Hardware reverbs - FX: like or meh

TroutMask

Recently I grew weary of software reverbs - not that I had that many, only Space Designer, SIR, and a couple in Kontakt and Reaktor. The issue I found was that it was difficult to make the reverbs 'sit' in the mix or gel with, say, vocals. After looking at SW verbs, I reached the conclusion that a hardware verb would hold it's value better than a SW verb and so I bought a Lexicon PCM91. I must say, I'm totally impressed with it and prefer it over the SW verbs I've used. The only hassle is 'striping' the verb signal back in to the DAW as another audio track.

Over the years I've tried a few verbs and FX, mostly at work: Yamaha SPX (all of 'em) + Rev 7; Lexicon PCM 70 PCM 80; TC M5000; Eventide H3000; Lexicon PCM 42; Deltalab Effectron...... and I've always had a good time when playing around with hardware FX. So, any opinions on this? Hardware vs. Software FX or, in a less confrontational manner - Hardware + Software??

i57dwun4yb1pt8

nebula with vnxt emt 150 is the best vst reverb out there , sits lovely


also the tc konekt interfaces have nice verbs you can plugin as vst

fitz

TroutMask wrote: »

Recently I grew weary of software reverbs - not that I had that many, only Space Designer, SIR, and a couple in Kontakt and Reaktor. The issue I found was that it was difficult to make the reverbs 'sit' in the mix or gel with, say, vocals. After looking at SW verbs, I reached the conclusion that a hardware verb would hold it's value better than a SW verb and so I bought a Lexicon PCM91. I must say, I'm totally impressed with it and prefer it over the SW verbs I've used. The only hassle is 'striping' the verb signal back in to the DAW as another audio track.

Over the years I've tried a few verbs and FX, mostly at work: Yamaha SPX (all of 'em) + Rev 7; Lexicon PCM 70 PCM 80; TC M5000; Eventide H3000; Lexicon PCM 42; Deltalab Effectron...... and I've always had a good time when playing around with hardware FX. So, any opinions on this? Hardware vs. Software FX or, in a less confrontational manner - Hardware + Software??

How are you using sw reverbs?
In Logic, I pretty much always use a Bus that has a 100% wet version on the reverb on it and send the track to that, with the send turned to 0db.
I then use the bus fader to control the amount of verb, but it also means I can independently process the verb sound very easily. Find doing it this way is much quicker than putting the verb plugin on the track in question, in terms of getting the verb to feel like part of the track.

I can also end up using several verbs on drums alone, so going the hardware route in a non-console type setup isn't really practical.

TroutMask

Ah yes, I always use busses myself - I set up Logic, well Nuendo or Harrison these days, the same way I set up my Neve with FX returned this way. I only insert dynamic FX like gates, comps etc. I'll be doing my first experiment with more than one type of reverb in a week or so - I imaging it's going to be unwieldy - but if it sounds better, I'm happy