Reverb has shaped music throughout its history – and we don’t just mean recorded music, either. Earlier musical forms like plainchant are a great example of this – the composition of the music was influenced by the space it was performed, and in turn, the spaces began to be considered with music in mind.
But singing monks rarely feature in plugins – you can hear the same principles at work since the history of recording, as spring reverbs, plate reverbs and chambers gave way to digital reverbs, reverb plugins and now even AI-powered reverbs. All the while, the reverb influenced the sound, and the sound influenced how the reverb was created and used.
So here’s a list of some of today’s best reverb plugins, each talented for a different reason, and all worth a look – and a listen – for the benefit of your music.
Best Reverb Plugins:
- iZotope Neoverb
- sonible smart:reverb
- Baby Audio Crystalline
- Eventide Blackhole
- Soundtoys Little Plate
- Relab Development LX480 Essentials
- FabFilter Pro-R
- Softube Atlantis Dual Chambers
- eaReckon EAReverb 2
- iZotope Stratus 3D
- Zynaptiq ADAPTIVERB
iZotope Neoverb
An AI-powered reverb plugin that lets you choose and blend between three reverb types, Neoverb is a modern take on spatial processing.
The AI part – Neoverb’s Reverb Assistant – will have you playing the channel you’re applying the effect to, in order for the plugin to analyse it, and generate reverb profiles that minimise masking, mix mud, and other ill-fitting qualities.
You really can’t miss that triangle in the interface – it’s a 2D controller for blending between three reverb signals. This is a flexible way to do it, letting you find the perfect blend between three neighbours, or two of them, or just letting you isolate a single reverb signal.
Another AI-toting reverb plugin, but this time one that takes a very different approach to the effect.
When smart:reverb analyses your input signal, it creates a reverb profile that’s, supposedly, the perfect complement to that signal. Any instrument has its own harmonic profile of unique resonances, and so does any room. smart:reverb makes sure that the resonances of its virtual room don’t line up with the resonances of the instrument, making the result smoother, as if the space had been architecturally designed with your input signal in mind. And in a way, it has.
Of course, there are loads more features that follow this. You also can a ‘reverb matrix’ with different styles to choose from, Width, Clarity, Colour, Spread and Density controls for customisation, and a whole lot more.
Baby Audio Crystalline
Another completely modern reverb, Crystalline isn’t supposed to sound like a room or a hall, but it’s a ground-up reimagining of algorithmic reverb itself.
Controls like Size, Sparkle and Width (in the Reflections section); Resolution, Modulation and Shammer (in the Depth section), and Tone, Smoothing and Transients (in the Shape section) let you know that you’re into a reverb that thinks like you do, rather than throwing numbers and proportions into the mix. To get a good sound out of Crystalline, you don’t need a degree in architectural acoustics – you just need to listen properly.
Further features include the ability to sync reverb timing (start and decay times) to project tempo, and to weight the reverb more or less heavily on the transients in your signal.
Eventide Blackhole
With its origins as an algorithm in Eventide’s rackmounted hardware, Blackhole could be described as a very ‘out-there’ reverb. It excels in long, complex responses, but it can also do more run-of-the-mill reverb where necessary. The big deal here, though, is the ‘out-of-this-world’ [sorry] spatial effects, all backed up by the Eventide pedigree.
Parameters like Gravity invert the decay of the reverb, making for swells and builds; Size can be cranked up to create extreme tails, and Feedback can take already-dripping patches into ever more extreme territory. There’s also a Freeze control, if you’re having a sound-design moment.
Plate reverb was once an impractical effect that few could actually use. Gigantic plates were miked up used to provide resonant reflections fed from the input signal. Plate reverb sounds particularly great on vocals, but it can also provide the goods on many other sources.
Little Plate takes the huge size of a real plate reverb and distils it into a single plugin – one with remarkably few controls.
Little Plate is more about the personality of the modelled plate reverb. With so many fans, you’ve got to sit up and take a listen before dismissing it because of its small size. Ironically.
Relab Development LX480 Essentials
Lexicon reverbs were some of the earliest viable digital reverb units, and as such they hold a cherished place in the hearts of producers – and fans of the 80s in general.
LX480 Essentials brings you four reverb setups from a timepiece Lexicon 480L reverb – Fat Plate, Medium Hall, Small Ambience and Large Wood Room. You can’t actually tweak the sliders, but these four settings have been tuned for classic response by Relab Development.
The big-daddy version of LX480 gets you access to the full settings of the plugin, but it has a higher price tag to match.
Pro-R gives reverb the FabFilter treatment, taking a fresh approach to reverb and providing a set of controls that’s easy to understand, easy to use, but just as in-depth – if not more so – than other top-selling reverb plugins.
EQ is built-in to Pro-R, as you can see in its yellow curve. That blue curve, though, lets you control the reverb decay time along the frequency spectrum. You could, for example, make the low frequencies decay far quicker, or even create an EQ-style ‘bell band’ at a place in the spectrum you want reverb to linger for longer.
At the top of the interface, controls including Brightness, Character, Space and Distance let you dial in properties that you understand intuitively, while the ‘main dial’ that would usually be called ‘Size’ or ‘Decay Time’ is just called Space. That blue curve makes choosing an actual room shape a thing of the past.
Softube Atlantis Dual Chambers
Reverb chambers are an even more old-school way to create reverb than plate reverbs. Actual chambers were specially constructed for recording reverberant sound, and the chambers modelled here are from Stockholm’s Atlantis Studios, which has graced more well-known recordings than you may first assume.
But it’s not just the sound of these unique chambers you’re getting here. Controls abound to give you flexibility with things like Damping, Resonance and Mic Distance.
Elsewhere, you can choose different mics and/or chambers for your left and right signals, and the plugin is rounded out with full EQ, dynamics (including ducking and gating), and width.
EAReverb 2 is a solid algorithmic reverb that doesn’t splash you with marketing hype or lofty claims. This straight-shooter makes its case by offering a great deal of control over your reverb.
The plugin gives you six reverb algorithms, from realistic and recognised reverb types to more out-there options like Reverse mode and Alu Box. We start getting deep with the Early Reflection Editor, which lets you time exact reflection paths in stereo. Then there’s the ability to run EAReverb 2 as a multiband reverb, and a comprehensive Gate module.
But that doesn’t mean EAReverb has to be hard to use. There’s also an SE Mode that distils the controls into a simpler format for quick use, and even ‘Pos Mode’, which lets you graphically place (and move) your source sound within the virtual reverb space, helping for both sound design and orchestral instrument placement.
iZotope Stratus 3D
Exponential Audio’s surround-specific reverb is built for today’s ‘3D’ audio formats, being able to run up to 24 channels of surround at once.
For music producers working in 3D formats, or for score and soundtrack engineers working on audio for film, Stratus 3D is a natural choice with a huge amount of control.
Zynaptiq ADAPTIVERB
This one is all about musical tone – it’s a “Harmonic Tracking Resynthesis Reverb” that, in essence, takes your input signal and creates a signal that’s built to match its harmonic (tonal) elements only. Building a reverb without any actual reflections means that Adaptiverb has a sound that’s all its own – but it’s still a reverb as we generally know it.
This unique approach to reverb also means that the controls on offer are a little unusual too: check out the Richness dial, push the Harmonic Filtering, and even Freeze your signal while in its steady, tonal state.