Recording - August 2019 - 62

Virtual
Space
A LOOK AT 10 FANTASTIC REVERB PLUGINS

What if we did a poll on the single most important studio effect of all time? My guess
is that half the people would choose delay
and the other half would choose reverb.
When plugins first hit the market,
reverb effects took the longest to mature
into convincing in-the-box models. Now
almost two decades in, some plugin
reverbs easily rival their hardware brethren.
Below we have an exposition of ten
unique, great-sounding reverb plugins
that will boost your creativity and give your
mixes some made-to-order depth and space.

Reviews by Mike Metaly & Paul Vnuk Jr

Best Service Halls of Fame 3

$169 (complete edition); www.bestservice.com
Halls of Fame 3 comes from German software/soundware
developer Best Service. It's a convolution reverb that's not well
known in the US, which is a darned shame.
The simple user interface in Halls of Fame 3 presents all the
basic controls you need: 3-band EQ for overall reverb tone,
input and output level controls with stereo metering, a pre-delay
control, and a mix control. A large graphic display shows the
selected impulse response, and presets are included to quickly
launch you off into space.
Halls of Fame 3 has extra controls that let you tailor each
IR in subtle or drastic ways. First off, what looks like a second 3-band EQ labeled 'damping' isn't actually a boost/cut
control at all; rather, it
controls decay times for
the high, mid, and low
frequencies of the tail.
Attack and release controls let you shape and
tighten the sound.
The Trim Start and Trim
End knobs let you set a
'window' on the IR to
address your audio. You
can remove early reflections, chop off tails for
a fabulous gated reverb
effect, or anything in between. Sometimes your
settings can cause the
62 RECORDING August 2019

output to lose level; when that happens, just press 'normalize'
to set the highest peak of the selected window to full scale.
Mind your levels when you do this-hitting a normalized reverb too hard sounds wonderfully trashy, but it might not be
what you want to hear!
The IRs themselves are plentiful and gorgeous! Halls of Fame 3
Complete Edition has over 3000 IRs totaling nearly 7GB in
size. Sampled units include the Lexicon 224, 480L, 300,
and PCM96/96L; EMT 240 and 250; AKG BX 20; Bricasti M7; Eventide 2016; Roland R-880; TC Electronic T6000;
and Quantec Room Simulator 2496. IRs are available for purchase, both individually and in small bundles. Nearly every
algorithm of every box is
represented with at least
two reverb time settings,
and some of them come
with dozens. There are
rooms of all sizes, plates,
chambers, halls, unusual
spaces, echoes, and special effects galore.
If you're in the market
for a convolution reverb
that's simple, CPU-friendly, and loaded with
sounds, Halls of Fame 3
should be on your short
list. Try the free edition
yourself! -MM
http://www.bestservice.com
Recording - August 2019

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