Hello! Today I wanna talk about why you should really own and use different reverbs if you want to make the most out of your sounds in music production.
I’m sure many of you know the saying that you should be knowing your plugins well rather than having way too many different ones you can’t even operate to enjoy all the useful features.
It’d be a waste of money plus it doesn’t improve your production skills by a lot.
First of all, I agree with that a 100%. Especially in recent times I have regularly been using a selection of go-to plugins and it really helps the workflow. But still: I feel that if you can you should definitely try out using different types of plugins, especially reverbs for your sounds. Why? Before we get to that let me clarify that you don’t have to spend much money on all of these plugins. There are many great reverb VST’s you can get for free and I’ll name some of them throughout this post, so stick through.
So what are the benefits of using different reverbs?
Different reverbs have different features. Of course the main features are always the same, Wet/Dry, Size and a filter. Most also come with a Pre-Delay option. But some reverbs have pretty specific and useful features you might not get with every plugin. Having multiple of these unique features enables you to get very specific and detailed with your sound design if you know why you would choose one VST over another in a specific situation.
Which reverb VST’s I regularly use and why
Except for one all of my reverb VST’s have at least been available for free at one point. The only one that cost me money is the Fabfilter Pro-R plugin. Right now it costs 170 bucks but I’d say it’s worth that for sure. One reason for that is the separate EQ’s for the decay and the post signal of the audio. Instead of having just two knobs (one for lowpass and one for highpass) you can adjust these setting with a full blown parametric EQ.
On top of that there is a ‘brightness’ knob you can use for quick adjustments. It pretty much acts like a lowpass filter but to me it sounds a bit more detailed and unique.
Still I use a couple of other plugins too depending on the sound I wanna achieve.
The EPIC Verb
Epicverb by VarietyOfSound for example is my go-to reverb for lush atmospheres with LOTS of reverb. With the right amount of damping this sounds just so smooth especially with long decay times. And with long I really mean LONG. There’s a button that when enabled just adds another 10 seconds of decay and it’s one of my favourite features in any VST ever. Listen to the drench you get with this:
My track Sorrow from the Salvation EP is probably one of my best examples for excessive use of reverb:
Listen to that portion of the vocal track without epicverb:
And here it is with all the epicverb instances enabled:
Also there is a switch which lets you decide if you want your sound to have a normal reverb or just an ‘Ambience’. If you opt for that you can basically drench your sound with the same reverb with just one exception: there’s no decay. So once the sound stops, the reverb stops as well. This is nice for subtle reverb effects on a drum bus for instance.
Secret tip: TeufelsbergReverb by Balance Audio Tools
I’ve been using this one more and more lately. It has exactly two knobs, one for the mix and the other one for the gain and lets you choose between six different reverb algorithms. And man they sound so different! Let me give you an example of one and the same clip with three different Reverb types from the TeufelsberbReverb VST:
This VST is a perfect example for one that doesn’t convince you because it has hundreds of different features but because it’s so simple and yet so useful.
If you’re looking for something to make your atmospheres more unique with the click of a button, there you go.
Other ones I use are Raum by Native Instruments, Nebula by Minimal System Instruments (got those when they were free, so look out for deals and specials) and AconDigital CM Verb
The AconDigital reverb is pretty simple too but perfect for a quick workflow and good for your CPU.
What I wanted to get across
Today I just wanted to give you an example for why it’s not automatically bad to own different plugins of the same type. You could say this for compressors, EQ’s and other types of tools as well but for me the reverbs are the most important ones. I use them most often, thus they are the ones letting me realize my creative potential the most. So yes, in my opinion you should own and use different reverbs! You don’t need a lot of money to take your sound design to the next level.
I hope you could take something away from today post and maybe you’ve even found a new potential game changer for your production.
Thank you for reading, make sure to check out other posts from the blog and until next time!
Leave a Reply