budget verb? Alesis?

[BrettB]

Hi All,

Does anyone has a suggestion on a cheap verb unit? I read about the extremely cheap picoverb and nanoverb from Alesis. Anyone have any experiences with them? I know they aren't very flexible, but I'm just looking for a desent but cheap way to get some pressure of those verb plugins...

[noiseportrait]

the Alesis verbs aren't going to be much better than your plugins. If you want to free up some processing power from plugins then I'd suggest copying the track and printing the verb to it. Then you can control the wetness by bringing some of the original track back in. If you find that you want to change the verb later on, then just delete the verbed track and try again. It's not as easy as running a plugin, but it works well enough to free up some of the tracks eating up processing power, and it's completely non-destructive.

[SonicAlbert]

Find a used Alesis Wedge in good chape, they go pretty cheap these days. Much better than either the Nano or Pico in my opinion, and really a decent budget reverb.

[Dot]

The Alesis Quadraverb 2 has excellent reverbs. They're regularly on Ebay for under $125. http://search.ebay.com/quadraverb-2_...ectZ1QQfromZR8

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Lexicon MPX 100 or 110

TC electronics M300

Not great units but as good as anything in the budget price range.

[Mustafa Salaam]

Originally Posted by Kevin DeSchwazi

TC electronics M300

.

That right there is your best choice for the money! Nice array of 'Verbs and delays!

[elleWebb]

Depends on what you need. If you just want a cheap hardware reverb, the behringer virtualizer does the trick. It's about $100-120, and is decent for most work and you don't have to worry about it getting ripped off or damaged.

If you need better quality, most recording software has pretty good verbs. I use Sonar, and the reverb in it has excellent quality. (I think it's based on Lexicon algorithms.)

The TC line is good, too.

You get what you pay for with reverbs, but you have to decide what's good enough for your needs, too.

[lumbago]

You could always try the bathroom in your house. Seriously, most places have somewhere that is reverberant and can be used / abused.

Failing that, look for a second hand Lexicon MPX100/110/200/500/550

[eeldip]

how many reverb plugins are you running?

you might want to consider running fewer... like maybe 1-3. that is really all you need unless you are going for something really crazy... can you run 3 reverbs?

1 for vocals, leads (a plateish thing). 2 for "room" (a roomish thing). 3 for "special effects" a sort of snazzy reverb (wildcard... slight gate, some extra delay, someun like that, spring reverb).

send all your lead vocals to 1, background vocals to 2- maybe 1, drums to 2, little bit of the guitars or whatever to 2. anything you want to pop out as a lead you might want to try sending it to 1 to see what happens. to 3 send the snare or something else that you want to pop out... instrumental leads... special vocals all to 3 maybe.

lots of people make the mistake of sticking verbs as inserts on every track... them crazy people. dont be crazy.

if you want to buy an outboard reverb invest in something mechanical like a spring or a plate. a computer doesnt do those that well without really trying hard. good investment... cheap outboard digital reverbs are cool if you pay less than $50 and expect it to be worth $25 in a few years. if you spend $150 on a reverb, expect it to be worth $50-$25 in a few years.

plug ins are nigh free. useum. buy cool microphones.