Compressor& Reverb Software Plugins

A

anoopbal

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I use the Ableton Compressor and Reverb right now. But I want to try other ones. What are the top software compressors and reverbs? I have heard about the wave plugins and they have a 1 week trial period. It is for vocals mainly.

Thank you
 
Thanks!

What I am really looking for are some of the ones which are the top/most recommended ones. I just wanted to see how big of a difference it will make with what I have right now. And if it makes a big difference, I can buy it. I know there are a lot of free ones and such.
 
The UAD EMT250 is just about the most natural and useful sounding ITB verb out there. Very hard to beat is also the UAD Ocean Way Room simulator. I also have the Lexicon native bundle that gathers dust. But only because im going back to Analog mixing. Plugins are worthless 1/0's the moments after purchase. Get a real unit even a Yamaha SPX2000 shits over Plugins & you can get some $ back on it. Plugs are good for a moment in time but hold zero re-sale value. Get a box Verb with AES and set up a loop back to your DAW. In My OP... LOL!
 
I have a Bricasti M7, so I have a pretty good perspective on reverbs. In software I have the Lexicon PCM Native Bundle, the Redline Reverb 112 dB, the AudioEase Altiverb 7 and some other ones. The UAD EMT 250 I have not tried, but a friend of mine has it and his mixes sound great. I think the reason for why that sounds pretty good is because its processing is hosted/powered by a dedicated hardware card, so you get a cleaner timeline ITB and it probably can do some more advanced algorithms as well - there is a reason why you have to have a DSP accelerator card with it. I doubt you could go wrong with that if your DAW allows such a card. I find that the Altiverb 7 has the most different characters among the ones I have ITB. They all have their own characters, the Lexicon I find somehow makes the sound a little bigger/rounder when applied, therefore I use that sometimes for stereorization. The Altiverb 7 also has the ability of placing the sound source in the room, which is very useful in order to produce certain dimensional qualities, such as making certain sounds in your face. The Bricasti has its own character depending on the various reverb categories, I would say it has around 5 different characters, they are all nice, especially at higher sample rates. Besides these, I have heard that the native reverb and delay in Logic Pro is good and that Guitar Rig has some useful Spring reverb as well. SoundToys EchoBoy is probably my next purchase, it's used on a lot of high end mixes out there. If you are serious you print each sound source using the various characters for delay and reverb from Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Ableton etc. and have them available as characters when you mix. I definitely recommend that you keep the focus on reverb type rather than only on unit, because the reverb's character is much determined by the type of reverb. For instance a Spring reverb is very different in character from let's say a hall. In practice you want several different ones in order to bring more character to your mixes, often times several different reverbs on the same sound source, for instance a little Spring reverb from Guitar Rig combined with a little stereo slap delay from EchoBoy. Then, on maybe certain character group tracks you might find you want to add some resonance either on the group (when you want glue) or on some of the elements in the group. So it's this kind of thing, in other words it helps a lot to use these various reverbs used in hits. If you can afford a Bricasti, that's definitely worth it, although with the control I find it is simply too expensive. When you find it works to add a lot of delay and reverb, and in my view it kind of does, then I suggest you go down in scope to using these maybe mostly on frequency band level, because else all the various reverb and delay tails might become too clouded. I definitely recommend that you avoid 100% wetness on reverb and that you have a dedicated volume control for ALL reverb in the mix even when it sits on tighter scopes, so that you can balance it according to where it sounds the best, because reverbs can very easily destroy mixes, the same about all other effects, especially effects like choruses, which are nice but must be well balanced within the mix. It's great if you can find reverbs and reverb types you find "less good sounding" and ones that are "better sounding", because you can take advantage of that in order to boost the perception of the really great reverbs. For instance I tend to phase out the Redline Reverb 112 dB and phase in the Bricasti towards the peak point then keep the Bricasti to the end of the song. When you do so on all tracks it becomes very character rich, especially when you go from a rather non-clean/heavy reverb type to a more clean/light one.

Remember that character can be both sound types like warmth, but it can also be specific effect types like chorus. At some point in the mixing process you might go: I want slightly more warmth, however slightly less chorus. It's extremely convenient then to have two volume faders available for this. Therefore, I recommend you ensure you can work with these separately in the mix and that you can automate them at any time. I use snap shotting a lot with multiple effects, because sometimes a certain combination of effects in a certain fx wetness sounds perfect on one place, while on most others it does not sound balanced at all. Being able to just lock these effects with volume automation, is great.

I hope this helps. :cool:
 
Last edited:
anoopbal said:
I use the Ableton Compressor and Reverb right now. But I want to try other ones. What are the top software compressors and reverbs? I have heard about the wave plugins and they have a 1 week trial period. It is for vocals mainly.

Thank you
Click to expand...

If you have Max for Live, the convolution reverb is pretty nice.
 
Synthzizer said:
The UAD EMT250 is just about the most natural and useful sounding ITB verb out there. Very hard to beat is also the UAD Ocean Way Room simulator. I also have the Lexicon native bundle that gathers dust. But only because im going back to Analog mixing. Plugins are worthless 1/0's the moments after purchase. Get a real unit even a Yamaha SPX2000 shits over Plugins & you can get some $ back on it. Plugs are good for a moment in time but hold zero re-sale value. Get a box Verb with AES and set up a loop back to your DAW. In My OP... LOL!
Click to expand...

Well of course plugins have zero resale value. :facepalm: There are plenty of good plugins. Saying that only outboard hardware is any good is ludicrous in this day and age.
 
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