Best overall software reverb under $250?

[Spring Goose]

Give ArtsAcoustic Reverb a go. I know, it's not actively maintained anymore, but, it really has "that" sound. If you know what I mean. I'm sure it would complement your music perfectly, as I really think it's THE reverb for electronic dance music (ugh). I mean, the better electronic dance music, not that stuff they sell you as "Trance" these days.

Cheers for that, i'd never heard of it. It sounds great but i'm a bit wary of buying it. It says it is "spring sale 2016" and they say United Kingdom belongs to the E.U. and pay 16% VAT.

[Bulbizarre]

With VVV it's often that I hear a reverb and it does sound nice but it's somewhat disconnected from the dry signal if that makes sense. That may be my lack of skills ofc.

I felt the same. I always think their reverbs sound exaggerated (I owned both VRoom and Vintage Verb). VRoom is super clean, almost unrealistically so, Vintag Verb is super chrous-y and modulated. They sound to me as if, instead of a tea spoon, they put a whole soup spoon of "extra sugar" on it. Never got the hype about their reverbs. To me, there's at least a dozen which sound better.

It's true that Vintage is characterful but I think it's also about knowing your way around the settings. Using short size, cleaning the low end with the filter, and with "NOW" era, it can be quite transparent. VRoom also has many non transparent modes like Nostromo. The dark modes are really nice, try the Dark Room one. rooms are less "unrealistic" than chambers on VRoom.
For invisible reverb, chorus are not intuitive yet they bring the sound into the stereo field while still letting all the depth for other elements.
Overall though I do agree Vintage Verb has some kind of low-mid density that can easily clutter the space.
I try to use more the built-in reverb in Live because it has this lighter character to it.
One last trick is the Smear algorithm in Echobode. It does reverb but more like using the base sound without trying to make a space for it (it's hard to explain), it sounds like it's floating in the mid-background of the mix. I like it a lot. It can be metallic and vintage, like quadraverb but without the dirt.

[rasmusklump]

Give ArtsAcoustic Reverb a go. I know, it's not actively maintained anymore, but, it really has "that" sound. If you know what I mean. I'm sure it would complement your music perfectly, as I really think it's THE reverb for electronic dance music (ugh). I mean, the better electronic dance music, not that stuff they sell you as "Trance" these days.

Cheers for that, i'd never heard of it. It sounds great but i'm a bit wary of buying it. It says it is "spring sale 2016" and they say United Kingdom belongs to the E.U. and pay 16% VAT.

I would strongly advice NOT to buy from that company anymore!

[Spring Goose]

Give ArtsAcoustic Reverb a go. I know, it's not actively maintained anymore, but, it really has "that" sound. If you know what I mean. I'm sure it would complement your music perfectly, as I really think it's THE reverb for electronic dance music (ugh). I mean, the better electronic dance music, not that stuff they sell you as "Trance" these days.

Cheers for that, i'd never heard of it. It sounds great but i'm a bit wary of buying it. It says it is "spring sale 2016" and they say United Kingdom belongs to the E.U. and pay 16% VAT.

I would strongly advice NOT to buy from that company anymore!

Thanks pal!

[Erik_Lucas]

you also don't really need much else if you just use Valhalla

I basically need a general purpose mixing reverb which I could put on a send track and admix to leads, pads and stuff (this is how I prefer working with reverbs, not a fan of using separate reverbs on different tracks, unless some specific effect is required)

I do synthy stuff, mostly psytrance but lately also some downtempo/ambient breaks kind of stuff. I want a lush reverb making big, clean and bright halls but also capable of a more natural/subtle ambience.

Any reverbs I should consider first? Preferably below EUR 150 and ilok-free. Or do I just need to learn my VVV better?

You really should check out adaptiverb by zynaptiq. It has become my favorite plugin to use, ever. I don't like pitting a reverb against EQs, saturators, compressors, etc, for obvious reasons BUT adaptiverb beats any other plugin I've ever used in terms of 'bang-for-buck' value, and it ain't cheap either. Money well worth spent.

For context, I have every Valhalla plugin. I have most of the UAD reverbs. I have R4 from exponential audio, 2C Breeze, Pro-R, the IRCAM verbs, Acon's Verberate... none of them beat Adaptiverb for me. This isn't even mentioning how well it will suit your needs for psytrance...

It's not emulating any real, physical spaces. It's "reflectionless". I wouldn't even consider it a reverb in a lot of circumstances.

[mholloway]

re: VVV sounding 'exaggerated' or having 'too much' character, I've found that despite the simple UI and small set of controls, it really benefits from getting to know it well, and yes, you can absolutely control these aspects of the sound. If you're just flipping through presets and deciding it's "too much this" or "too much that", you haven't given it a fair shake.

Many of the presets have heavy modulation, and simply turning the rate and depths knobs down will drastically reduce / change the feeling of the patch. It's also important to use the low-cut EQ knob (if using it as an insert, or not using an additional EQ on a send) as patches will sound muddy until you do so (and it's a gentle 6db filter, so you can really crank it up).

There's also a huge range of sound between the different included algorithms. Check out "smooth plate" and then tell me it has "too much character"....unlikely you'll still feel that way.

The simple interface belies the actual depth of the device. The assorted knobs yield different results depending on the chosen algorithm....meaning, it's really very, very deep. But takes time to get to know.

The 'ambience' algorithm can absolutely yield some clean, convincing small spaces.

Anyway, it's stellar, and for 50 bucks....etc etc.

[SparkySpark]

You really should check out adaptiverb by zynaptiq.
...
It's not emulating any real, physical spaces. It's "reflectionless". I wouldn't even consider it a reverb in a lot of circumstances.

Hear, hear! It's a great way to describe Adaptiverb: reflectionless.

More than a reverb, it's the world's finest lush-y-izer.

For low-cost/free takes on large spaces I also enjoy Blackhole (on sale) and Valhalla's free SuperMassive.

(I wonder if Neoverb can be added to this list too; haven't tried it much.)

[Spring Goose]

Valhalla's free SuperMassive.

That's a good call. I was looking for a replacement for ArtAcoustic reverb after i tried the demo earlier today.

[bmanic]

Reverb is probably one of the most subjective things ever. The only way to find what works for you is to try them all.. and learn to tweak them! If you rely only on presets or random tweaking without knowing what you are doing, it can be frustrating.

Valhalla VVV and Room cover a lot of ground. Having said that, they both suffer a bit from falling into the "congested" problem that happens with some reverbs.. meaning they actually amplify some frequencies and thus do not always blend. This can be a good and a bad thing, depending on what you are after.

Other reverbs, most notably some of the higher end lexicon models, do the exact opposite. They sometimes make congested mids and lowmid frequencies somehow cancel out and thus the original source gets smeared and slightly thinned out/weaker, which in turn can be either a good or a bad thing, depending on what you are after.

Basically I think of these two above categories as phase reinforcing vs phase cancelling.

Then there is a 3rd category where the tails are kind of ringing, either nicely or not so nicely (again, both useful depending on what you are after). Adaptiverb is what I'd call a sort of synthetic ringing sort of thing. I've yet to find real world everyday use for it to be fair, but for sound design and specifically lengthening audio sources I find it interesting and a viable option.

Another category is "realistic" reverbs where the early reflection patterns and how the original sound source blends and creates a sense of "real space" is the main goal. These are great for placing sound sources in the Z, aka front to back dimension (or "depth") of a mix. Usually these are not very useful for synthetic sound sources in my experience. You easily end up with a strange dissonance where you have a synthetic original sound that is then put in a "real" space. It becomes an issue of the uncanny valley somehow.. or then it's just because we usually don't hear these kinds of reverbs on electronica/trance/techno type of mixes so we aren't used to the combination.


I haven't yet come across a single plugin or hardware box that does all of these categories well. Probably the closest would be a heavily tweaked TC 6000 system (or equivalent plugin) but it's difficult to emulate the "phase cancelled" sound of the lexicons with this.. so it's not a proper solution.

Probably the most flexible reverb system out there is something like Ariesverb but I can not recommend this plugin as it's not under development any more.

[SparkySpark]

Actually, Neoverb starts to intrigue me. Look at the un-muddy feature in the middle of this video. It's quite impressive, honestly.

It should also take care of the issue rightly brought up by bmaniac.

I guess I should use it more...

https://youtu.be/cIvKQ2ZMQtY?t=122

For your particular music, I guess the automation thing would be of interest to (don't mind the vocals in this passage). It should give you some ideas!

https://youtu.be/dbs1PFCl8FU?t=525

[xx JPRacer xx]

Probably the most flexible reverb system out there is something like Ariesverb but I can not recommend this plugin as it's not under development any more.

I've been a fan of this "reverb" since the beginning. I'm so sad the dev stopped working on it but it's working good, there's a 64-bit version and seems future-proof, at least on Windows. Hope we'll see a 1.0 version some day.

[bmanic]

Indeed. Ariesverb is my go-to almost always as I have made so many presets for it for different flavors of reverb. It can do all kinds of cool reverbs. I have not however been able to do the lexicon phase cancelling thing with it yet.. but everything else it does quite well. It absolutely excels at strange modulated hauntingly beautiful and weird reverbs.

Luckily it DOES indeed seem quite future proof now that it is 64bit. It's even working under Rosetta translation layer on my Mac M1 within Reaper. That of course will most likely change at some point if Apple decides to remove the rosetta layer (which they probably will in a few years).

I've even been thinking of building a little mini-pc running windows where it'd be my external effects system just to keep Ariesverb alive.

[mholloway]

is this "lexicon phase canceling thing" actually uh, a real thing, or just someone's interpretation of what they think they are hearing? I've read a whole lot about algorithmic reverb and I've yet to hear about one that can magically phase-cancel out frequencies of the dry signal.... I'm happy to be educated in the matter if it is, in fact real, but some of this stuff sounds more like imaginary woo-woo than actual legit Reverb science...

[Debutante]

HAHAHA!! Was going to recommend Ariesverb, but bmanic beat me to it -ish. I STILL bought it a couple of months ago even though the dev seems to be awol. It's THAT good.

[DJErmac]

+1. Yes, Ariesverb is awesome.
Will never be my favourite reverb ever, but I truly love it. You can feel a sense of depth no other reverb brings me.