Thinking about a new reverb... recs?

[Ted]

Hey all,

I'm planning on doing some vocal tracks and I'm not entirely satified with the reverbs I have. Even though money is really tight for me because of the COVID situation, I am considering a new reverb plugin. I already have some nice effects reverbs (Raum, Supermassive, etc) but I want something that is just very good for vocals. I now have access to vocal rooms with baffling and acoustic treatment in them-- and I am stoked that I will be able to start recording vocals completely dry and then have complete control in adding reverb and ambience.

I currently have the verbs that come in Logic X, Native Instruments Komplete 12 Ultimate, IK Multimedia T Racks 5, and maybe a few other things. I also have Izotope Nectar 3 although I haven't played with it much yet.

There are two things I am considering. Primarily the IK Multimedia Sunset Sound Studio Reverb-- it sounds so good to my ears, and exactly what I want. But it's pricey. It's normally $150 but it's currently on sale for $99 and I'm thinking about getting it. Anybody here using it?

The other thing I'm thinking about buying is the Izotope Holiday bundle for $49. I don't need the elements versions of Ozone, Nectar, Neutron-- but the R2, Phoenixverb and Excalibur (Exponential audio) as well as the Trash 2 and Iris 2 look like a good pickup for the cost. Just wondering if anybody uses the reverbs in R2 or Phoenixverb.

I also noticed the paid plugins from Valhalla look pretty good for $50 each and there are several of them.

I welcome any recommendations on the reverbs listed or others that I'm unaware of that have a great bang-for-the-buck.

Thanks,

Ted

[cosmicdolphin]

Neoverb

[Ted]

Neoverb

Hmmm..... I thought about it when it was at the intro price but It seemed more like a creative reverb than the ambient type I was looking for. I tried to watch some Youtube vids to see what it does, but my YouTube wasn't playing nice at the time. I have some Izotope products and they have nice user interfaces but there is something about them that also turns me off and makes me not like them compared to other plug in makers.

I'll have to look into Neoverb a little bit more. It's an intriguing concept-- similar to how Neutron works across channels-- but I guess I need to spend some time with tutorials.

If I did get it, I'd probably look at getting it bundled with Vocal Synth 2-- now that's a plugin I really want.

[AlasdairEaston]

Hi there. There's no end to the "what reverb?" question if you allow it to happen. My thoughts on it really hardened up after reading a thousand and one threads on various forums, and finally one thread that sealed it all for me. The thousand and one threads all had the same basic plot: the question posed, followed by responses that all conflicted. No agreement ever reached, no decisions made.

Then the final thread brought the answer for me: it was a blind test someone posted of several reverbs on the same piece of music (orchestral). The reverbs were all the usual serious suspects: Valhalla, Seventh Heaven, The NI Lexicon emulations, Lexicon's own plugins, A Bricasti M7(?) hardware unit costing several thousand dollars, etc. Everyone voted blind. After a week or so the votes were in and the winner was revealed. By quite a margin, the Lexicon MPX native plug-in. At the time it was on sale for 35 quid. Bought it. Done. For me, no more wrangling about "maybe this could be better if I only had ...". I now know that if it doesn't sound good it's my fault.

A couple of minor caveats. We all probably need a "special effect" type reverb for something mad now and again, but you already have Supermassive and Raum which are capable of huge and unusual reverbs. And the test was on orchestral music on a "hall" setting. For other uses you might not choose a "hall" algorithm, going for plates or chambers, etc instead. You could decide there are other reverbs that deserve to be researched for those specific settings but... like I said, there's no end to the process if you allow it. The MPX plugin has all the usual algorithms and I've no reason to believe they're any less good the the "hall" algorithm that won it the blind vote. It sounds great to me and has all the parameter adjustment I need.

BTW that's brought me a side benefit: having totally commited to this bit of software, I'm really learning how to use it properly, both in terms of its own facilties and how to really work reverb in general. For example, I've realized that sometimes (say for acoustic guitar recordings) it's useful to turn down the reverb tail a bit and really just leave the early reflections as the main part of the reverb sound. That places my dry guitar recording in a controllable "live" space without washing it out with a prominent reverb tail.

By the way, in case funds are super-tight, the NI Lexicon emulations, RC24 and RC48, you already have (I think) in K12 Ultimate did alright in the blind test too and are well regarded. Sound on Sound (great, great magazine and forum) summed them up as "classy". The only down side is that they only emulate the Lexicon "Hall" settings, so no plates, chambers, etc.

So, in conclusion, if I was being slightly glib, I'd say just buy Lexicon MPX Native, put the whole debate to bed and free yourself to get on with making music.

I hope that's some help.

Cheers,
Alasdair.

[Ted]

Alasdair, thanks for that thorough reply. I was not overly impressed with the NI RC24 and 48, but I didn't spend a lot of time with them when I got Komplete because there was so much stuff to check out-- but like you said they're basically hall reverbs and I am looking for something more intimate.

I'll do some research on the Lexicon you recommended. The reviews I've read so far are pretty good. $50 is not bad at all. Of course with the Black Friday sales, I'm finding a few other things I want to buy too (Neural DSP is now running a 50% off sale on their amp plugins and I've been waiting months for this to happen).

Thanks again!

Ted

[RPaul]

Neoverb

Hmmm..... I thought about it when it was at the intro price but It seemed more like a creative reverb than the ambient type I was looking for. I tried to watch some Youtube vids to see what it does, but my YouTube wasn't playing nice at the time. I have some Izotope products and they have nice user interfaces but there is something about them that also turns me off and makes me not like them compared to other plug in makers.

I'll have to look into Neoverb a little bit more. It's an intriguing concept-- similar to how Neutron works across channels-- but I guess I need to spend some time with tutorials.

If I did get it, I'd probably look at getting it bundled with Vocal Synth 2-- now that's a plugin I really want.

Neoverb has the potential for a whole bunch of personalities, blending between them in relatively intuitive ways. Also, the features for detecting resonances and masking and EQing on the way in and out to help on this, plus the whole "assistant" notion might be helpful for finding starting points. I know I was trying it out on vocals on one of my recent recordings -- I don't recall if I ended up using it on the final mix.

I've also got the R4 and Nimbus reverbs from Exponential Audio, courtesy of one (or two?) of the iZotope bundle deals (in fact, one of the more recent ones may be how I got Neoverb). I know I've used at least one of them (probably R4) a bit, but there are SO many presets in that, that it is daunting to choose starting points, even after using the filtering to narrow things down. I also tend to have mixed feelings about iZotope plugins. While I have most of them, and I do use pretty much everything at one point or another, they often don't end up on my final mixes, and it probably comes down to a flavor thing. Also, many of their plugins, especially in the Ozone line, have super heavy impact on my system, I think probably related to their user interfaces, and can cause or contribute to sample loss on playback, so I have to be careful when resources are getting tight.

Of course, I have so many reverbs at this point (I'm a certifiable plugin junkie -- see http://rickpaulmusic.com/equipment-and-software/ for more on that) that I'm always facing option overload. That said, in the last few years I've found myself using the Waves Abbey Road Plates and Chambers reverbs quite a bit, and also IR-L when I want to simulate a specific environment (in fact, that has been my go to room reverb on quite a few recent recordings), though I also often use PSP Audioware's EMT 2445 reverb quite a lot, especially on vocals, and also Arturia's Rev PLATE-140 (another EMT plate emulator). I've definitely gone through phases where I gravitate to specific reverbs for specific functions, but I also tend to like to try multiple options on most projects, at least when I'm not running behind on meeting a deadline.

Rick

[Ted]

Rick, thanks for the great response.

I was working on a vocal listing over the weekend with a tight deadline, and I'd built a nice vocal channel preset a few weeks ago-- but I forgot that several of the plugins I was using were free trials of Waves stuff and were no longer installed (I'll buy them eventually, but my budget is limited)-- and I went back to playing around with Izotope's Nectar 3. I just grabbed a few presets and winged it. Upon listening back, I'm quite impressed with some of the reverbs that I were included in Nectar 3. Izotope is just not my favorite company.

I'm thinking now that at some point I'll end up with Neoverb regardless-- maybe in a bundle. I also think I'll end up with the Sunset Sound Studios Reverb too-- and it's not in a bundle, though it's on sale. I have to say that I'm very impressed with IK Multimedia's products. For some reason, I didn't have high expectations of their stuff (maybe their weird backwards looking logo)-- I was just interested in Amplitube, but they're becoming one of my favorite companies. The quality of the IK stuff really caught me off guard.

The Waves Abbey Road stuff looks great. I have the J37 tape machine and I've been using it on the Abbey Road default setting on my master buss and it's really nice. Similar story with my opinion of Waves-- I initially found their marketing tacky (Chris Lord-Alge is a bit much sometimes-- that one Waves demo video on Youtube for the CLA vocal channel is a f*cking riot-- it's the one with the knock off Billy Idol singer demo-- the comments are classic), but man I really love some of their plugins... Their Rhapsody Grand is my go-to piano instrument out of all the great pianos I have. The PRS Supermodels amps were another unexpected surprise too.

Yeah Rick, I'm with you on the plug-in fever...Up until this year I never owned any plugins-- For some reason I assumed that they were all some kind of hassle to install and run in conjunction with your DAW... I don't know WTF I was thinking, haha. I used to flip through music catalogs and drool over guitars I wanted to buy-- now all I want is plugins.


Here's the CLA Vocals video... this demo song makes me laugh so hard...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYLoLNeTHYw

[RPaul]

I was working on a vocal listing over the weekend with a tight deadline, and I'd built a nice vocal channel preset a few weeks ago-- but I forgot that several of the plugins I was using were free trials of Waves stuff and were no longer installed (I'll buy them eventually, but my budget is limited)-- and I went back to playing around with Izotope's Nectar 3. I just grabbed a few presets and winged it. Upon listening back, I'm quite impressed with some of the reverbs that I were included in Nectar 3. Izotope is just not my favorite company.

Yeah, I was in the same predicament over the weekend and ended up using a Waves StudioRack vocal preset on a lead vocal, I think with some macro tweaks to tune it, and maybe a few individual plugin tweaks as well. It was only meant to be a temp treatment, but I was running out of time, and it seemed to do the trick. Or at least I rationalized that it did. I didn't even use a separate reverb bus on that one, at least not for the vocal. (I think I did use one on the virtual guitars.)

I have tried Nectar 3 Pro on my vocals a number of times. There was one time recently when it really was close to working for me -- I'd used it for early mixes of the song -- but I ultimately ended up replacing it (I don't recall with what at this point, but my most frequent lead vocal processing involves either a chain of mostly PSP Audioware plugins or some combination of Waves plugins, especially including Scheps Omni Channel), along with send stuff including the Waves ADT plugin, some delay (most typically either Lexicon PSP 42 or Waves H-Delay), and whichever plate reverb I picked for that project (PSP, Waves AR, or Arturia).

There was one project some years back that I decided to try mixing only with Neutron at the channel level, trying to see what kind of mileage I could get out of its assistant features that analyze the track and suggest settings. I didn't expect it to succeed, especially on the lead vocal, but I was pleasantly surprised that it actually worked just fine, and I didn't even replace the lead vocal processing. That was my one and only time succeeding at that level, though, and I think it was partly because the specific type of song was pretty different from my norm -- e.g. no piano or other keyboard sounds at all. I have used Neutron as a channel strip here and there since, but it's been pretty rare. I almost always use the Ozone 9 Maximizer, thanks largely to its being able to achieve a LUFS value for the mix (as long as what's feeding it is within range), and I've also used Ozone in mastering a fair amount in the past, though not so much recently.

I'm thinking now that at some point I'll end up with Neoverb regardless-- maybe in a bundle. I also think I'll end up with the Sunset Sound Studios Reverb too-- and it's not in a bundle, though it's on sale. I have to say that I'm very impressed with IK Multimedia's products. For some reason, I didn't have high expectations of their stuff (maybe their weird backwards looking logo)-- I was just interested in Amplitube, but they're becoming one of my favorite companies. The quality of the IK stuff really caught me off guard.

I've got a lot of IK stuff, like you having started out with AmpliTube, or maybe it was T-RackS. I've used AmpliTube a fair amount, though it's never become my first call guitar amp simulator. At one point I was using Pod Farm more frequently, but lately it's been either Overloud TH3, NI Guitar Rig Pro, or Waves PRS SuperModels, more or less equally, depending on the project. I think it's probably more a workflow thing than a quality thing as NI and Overloud, especially, make it easier to find sounds that are in the ballpark quicker, whereas I tend to feel overwhelmed by AmpliTube's filtering system and huge number of presets. As for T-RackS Max, I seem to mostly only use individual modules where I'm looking for a flavor I don't have in other plugin lines (and there usually are multiple choices for most classic compressors, EQs, etc.). That is partly because I'm really big on starting from presets and choosing a plugin before I start tweaking, so more presets, and, in particular, ones that are well-organized and get me closer to something I like prior to tweaking, tend to have an advantage over ones that are geared toward people who just set things manually from the get go.

The Waves Abbey Road stuff looks great. I have the J37 tape machine and I've been using it on the Abbey Road default setting on my master buss and it's really nice. Similar story with my opinion of Waves-- I initially found their marketing tacky (Chris Lord-Alge is a bit much sometimes-- that one Waves demo video on Youtube for the CLA vocal channel is a f*cking riot-- it's the one with the knock off Billy Idol singer demo-- the comments are classic), but man I really love some of their plugins... Their Rhapsody Grand is my go-to piano instrument out of all the great pianos I have. The PRS Supermodels amps were another unexpected surprise too.

While I'd had some early exposure to Waves plugins -- I'd reviewed their Renaissance Max suite for the (long defunct) CakewalkNet ezine back in 2003, using the DirectX versions in the then-current version of SONAR -- I really only started rediscovering them a few years back thanks to one of their (typical) deep discount sales, I think that got me a newer version of Renaissance Max plus a few other plugins at a way lower price than I'd remembered those things having in the past. I've since taken advantage of various sale prices and upgrade prices to have almost all the Waves plugins that interest me.

Since they came out with the recent version of StudioRack, which has some really powerful and flexible ways of dealing with plugin chain routing and presets, that has inspired me to catch up on some of the ones I didn't have that were used in a lot of their own presets. For example, though I had a bunch of 1176 and LA-2A type compressors, Studio Rack only allows using Waves plugins in their chains, so I couldn't just stick, say, an IK or PSP 1176 plugin in there if wanting to use the other features in a plugin chain, and all the multiband and parallel routing options within the chain can be really powerful.

Beyond Studio Rack, there are two things Waves "does right" for my purposes that many other plugin vendors don't do as well. One is create a lot of presets (and their new V12 preset search feature makes them a lot easier to find) to try out for starting points, making it a lot quicker to do plugin selection the way I like to do it then tweak later as needed. The other is the huge number of educational videos they have. While I'd definitely agree that CLA can be way over the top in his presentations, he does convey good information, and there are others who've done master classes and/or product-specific videos for Waves that are less used car salesman-ish.

I had a look at the video you linked. I'd probably seen it before, but I was curious, and, yeah, the vocal does sound a lot like Billy Idol. Those signature series plugins (e.g. CLA, JJP, Marroquin, etc.) can be quite useful in the context of finding sounds quickly by trying flavors, but also for providing a good deal of flexibility in tweaking where you just do it more by ear and less by thinking about EQ frequencies and Q values, compression ratios, and so on. The Studio Rack stuff takes that to another level in that you can create your own plugin chain presets with some macro controls but can also look under the hood to see what the preset developers have done in terms of tying underlying plugin controls to the macro knobs.

Yeah Rick, I'm with you on the plug-in fever...Up until this year I never owned any plugins-- For some reason I assumed that they were all some kind of hassle to install and run in conjunction with your DAW... I don't know WTF I was thinking, haha. I used to flip through music catalogs and drool over guitars I wanted to buy-- now all I want is plugins.

I'm not a guitarist, but used to have a whole rack of MIDI modules plus a couple of keyboards. When I started recording in a DAW (after having gone through 8-track reel-to-reel and ADAT), virtual instruments still weren't really a thing, so I did collect a small set of basic audio plugins. When virtual instruments came around, I quickly became a virtual instrument junkie, especially once GigaPiano arrived and finally had an acoustic piano sound that felt more like a real piano than the Roland MKS-20 module I'd been using as my main piano prior to that. I quickly got to the point where the only thing I was using my Mackie 32*8 mixer for was one channel of vocals and routing to a monitor amp. There was also a lot less heat being put out in my small bedroom studio. The audio plugin "junkiehood" developed a bit later, especially with PSP Audioware's great range of quality plugins that finally got me feeling like plugins could compete with the sounds I'd previously been getting with hardware. (PSP VintageWarmer has probably been on more of my projects over the last decade plus than any other single plugin.)

The good thing is plugins take up a lot less physical space than guitars, keyboards, and outboard gear. And I could never have afforded anything close to the virtual range of instruments and audio processors and effects I now have at my disposal. Hell, the Synclavier alone probably would have cost more!

Rick

[Ted]

Rick that was a nice read. The world of plugins is like a whole new dimension to producing music that I'm stepping into-- and it must frustrate some non-musician people I talk to when I gush over these magical computer programs and the fairy dust they provide. I feel like Unfrozen Caveman Musician.

I bought an Izotope bundle over the summer-- primarily to get Ozone 9 for mastering and Nectar 3 for vocals. To be honest, I feel bad that I haven't even utilized Neutron yet. I need to take a day and watch some instructional vids. I need to really give Ozone 9 some attention-- I always use Lurssen Mastering Console to master my tracks-- I just really dig it.

I do need to work through some production techniques that have me stumped. For one, I need to figure out a better monitoring/recording process when I am recording my vocals. I have determined that some of the problems in my vocals have been because of latencies in my signal between it leaving my mouth and coming back in through the headphones. This results in me sounding semi-drunk and slurring my vocals because of the disconnect in timing. I've solved this partly by singing with only one headphone over one ear and then being able to hear my voice in the room naturally. Also, this summer I got a new interface and it made me realize that a lot of the problems I'd had recording in the previous years were because of the latency of an old, outdated interface.

I've found that anything with pitch correction seems to be problematic when used live-- so I turn off Nectar 3 while I'm tracking the vocal, and then turn it back on afterward. Maybe this is a thing that everyone knows about? I have no idea.

My apartment building actually has 3 vocal booths available 24/7 for the tenants. I'd completely forgotten about it all summer. But now that I'm trying to get my vocals as good as possible, I want to start using them. I just feel kind of skittish about people hearing me. I've been acclimating myself little by little by just walking into one of the rooms at random and belting some Lou Gramm stuff. haha. For the project this weekend, I took some blankets and hung them up around me and made a little tent in my room for tracking vocals. It did help.

Lately, I've been starting out my vocal channel with the T Racks Black 76 going into the Waves Mazerati Vocal plugin. I bought the Signature Vocals bundle and for me-- the Mazerati and JJP are the best ones. Then I have Nectar 3 in the chain after the Mazerati--I have it bypassed while tracking and then turn it on afterwards. I don't know if I'm doing it right or I'm just a hack but this is what I've been doing.

The Butch Vig vocals are really nice too. I also like the Greg Wells Vocalizer or whatever it's called.

As far as amps go, I agree that sometimes when recording I actually end up using Amplitube less than my other amp sims (Amplitube 5 might change that with its new IR cabs-- sounds promising) for the reason that anything that requires crazy experimental effects/ambient stuff, I tend to use Guitar Rig-- and when I want something really straight ahead and sounding as good as possible, the Neural DSP Archetype amps are better than anything else I've ever used-- they're on sale for 50% off-- and I am finally getting the Nolly and the Cory Wong. The Cory Wong sounds so great for clean guitars-- especially on a Strat.

What I like about Amplitube is the collections. I really dig the Fender amps and the Mesa Boogie high gain amps. Sometimes I'll just go into Amplitube with guitar in hand and go through presets and noodle for hours.

You made a great point about presets. I would be lost without a lot of presets. I love any plugin that has a lot of presets to it. I've always wondered what was the big deal about 1073 style EQs-- I've found that T Racks has a great 1073 EQ plugin-- and the presets on it are so helpful when you're going for a certain effect. Makes it quick and easy.

Man, I don't know anything about parallel routing in signal chains....haha. Sounds complicated, but like anything it's probably worth the effort otherwise people wouldn't bother. In a year I'll probably look back to myself at this point in time and shake my head over the stuff I didn't know about.

But I guess the proof is in the pudding and I can see myself making improvements in my production all the time. I can't imagine trying to own all the outboard gear to do the stuff these plugins can do, for a fraction of the cost.

Cheers,

Ted

[RPaul]

Hey Ted, I'm laughing at the "magical computer fairy dust" and "Unfrozen Caveman Musician" references.

I've had Ozone since something like the first version -- even beta tested the second version for them, but that was ages ago. It was my main mastering software for a long time, even through an album I put out in 2016. However, by the time I did my second most recent one in that came out last year, I'd started really liking the Waves AR TG Mastering Console, and was using that for many, if not most, of the tracks. On my most recent one, it was probably a combination of that one, Ozone, and Lurssen Mastering Console. Lurssen can be really good for nearly instant gratification, though it can also be such a hog that it is unusable on some heavier projects. Bottom line for me on the mastering front is I try whatever I have at the time (assuming I have enough time to experiment) to see what feels best on the specific project.

On the monitoring vocals while recording them, have you ever tried just not putting them through any plugins on the way in? That's what I do all the time, though I really don't need to hear my voice compressed, tuned, reverbed, etc. to get vocals down. That lets me keep latency down since plugins can not only drag down performance, thus needing a higher sample buffers setting (which adds latency directly), but some also have their own latency that adds on top of whatever your audio interface has. I definitely wouldn't try recording through tuning software -- that would be distracting. I do tuning later with Melodyne and also decide on other processing later on. Just depends on what you need to get a solid performance down, though. I do usually track (virtual) guitar tracks through an amp simulator if that will be a key part of the sound, though I might change the processing later. It's just that the amp simulator sounds tend to affect the playing due to things like sustain.

Wow, that is neat about an apartment building having vocal booths available! I live in a condo, so I can't do vocals 24/7. I just record in my small bedroom studio, with no vocal booth or anything. I just place my mic in a way that is minimizing the computer noise (and I have a computer case, and components, that are fairly optimized for being quiet, so there really isn't much issue from that anyway). My neighbors have no choice but to be used to me playing piano and singing after dinner every day. As for recording vocals, I usually concentrate that in small periods of time, and usually in the afternoon or early evening.

I don't think I've ever used the Maserati or JJP vocal plugins on a final vocal. I think I used CLA once or twice and the Greg Wells one at least once. Butch Vig is the one of those that I don't have. In fact, I think it might be the only Signature Series plugin I don't have. I have used the others on things other than vocals more often than on vocals.

You probably already use parallel routing -- using send effects is blending the effected signal with the original signal in most cases. What Studio Rack does is give that kind of parallel routing potential in a single plugin (i.e. no buses needed) where you can save all the settings and routings in a preset. So, for example, maybe the 6th slot in the chain is a parallel slot, where you have the signal to that point coming through, alongside a delay or a reverb, or a slammed compressed signal (for New York-style parallel compression).

Yeah, the bottom line is really making improvements over time. I've put out 5 albums to date, between 2009 and this year, as well as a bunch of singles and a few EPs going back as far as 2006. It can be somewhat painful listening to some of the earlier stuff. Of course, perhaps five years from now I'll think the album I released last month is now unlistenable. (That one, which is called Moments of Insanity, actually has one recording on it that dates back to 2008, with some tracks from as early as 2003, but I did a remix for the album.)

Rick