Sound through Details, or not: Waves H-Reverb

I’m sure you know the Hybrid Series from Waves and maybe you’ve heard of its latest addition: H-Reverb!

I’m a big fan of H-Delay, so I was thrilled when I heard that Waves added this new reverb to their catalogue. Today I want to give you an overview how this plugin works and how you can pimp your production with it.

General

Basically there are two kinds of reverbs: algorithm and convolution reverbs. Algorithm reverbs are calculated ones based on your setings. The advantage is that you have great control, but depending on your reverb, their quality might be not as good as the sound of convolution reverbs. These kind of reverbs are based on impulse responses which are generally recorded on location, to preserve realistic spaces – Audio Ease’s Altiverb is a very common here. Comvulution reverbs  are cpu hungry and lack in terms of control.
H-Reverb is a convolution reverb which was designed with a technology called FIR. (F)inity (I)mpulse (R)esponse means that the impulse responses have fixed lengths whereas Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) are based on a feedback loop. Although the FIR Tech’s calculation amount depends on the length of reverb, FIR reverbs allow much more control over time response and with a maximum of sound quality.
This means that H-Reverb combines the advantages of algorithm and convolution reverbs! To prevent too high cpu usage, you can use H-Reverb in a version with reverb times up to 6s and 12s. Should be perfect, right?

Overview

When opening H-Reverb, you will find basic parameters, as you know them from other plugins. In the top there is a visual of how the reverb will sound.
You can grab nearly every parameter (pre delay, reverb time, decay envelopes, …) in this graphic display. I think this is one of the reasons why the H-Reverb works so nice for me, as my work flow is a usually very intuitive and not so much about numbers. Short Form: You can directly affect the parameter you want, without searching it – Andy Style:)!

One of my basic tips for imaging is to work in the grid mode to insure musical results (I’ve written a ton of posts on this topic, so just search for the word GRID and you will find more specifics) H-Reverb picks up this workflow means it is possible to sync the predelay to your session tempo. This means that even if you have a long distance between early refelctions and your tail, the tail will appear in tight beat sync.

By clicking on ‚expand’ you will get more controls. Here you can get pretty much into detail, but I just want to show you features which might be helpful the most for your imaging process.

A creative way to affect the reverb tail is to use the Time Filters on the right side. There are three tabs: Damping, Envelope and LFO. The Damping section gives you the possibility to set the reverb time of different frequencies with the use of two shelf filters. The Envelope tab creates a sweep of the reverb tail with a LPF/HPF. You can set the edge frequencies, resonance and mix. The LFO tab does the same, but not only in one direction. It repeats the sweep in sine waves until the reverb time is over.

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In the modulation section below, you can add some stereo sensation by applying amplitude modulation and frequency modulated replica at the output, which results in a little flanging. You can use this effect to create a kind of chorus: Set a short reverb time around 0.15s to 0.25s, a short pre delay around 20 and a ER/Tail Balance of 100. Use this effect as an insert. Now turn up the modulation. You will see, that this will help to add more depth to your VO, while the original stays clear.

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Dynamic Section! While using a reverb I often find myself that the original VO file sounds nice, but when I put a reverb on it the sound is too harsh. The reverb has an inbuilt problem solver for this: a compressor with a dresser mode! Of course you can also use the normal comp mode. If you think that your tail gets lost in the mix, this will bring it back up. Two parameters, threshold range/release, help you to adjust the compressor to your needs.

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Additionally to the mentioned sections, you can add two different echoes, seperate filter for early reflection and eq for the reverb itself and a global section in which you can add some distortion.

If you ant total control, massive opportunities and great sound H-Reverb is your choice! From easy to create brilliant sounding reverbs to complex opportunities…All possible.

This plugin comes with a nice amount of presets from leading sound engineers like Brad Divens, Gil Norton and Kevin Madigan. At the same time the amount of tweaking options can satisfy your signature needs. While using this plugin, small functions like test, reverse and analog buttons make life easier. With possibilities like phase and frequency modulation, you can get nice effects which are not only interesting for voice, but also for FX creation. While most reverb plugins are IIR based plugins, the FIR Technology really pays off here – the combination between sound quality and amount of settings is great.

However, it would be nice if the plugin was scalable so you could adjust it for your monitor size. I also would like to see if the filter for early reflections would be bypassable. Of course you can set the frequency that high it won’t effect them, but thats an unnecessary work-around.

At the moment H-Reverb is on sale for $199 (regular: $349). Check out the Waves website for video tutorials or to download the demo. Enjoy!