What's the best software reverb?
 

Any ideas? There are loads of crap software reverbs on the market - I know, I've tried them, but does anyone know of any really good ones?

"SIR" is the convolution revolution (using pre-recorded impulses from different aural environments) which is meant to be pretty good, and free. CPU intensive, though, so I gather

If you want a good reverb which is not a convolution reverb, you must buy a powercore. UAD1 also has good reverbs but I prefer the powercore ones. They are more versatile and better in quality too.

If you use a mac, try the apple au matrix reverb.

If you are using logic, space designer is great. If not check out altiverb <--- convolution verb though.

I'm using Cubase. What's wrong with convolution reverb anyhow, I thought these were the better type you can get.

Not heard of "SIR" I'll have to do some digging. I have heard that the reverbs on the Powercore are very good but are they as good as standalone packages you can get i.e. Waves IR?

The fact is that you cannot do everything with convolution. If a reverb uses complex modulation, you cannot copy that 100% accurately with convolution. When you take the impulse response, the modulations may change the sound differently every time you take a new impulse response. Also you cannot tweak the reverb parameters with convolution reverb. You cannot build a new reverb using a convolution reverb plugin. You have to use an artificial reverb plugin to do that.

A convolution reverb plugins is a very static plugin. You can't change many parameters and usually if you change the reverb decay the reverb won't sound as good anymore. It's almost the same as if you play a JP8000 it sounds like a JP8000 but if you sample the JP8000 and play it with a sampler, it won't sound the same. If you tweak the filters of the sampler the sound gets worse because it's not the original machine's filter you're tweaking.

I don't like convolution reverbs as much as artificial reverbs because convolution reverbs need more cpu to run and the parameters are not as tweakable. I have a space designer in logic, but I always use the powercore reverbs. Only in very rare situations I use the space designer. But if you find or record good impulse responses which work in your project, use them.

And of course, if you don't have a powercore, convolution is the only way to get as good results, if you find as good impulse responses.

I prefer the Plate 140 to anything else. Although I do use Classicverb from time to time.

Plate 140 is absolutely incredible on precussion. That along with Voxengo's Tapebus = Perfect combination!


Drammy

Yeah, the plate140 is very good but it doesn't have much choices. 3 different plates with adjustable decay and eq. That's about it but it works for drums and vocals. However those plates can be used with space designer and achieve the same results because they don't have modulation, if only you have enough different impulse responses with different settings.

I'm waiting for the new powercore pci mk2. When I get that card, I will purchase the VSS3 and nonlin2 reverbs.

The Plate 140 does have some slight modulation - it is a hidden feature though. You have to go into the nonGUI vst editor to find it.

Just demoed the Plate 140 and it is quite a solid reverb. I loaded in the UAD v3.8 software with the new plugins on. Not too sure about the Precision Limiter though - don't think I need that just yet.