.
 
For orchestral, Samplicity Berlin Studio is the one to beat (not only sound, but concept and workflow). MIR is even more advanced, but superexpensive, and complete overkill for most people. Berlin Studio does what MIR does, but more streamlined. That's a good thing. Less room for error.

Other reverbs are fantastic, but don't have this concept in mind (I think). The concept separates them from every other reverb.

But, Berlin Studio is made for orchestral. It solves a specific problem to a specific group of composers. It might not be needed for everyone.

Fantastic, more traditional reverbs are RC48, Spaces, H-Reverb (don't sleep on this one!), Valhalla Room, Cinematic Rooms...

In fact, the choices are endless. Can't go wrong with any, really. With traditional reverbs, it really comes down to preference of sound. They're all really good, mostly.
A nice "bonus" of Berlin Studio is the ability to bring down the early reflections for a nice subtle tail for stuff that already is recorded in a hall, e.g. BBCSO (Core), Pacific Strings, etc.
 
Screenshot 2023-04-22 at 8.04.34 PM.jpg

Any software, plugin or not, has to have a clear interface, and preferably one that is nice to look at.

For example, look at the Liquid Sonic plugins (thanks Trash Panda for the tip). Those are beautiful GUIs. Not that I'm going to spend a lot of money just because of a nice GUI, but it helps when considering among several choices of something that I'll probably use a lot.
I demoed Symphony (was looking for a surround verb) and agree that the preset screen is a bit of a mess. I also demoed Cinematic Rooms and went with that instead for surround - found it to be a very clear sound and interface was better. I actually haven't even changed from the default preset yet lol.

For stereo verbs I use
  • Altiverb Standard Version
  • Valhalla Vintage Verb
  • Valhalla Shimmer
For surround
  • Cinematic Rooms

But what you have is pretty darn good already, so you don't need to be looking for more verbs. Only if you want to.
 
Talking from personal experience here: The first question should be, what do you hope to accomplish by adding reverb. I spent years searching for the perfect reverb, realizing that it wasn't reverb I was actually after. Now I ended up with a fairly subtle neutral reverb (VSS3) which doesn't even apply to all instruments. :)
 
I own:
Cinematic Room by Liquid Sonics
TransAtlantic Plate Reverb by Rare Signals
Pro R by FabFilter

Each reverb has its place & reason for using. I am usually not looking for room realism.
I am looking for that bigger than life sound that is expanding the sustain without muddying up the primary tone. And Pro R has many options in that category. A wide open and clear sounding reverb, Pro R is always my first choice.
 
Ive realised that even the defaults on most VI have too much reverb. Fu-k Ive got maybe 10 reverbs and asking myself what shall I do with them, when theres already too much reverb in most instruments/voices default settings.

I cant hear this in my $500 Sennheiser headphones or the Yamaha Hs7 speakers, or any other fancy tools for that matter, but in MacBook Air M1 speakers, which have proven an invaluable mixing/mastering tool: "Yep, the reverb is there again messing".

Now going back to fix those old tracks I already bounced etc. Extremely annoying especially when you are disorganised.

Be careful with reverbs. Or if you use, make sure you got it well organised so you can rip them off later.
 
These folks currently have a free-offering (only for another week or two) to go along with a new release. I tried it and it immediately found a home in one of my projects. May be worth looking into for you.

 
Lots and lots of reverbs here, but I still gravitate towards FabFilter Pro-R, EastWest Spaces 2, both Valhalla Room and VintageVerb, and Zynaptiq Adaptiverb. That said, another little beauty is on sale at its lowest ever, UVI Plate for $29. Get it!
 
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