While there’s no doubt that you fundamentally get what you pay for with reverb plugins – witness the works of LiquidSonics, FabFilter, Eventide, Audio Ease et al – there are are a few free options out there that really put that established wisdom to the test. Here are half a dozen that we’d be happy to call on in any mix.
Valhalla DSP SuperMassive
Sean Costello’s amazing freebie is built specifically for the conjuration of huge, mind-blowing spaces, although the parameters can be set to recreate smaller environments too. SuperMassive’s 18 reverb/delay algorithms are named to reflect their cosmic sonic scalings – ‘Centaurus’, Great Annihilator’, ‘Orion’, ‘Scorpio’, etc – each one defining the attack, release and base density of the effect. We’re particularly fond of ‘Aquarius’, which blurs the line between delay and reverb, the languid ‘Andromeda’, and the delightfully weird ‘Cirrus Major’ and ‘Cirrus Minor’ – but every one brings something different to the party, and all are immense fun to manipulate using a concise control panel that will feel like home to anyone who’s ever used a Valhalla plugin before. You get up to 2000ms of Delay time (synced or free-running, and LFO-modulated), Feedback, Density, Width and high/low-cut filter adjustment, and the groovy Warp knob, which alters delay lengths relative to delay time to great rhythmic effect.
Why this one doesn’t get the usual €50 Valhalla price tag, we have no idea, but this unique reverb is one that you just can’t afford to miss.
Wave Arts Convology XT
Born of a collaboration between plugin developers Wave Arts and impulse response capturists Impulse Record, Convology XT serves as a compelling sales vehicle for the latter’s 2,965-strong Complete library of IRs (and its individually available subsets), but is also a superb convolution reverb plugin in its own right. Loaded with 74 of the aforementioned IRs, which have been nabbed from a range of vintage reverb units of all kinds – digital, plate, spring, etc – and a handful of real-world spaces, Convology XT makes working its wholly convincing simulations into your projects a breeze, with a straightforward set of controls taking in envelope timings, pre-delay, decay scaling and LFO modulation. It sounds fabulous, and although you can of course dip into the temptingly priced additional IRs as and when you see fit, there’s endless mileage to be had from the plugin in its completely gratis form.
Togu Audio Line TAL-Reverb-4
Togu’s ’80s-styled plate reverb sim goes beyond many commercial alternatives in the extent and power of its feature set. Alongside the usual plate-shaping parameters – Size, Damp, Delay, Diffuse and Stereo width – TAL-Reverb-4 lets you get to grips with pitch shifting, equalisation (low-cut, high-cut and peaking filters), tail modulation, bitcrushing (24-bit to 2-bit) and sample rate reduction (48kHz to 0Hz), for an impressive level of customisation. There are separate dry and wet output level controls, too, and you can even dial in ducking to drop the volume of the wet signal whenever the input or an externally sidechained signal is present. The quality of the thing is plain to hear, and while you’re there, you’d be mad not to download the company’s other free goodies – TAL-Filter-2, Chorus-LX, NoiseMaker and Vocoder – as well, all of them being every bit as good as their reverb sibling.
Melda Production MCharmVerb and MConvolutionEZ
The two reverbs included in Melda’s incredible MFreeFXBundle cover both algorithmic and convolution approaches, and are comparatively light on knobs, which makes them supremely quick and easy to use. MConvolutionEZ really is as pared back as they get in this regard, with only Predelay, stereo width, filtering and mix parameters to negotiate, but the appeal lies in its extensive library of impulse responses, which take in all manner of spaces, plates, microphones and more. MCharmVerb’s busier panel offers Length (0-5000ms), Size, Predelay, filtering and low/high damping controls, while the engine running that particular show has been culled from the mighty MTurboReverb and sounds quite beautiful.
They might be less obviously flexible than most of our free contenders, but MConvolutionEZ and MCharmVerb are great choices when you need quality reverb with the minimum of fuss.
Acon Digital Verberate Basic 2
…Well, almost ‘minimum’. Making Melda’s rudimentary pair seem positively busy, Acon Digital’s free ’verb takes four presets from the full Verberate 2 and puts them in a one-knob GUI, the dial in question controlling the dry/wet mix. And that’s it! Choose from ‘Plate’, ‘Room’, ‘Hall’ and ‘Lush Hall’ presets, set the mix and you’re done, for better or worse – and while the A/B comparison function is helpful, we’re honestly not sure if the undo/redo buttons are there as a rather brilliant joke!
Okay, so clearly this one is primarily intended to upsell Verberate 2, the stellar quality of which it ably demonstrates; but Verberate Basic 2 is well worth having around for those occasions when you just need to pull up a quick room, hall or plate without having to think about it.
Voxengo OldSkoolVerb
Another free reverb that we’d happily pay good money for, OldSkoolVerb deploys a “classic” algorithm that’s described as “technically simple yet optimal” – ie, a vintage-style effect that puts sonic purity ahead of any sort of acoustic realism. The main editor is home to the expected size, decay time, width, damping and EQ controls, but you can delve deeply into the algorithm itself in the Reverb Mode panel, messing about with the likes of Operator Count, Delay Ramp and Cross Gain, and saving the results out as a discrete preset if you hit upon a worthy setup.
While this is ostensibly a demo version of the paid-for OldSkoolVerb Plus, the only thing you gain by upgrading is the Spatial control panel, which – although undoubtedly worth having for its imaging and density-boosting capabilities – doesn’t profoundly detract from the overall proposition in its omission.
Tell us about your experiences with these and other free reverb plugins in the comments.