August 2022 - Aaron J. Trumm

The 5 Best Reverb Plugins Compared

This article first appeared in FlyPaper by Soundfly. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to check out their courses. You can get a 15% discount code on a subscription using the promo code AJTRUMM15.

Reverb is like water. You can live without it for a few days, but eventually you’ll die. Ok, it may not be that necessary, but without a few good reverb plugins in your DAW, you’ll be hard pressed to get a good mix, as reverb is one of the most essential tools in mixing. Reverb creates a sense of space, makes a song come alive, and gives mixes depth.

So, we’ve compiled five of the best reverb plugins around, in case you’re in need of an upgrade in that department. It would be hard to claim that this is the only possible list of five top verbs, as there are so many incredible plugins out there, but these five come up repeatedly and have become staples in many a studio.

Without further ado, in no particular order, and a drumroll please….

Valhalla VintageVerb – $50

Overwhelmingly the most mentioned plugin in our informal surveys of producers and musicians. VintageVerb is a simple, intuitive plugin that offers three distinct modes:

1970’s Color Mode uses algorithms inspired by digital reverb hardware from the 1970’s. This mode reduces bandwidth to add artifacts.

1980’s Color Mode emulates digital hardware reverbs from the 80’s. Bandwidth is less limited here, and the mode does just what it says – makes 80’s sounding reverb.

NOW Color Mode gives you a more modern, clean reverb sound.

Valhalla VintageVerb is great for vocals, and while it may not be everyone’s go-to for other tracks, it has a flavor all its own, and as such is loved across the board.

Audio Ease Altiverb – Around $650 to $1100

Altiverb an expensive choice, but the love shown for this convolution reverb is as much as any other. Altiverb comes in two flavors – regular at 499 British pounds and XL at 849 pounds. This translates to somewhere around $650 and $1100 depending on current exchange rates, although you can do a good bit better at a dealer like Sweetwater.

Expense aside, Altiverb is sophisticated and rich, and arguably the top convolution reverb on the market. If you don’t already know, convolution reverbs take impulse responses (IRs) from real world spaces – cathedrals, concert halls, bathrooms, anything, and use complicated computer mumbo-jumbo to allow you to place your source in that space.

Altiverb has a massive library of IRs from around the world, all exquisitely crafted. This includes more than just music spaces. It also includes responses from vitage gear, specific stage locations, experimental responses and more. If you’ve never tried a convolution reverb, do yourself a favor and at least try out Altiverb’s demo.

Uaudio Lexicon 224 – $299

Uaudio’s Lexicon 224 is a digital emulation of Lexicon’s famous hardware reverb, which was the most popular studio reverb from its release in 1978 well into the modern era. If you’ve heard U2, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Grandmaster Flash or any number of other artists, you’ve heard the 224.

UAD’s emulation does the classic reverb justice, using the same algorithms as the original hardware and adding presets from famous producers who used the original, such as Prince’s Chuck Zwicky and Peter Gabriel’s Kevin Killen. Even Lexicon endorses UAD’s plug-in version, and for good reason.

The 224 is another great vocal reverb, but it shines in almost every situation. Its characteristic lush tails and classic 80’s sound will transport you back, but the truth is the sound of the 224 is equally at home in a more modern production. It’s a pretty simple plugin, with only 5 faders (just like the original remote control), so it won’t be hard to start experimenting right away.

Fabfilter Pro-R – $199

Fabfilter’s Pro-R makes the list not only for popularity and a decent price tag, but because it’s so innovative. The company claims the Pro-R plugin works in a more “musical” and less technical way, and that’s a pretty accurate statement. Some features that set Pro-R apart are a stepless room size control, tempo sync’d pre-delay, and probably the coolest thing ever – delay rate eq, which allows you to control the decay time of different frequency ranges independently.

Besides offering these cool features, Fabfilter’s Pro-R has an incredibly natural and smooth sound, almost never introducing artifacts or producing ugly, nasally “reverb” sounds.

Softube TSAR – $199

Last but certainly not least, Softube’s “True Stereo Algorithmic Reverb”, or TSAR. Softube’s sell on their reverb plugin is that it is NOT an emulation or a “static snapshot” of a space (a possibly unfair potshot at convolution reverbs). TSAR also boasts a “true stereo” response, which simply means it responds to a stereo input in a more realistic way. IE: if you pan an input hard right, the reverb won’t just be heard in the right speaker.

TSAR is another simple reverb. It’s got a few faders and only one algorithm. There’s no low-cut option, but you can always add an EQ to your chain to do what you need to there.

In the end, TSAR makes the cut because of its excellent sound quality, relatively low CPU usage, and of course because of its sheer popularity in our surveys. TSAR is a fair-priced, effective and high- quality solution.

There You Have It

In all honesty, we could have gone a hundred ways with this. There are a plethora of awesome reverb plugins out there. Companies like UAD, Waves, Liquid Sonics, and Eventide are just the tip of the iceberg. Even your DAW’s stock reverb plugins are likely to be awesome. That said, the five above showed up repeatedly in surveys, always get great reviews, and when we tried them, they all sounded magnificent in some unique way.

So, go out there and try some, and let us know your favorite!

I’m a producer, writer and artist. I’m not always spacey, but when I am, I prefer lush and classy reverb – sometimes. Let me know your favorite reverbs on Facebook or Instagram

In Studio: Track Band Together, or Separately?

August 29, 2022 by Aaron

Audio Instruction, Carvin Amps and Audio, Instructional Stuff, Published Work

aaron trumm, audio basics, carvin amps and audio, carvin audio, home recording fundamentals, nquit music, recording basics, signal flow

This article was written originally for the blog at Carvin Amps and Audio. I repost it here, and encourage you to check out Carvin’s amazing line of products!

By now it’s an age-old question: should we track the band together as if we were playing live or should we try to get the cleanest signals and performances possible by tracking separately?

The truth is there’s no right or wrong answer. How you go about recording depends not only on you – your chemistry, skill, and tightness – it also depends on the studio. Is the space tight enough that bleed will be a major problem? Will you be able to properly hear each other? Is there a drum booth? Do you need eye contact can you get it?

Your genre is a big determiner here too. Jazz ensembles and jam bands who improv a lot and feed off each other may need to track together regardless of the tradeoffs. Pop groups who need to sound as clean as possible may want to opt for fully separated tracking.

The good news is, it’s really an either-or proposition. In fact, in reality most groups use some sort of hybrid, and most projects exist somewhere on a spectrum between fully together and fully separated tracking. Here we’ll go over just a few common ways to answer this question.

Authentic Live Capture

The most extreme end of the tracking together spectrum. An authentic live capture seeks to track the band exactly as it is on stage with no overdubs. The advantage here are authenticity – you’re really capturing the group as it is on stage – and efficiency. A well-rehearsed group may even be able to knock out 10 songs in the time it takes to play 10 songs. Potential disadvantages include instrument bleed, performance errors, and edit issues.

Some ways to mitigate these issues include separating drums and amps into booths, using headphones to monitor, and playing to a click or reference track. Playing to a consistent tempo reference can be crucial for editing takes together or making fixes later. Isolating amps and other loud sources to minimize or eliminate bleed gives you the opportunity to overdub later – even if your goal is not to. Finally, rehearsal is crucial if you track this way. Tiny mistakes and inconsistencies come through loud and clear on a record, so if you’re recording this way, you need to be tight.

The Basic Band With Overdubs Method

With this method, the intention in initial tracking sessions is to play together as a band, but the focus in the control room is capturing the main foundation of the band. This usually means drums, bass, guitar, and piano if it’s in the band. In this tracking session, the vocalist is singing, everyone is doing their part, but the main focus is to get the foundation right. You don’t go back on a bad lyric or a flubbed note from the singer, because the singer will come back later to overdub the “real” vocal take. Backup singers may or may not participate in initial tracking, and extra fillers like bells or extra percussion wait until later to overdub. This method may be the most common method for bands, as it captures the chemistry of the band while still getting clean vocals. Extra leads and solos may be overdubbed too.

Guidelines for mitigating bleed still apply here, as does the advice about playing to a click or other fixed tempo source.

The Rhythm Section First Method

In this method, start with the drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and piano if you have it. The focus is entirely on putting together a solid rhythm section, without the “distraction” of vocals and leads and what not. This method may be good if the vocalist also plays guitar, piano, or bass and doesn’t always feel comfortable doing both at once. It’s even more useful if the vocalist is the drummer, because capturing a clean vocal take in the midst of a drum kit can be pretty hard.

Play to a click and isolate as well as possible without messing up chemistry.

The Hip-Hop, Pop and Everything Else Method

If the group is not a band, the whole question is nearly moot. Beat makers make beats which are always locked to tempo, performers perform over the top of those beats, and there’s no question about separation, unless there are multiple vocalists.

If there are multiple vocalists, you’ll have to decide whether they should sing or rap together and if so whether they should be in the same room, share a mic, be in booths, etc. It would be easy to decide to give everyone their own mic, but there are plenty of times you might choose to let vocalists share. For example, a really skilled 4-part harmony might be better captured with a great omnidirectional condenser than with isolated microphones. “Gang vox” where a room full of people chant together might be hard to deal with if there’s 40 separate signals come mix time. Instead, that group might be better captured in a room with a stereo pair.

Two rappers feeding off of each other, however, might be better tracked in isolation, but perhaps together in the same room.

The completely separated method is the best and sometimes only way to go about things if you’re capturing sources in a variety of home studios or collaborating remotely.

These are just a few of the most common answers to the question of whether to track together or to track everything separately. As you can imagine, there are infinite ways you can tweak to make it work for your group. The best way to come up with the plan of action is to first think about the abilities and idiosyncrasies of the players, the genre, the end goal, and of course the budget. After all, if you’ve only got the studio for an hour total – the question is answered. Similarly, if you’re working with 4 or 5 people all in different towns, you know what you have to do. In any case, there’s no one right answer to the question “should we track all together or separately?” – only your best solution.

If you have questions or want to talk, just hit me up on Facebook @AaronJTrumm – or email me aaron @ aarontrumm.com

Do You Need That Upgrade?

August 24, 2022 by Aaron

Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness, Published Work, Recording Magazine

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, do it yourself recording, home recording, mixing, mixing music, music equipment, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Black Friday will be upon us soon and you’ll be inundated with discount offers tempting you to buy while you can. But unless you’re filthy rich, “discounts” can break the bank. In fact, it may be the number one way to stay poor: spend money you wouldn’t otherwise spend on something you don’t need, simply because it’s less than it might have been.

Still, when it comes to your studio and your creative output, there are times when you need to make purchases. Around the holidays is a great time to make upgrades, not only because of sales, but because at end of the year you’ll have some idea how much room you have for tax deductions.

Generally, it’s wiser fiscally to respond to a need (or a want!) and see if you can get a great deal than to react to an offer – unless you’ve been patiently waiting for exactly that offer. But that doesn’t mean offers won’t come your way, so there are a few questions you can ask when one hits your inbox:

Have I been waiting for this exact thing?
Is there a quality issue in my studio that this would solve?
Is there a productivity issue in my studio that this would solve?
Is there something I can’t do at all without this (eg: recording vocals with zero microphones)?
Do I already have this functionality?
Is something broken that this would replace?
Have I exhausted the possibilities with my current gear?
Am I excited about this?

The first six questions here come down to practicality. You can solve many problems with resourcefulness and handywork. There’s a lot of creativity in that, but sometimes you’d rather apply your creative energy to music, so it’s perfectly alright to solve these problems with money. But you can save a lot of money, time, and space by asking these practical questions before buying. If the answer is “no but so and so says I need it”, back away slowly.

The last two questions deal with creativity.

The first – “have I exhausted the possibilities with my current gear?” means a lot. Most of us don’t read the entire manual when we start using a new gadget. We just jump in and make it make noise and as we go we get really good with certain aspects and neglect others.

This is fine – there’s no reason to use audio snap if you only use MIDI. But the downside is you may have missed something a piece of gear or software can do that you’re about to buy a whole other thing for. Your existing gear may even do it better!

Not only that, you may find that exploring an undiscovered function could lead to a bunch of ideas. Why NOT record audio and see what audio snap does? Why not explore the omnidirectional setting on your condenser? What happens if you use the sequencer on this vintage synth instead of the DAW?

It’s worth it to really get to know the ins and outs of your current rig before you add to it. You might discover that you don’t need something you thought you needed, or you may discover a different new purchase that would suit you better.

That leads into that last question – which other than pure practicality may be the only real reason to buy something new. Inspiration! Sometimes you just need a fresh something to jazz your juice! There’s nothing better than diving into a new toy – maybe a hot new analog synth or some insane, revolutionary plugin that does something heretofore not done in sound.

There’s definitely nothing wrong with that. After all, you may be a musician at heart but if you’re reading this, you’re also a recordist at heart and that’s all about playing with toys.

So, ask yourself “does this excite me?”. Believe it or not the answer is often no. As Derek Sivers, famed founder of CD Baby, has said many times, “hell yes or no!”.

At the end of the day there are a million things that everybody says you need lest you not be good enough and you almost feel obligated to buy just to keep up with the times. This is financially prohibitive. Instead, you can maintain the health of your studio with practical purchases and leave just enough room for those new toys that will cream your corn and make you make a new masterpiece.

This is the way of the wise upgrader.

I’m a producer/artist who stays just behind the cutting edge, stays efficient, and thus can afford healthy food. Ask me about it on Facebook @AaronJTrumm or Instagram @AaronJTrumm

Monthly Archives: August 2022