Arguably, reverb is one of the most essential effects in any audio engineer's toolkit. Its primary purpose provides a sense of natural space and ambience to tracks, which in turn introduces a sense of depth and dimension to the sound of our mixes. In this free video series, brought to you with the kind support of Waves, we demonstrate four different styles of reverb plug-in that you can use to help sit lead vocals beautifully in a mix.
The four plug-ins we feature in this series are not only very capable plug-ins in their own right but are all super simple to use. We are going to use the same example in each of the tutorials to enable you to compare the differences in workflow and results between each of the plug-ins. We will start with the most straightforward reverb plug-in first.
Waves OneKnob Wetter
Waves entire OneKnob series often gets a bit of a bad reputation as many believe they are too simple for professional use. I disagree, try to look at these as liberating instead of limited. Often mixes need to be turned around quickly and on tight budgets. In such cases, why waste time fiddling around with a complex interface if you can get the job done with the turn of a single dial?
In this video, we have set OneKnob Wetter on the vocal in series as the last insert in the track’s plug-in chain. There’s no real need to have this working in parallel in an effects return as the central dial acts as the primary level control. You will also hear how different values sound, not just in level but also in timbre as the tone transitions from bright to slighter dark as the amount increases.
Waves GTR Stomp Boxes - Spring Pedal
Don’t assume that Waves Stomp Effects are only suitable for just mixing guitar tracks. They are also excellent on vocal tracks. In this video we show you how to apply spring reverb to a vocal using a touch of delay before the spring effect. What’s great about Waves Stomp Effects is that you can quickly and easily chain your own custom effects all within one plugin.
Waves Manny Marrroquin Reverb
Waves Manny Marroquin Reverb is a generic reverb with some special creative effects thrown in as well. The post effects section is particularly special as you can use it to shape the sound of your reverbs using EQ along with compression, phaser effects, distortion (with Dry/Wet control), altogether making this a very creative and versatile tool.
Waves Abbey Road Plates
Many plug-in developers have produced plate reverbs. So what makes Waves Abbey Road Plates unique? For starters it has the official Abbey Road seal of approval.
Abbey Road Plates released in February 2016. Waves claim this to be a full-on emulation of the four legendary EMT 140 reverb plates at Abbey Road Studios. Physical plate reverbs produce the sound of reverb through large suspended sheets of metal tensioned with springs. Transducers transmit audio energy through these metal sheets which is then picked up by contact mics attached to the surface of the plate. Adjustable internal dampers set the length of the reverb time. Sound travels more quickly through metal than through air, this gives plate reverb its unique tonal characteristic. Plates produce very smooth tails which sound very nice on vocal tracks.
It can be difficult to pick the best flavour of plate in this plug-in as each of the plates sound beautiful. It is a bit of a CPU hog so don't expect to run multiple instances of this within a session.
There you have it, four very different reverb plug-ins you can try for yourself the next time you need to mix a lead vocal. Out of these videos, which of the plug-ins did you prefer the sound of the most?
Visit Waves more information on the plug-ins used in this article.