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Best Reverb Plugins for Cinematic Orchestral & Trailer Music

HarmonyCore

HarmonyCore

Senior Member
Hey Everyone,

I've been using NI's RC 48 and Valhalla Supermassive for a year now and I am getting good results with them. Many artists prefer Blackhole and Valhalla Room. How good are these plugins? My humble understanding of reverberation is to have a convolution reverb on the master bus so that all instruments are in the same space with the added long tail. But I still don't get why do we need an algorithmic reverb?

Thanks
Click to read more...
 
The problem with convolution reverb in general is that it's static. It uses captured impulse responses, which makes it very accurate, but at the same time, you lose a lot of control.

Algorithmic reverbs on the other hand give you more control, while they are generally not as accurate when it comes to representing a real space.

I say generally, as there are very high quality algorithmic reverbs out there.

My personal favorite, Seventh Heaven, which is somewhat of an easter egg, is one of the best in my opinion.

I've heard great things about Valhalla and the demos are very nice for the asked price, so I don't think you can go wrong. The same with NI's Raum, though the intended use is slightly different. Still, their Orchestral preset is quite good.
 
On my personal tests raum didn't perform well (as master reverb) to be honest with was a bummer as I like the design. The ER's simply doesn't have much control nor sounds very good either.

HarmonyCore said:
Hey Everyone,

I've been using NI's RC 48 and Valhalla Supermassive for a year now and I am getting good results with them. Many artists prefer Blackhole and Valhalla Room. How good are these plugins? My humble understanding of reverberation is to have a convolution reverb on the master bus so that all instruments are in the same space with the added long tail. But I still don't get why do we need an algorithmic reverb?

Thanks
Click to expand...
@thorwald ld 's explanation is quite breaf and correct. Keep in mind some reverbs (like eventide blackhole) are more for creative use. If you want more self education about the topic can search for "mastering reverb" too on the internet.
 
thorwald said:
The problem with convolution reverb in general is that it's static. It uses captured impulse responses, which makes it very accurate, but at the same time, you lose a lot of control.

Algorithmic reverbs on the other hand give you more control, while they are generally not as accurate when it comes to representing a real space.

I say generally, as there are very high quality algorithmic reverbs out there.

My personal favorite, Seventh Heaven, which is somewhat of an easter egg, is one of the best in my opinion.

I've heard great things about Valhalla and the demos are very nice for the asked price, so I don't think you can go wrong. The same with NI's Raum, though the intended use is slightly different. Still, their Orchestral preset is quite good.
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Thanks for clarifying!

Yeah, Raum sounds fantastic from the videos and shame on NI to not include it as part of my ultimate bundle. Seventh Heaven comes in two version: standard and pro. I need to check their comparison sheet.
 
merty said:
Keep in mind some reverbs (like eventide blackhole) are more for creative use. If you want more self education about the topic can search for "mastering reverb" too on the internet.
Click to expand...
Sorry but I didn't get what did you mean by "more for creative use"? Aren't all quality reverbs for creative use?

Yes, I am currently studying reverberation on Groove3 but I need to buy a quality verb now for my current projects. The blackhole reverb tail is an ear candy and I immediately fell in love with it. Valhalla Room also sounds very good to my ear. It's very hard choice really.
 
There is probably not a lot which beats Valhalla's bang for the bucks. In order to give advise, let us know what you're planning to do. Are you looking for a generic reverb, a realistic reverb? What DAW are you using, because the build in reverbs in Logic/Cubase/S1 for instance are really good. I'm positive you'd get a lot of millage out of those and they might cost you nothing.
 
babylonwaves said:
There is probably not a lot which beats Valhalla's bang for the bucks. In order to give advise, let us know what you're planning to do. Are you looking for a generic reverb, a realistic reverb? What DAW are you using, because the build in reverbs in Logic/Cubase/S1 for instance are really good. I'm positive you'd get a lot of millage out of those and they might cost you nothing.
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I am on Cubase Pro, v11 now :)

My plan is to get my hands on couple of quality verbs as they cheap right now. I never understood Cubase stock verbs such as Reverence or the others. I always get bad results using them.
 
So many fantastic reverbs around these days. If you'd like Hans Zimmer's advice on it, he is using Liquidsonics Cinematic Rooms at the moment:

Cinematic Rooms vs. Seventh Heaven

Both on sale. Seventh Heaven a little cheaper, Cinematic Rooms a little prettier. Has anybody used both of these and know any big differences? Which one do you prefer?
vi-control.net vi-control.net

Not that many other reverbs - including the ones that have been mentioned above - will also be able to do what you want.
 
HarmonyCore said:
Sorry but I didn't get what did you mean by "more for creative use"? Aren't all quality reverbs for creative use?

Yes, I am currently studying reverberation on Groove3 but I need to buy a quality verb now for my current projects. The blackhole reverb tail is an ear candy and I immediately fell in love with it. Valhalla Room also sounds very good to my ear. It's very hard choice really.
Click to expand...

Blackhole focuses on "extreme" settings like unrealistically big rooms, odd resonances, feedbacks...and that slider under it makes it useful for very creative fx.

So though not saying it can't do traditional rooms but its very limited for an overall studio reverb. You'll want plate's, chambers, halls etc. with as much detailed control as possible when/if you hear imbalances (fixing muddyness, size, ER incompabilities while mixing).

For learning/experimenting with reverbs definitely get an algorithmic reverb.
 
muk said:
So many fantastic reverbs around these days. If you'd like Hans Zimmer's advice on it, he is using Liquidsonics Cinematic Rooms at the moment:

Cinematic Rooms vs. Seventh Heaven

Both on sale. Seventh Heaven a little cheaper, Cinematic Rooms a little prettier. Has anybody used both of these and know any big differences? Which one do you prefer?
vi-control.net vi-control.net

Not that many other reverbs - including the ones that have been mentioned above - will also be able to do what you want.
Click to expand...
Of course, Hans Zimmer advice is very important. However, Hans Zimmer is doing more than just music production. Like any other human being, his workflow is totally different than mine. He uses expensive plugins for film scoring, not for tracks submitted to music libraries. From what I read about CR, it is a more of a surround reverb (Dolby Atmos) than a casual home music production reverb. And it's overkill! I can't buy expensive effect plugins at the moment until at least my music can see any income. I'd be fooling myself if I buy an expensive effect plugin now to only use 4% of it.

On the other hand, I heard the sound of 7H and it really attracted my ears. Also, blackhole and Valhalla Room can't be ignored. I think I am going to buy these 3 plugins.
 
As has been said already - blackhole is (perhaps unfairly?) typecast as "creative" reverb. It does sound lovely though - and as long as you arent looking for hyper-realistic stuff it does make it very easy to get that intense, massive, wall of reverb sound... great for vocals! It also goes on deep sale now and then - I think I got it for $30 - well worth it!

Valhalla reverbs are superb - I have room, plate, shimmer and vintage. Room is a workhorse - covers so much ground and I strongly recommend it. Plate covers all my plate needs and shimmer is a very specialist (but lovely) sound. I find myself coming back to vintage most of all though - I think it has something warm and magical I can't quite quantify... maybe its a ghost of the lexington 480 sound? IDK

Everyone raves abot seventh heaven and I'm going to pull the trigger on it one day I know it.... For me, I can't help but fall in love with reverberate 3 mainly due to this demo.

Piano Ballad DRY:


Piano Ballad FS-24 Rich Chamber 2
 
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Ok I bought Valhalla Room and Blackhole. It's wise to stick with these verbs and utilize the heck out of them. I am sure I can get pretty nice results with these. The reason I bought Valhalla Room because I loved its space. In addition, both Jake Jackson and Christian Henson admired it in this video especially in that price. Watch at 16:15

 
HarmonyCore said:
Hey Everyone,

I've been using NI's RC 48 and Valhalla Supermassive for a year now and I am getting good results with them. Many artists prefer Blackhole and Valhalla Room. How good are these plugins? My humble understanding of reverberation is to have a convolution reverb on the master bus so that all instruments are in the same space with the added long tail. But I still don't get why do we need an algorithmic reverb?

Thanks
Click to expand...
There is no "best reverb". The best reverb for you can change per instrument and definitely per song, and it's absolutely a matter of personal taste. The only real answer is to demo a bunch of reverbs and see which one(s) clicks with you. And don't listen to anyone who tells you to put reverb on the master buss by default. That is a quick path toward unnecessary mud for no reason other than taking advice from random people on the internet. If you put reverb on the master buss, do so because you hear a specific problem that needs to be solved, and you can't solve it any other way. If you choose complimentary libraries to begin with and mix the mics you have available in those various libraries properly, then tend to proper individual and group processing (if even necessary), you should be able to get things to sit together just fine without much master buss processing at all.

FWIW, if someone told me they put Blackhole on the master buss, I'd honestly think they were joking. Blackhole is fantastic as a more sound design oriented effect rather than a subtle "glue" reverb.
 
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Recommend doing the 14 day trial for LiquidSonics Reverbs - Seventh Heaven or Reverberate 3 for IR-based or Cinematic Rooms for algorithm based. What you like will depend on if you value transparency or specific flavors of coloration to your reverb.

Cheaper options are Nimbus and R4 by Exponential Audio which are commonly available for $29 and have a billion useful presets and controls to tweak them if you're into that. Nimbus is the transparent one, R4 is the character one. Both were built by one of the Lexicon hardware engineers if that means anything to you.

If you're looking for a "smart" reverb, Sonible's smart: Reverb and Izotope's Neoverb are worth a look.

I want to try Spaces 2 from EWQL, but haven't seen it at a sale price I like yet.
 
Ive been recently studying on how to use reverb better in a cinematic/trailer music and been able to dramatically improve my sound using 2 reverbs at same time: convolution and algorithmic. Convolution puts the thing into ”real” space and algorithmic gives the longer tail. I dont have much experience of many reverbs, but I think you can have good results with almost any of them. There are so many good quality ones. I use Spaces II for convolution and Valhalla Room for algorithmic at the monent.

For creative use I just use Spaces, Valhalla room or Logic’s Space Designer, but am intersted in digging deeper into that area as well. Blackhole seems interesting but I will wait until it goes to sale. Are there other good alternatives for creative style of reverb? Maybe little less expensive at least when on sale?
 
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