Did you know that Waves have roughly 200 plug-ins in their mighty catalogue? Out of these 200 or so plug-ins that span EQ, compressors and emulations there are only a smattering of dedicated reverb plug-ins.

Reverb is one of the most important effects in a mixer's toolkit. Reverb creates space around tracks, which in turn adds depth and dimension to mixes, in short, reverb is a tool that mixers will never be able to live without. In this article, we feature 5 of the best reverb plug-ins by Waves.

Abbey Road Plates

Plate reverbs were first introduced into recording studios in the late 1950s. Over the last decade or so many plug-in developers have produced many and varied types of plate reverb plug-ins, but what makes Waves Abbey Road Plates unique? Simple, the official Abbey Road connection and the quality of the reverbs. 

Abbey Road Plates was released into the wild in February 2016. Waves claim this to be a full-on emulation of the four legendary EMT 140 reverb plates at Abbey Road Studios. Plate reverb produce the reverb effect through large suspended sheets of metal that have tensioned springs attached to the corners. Transducers transmit audio energy through a metal sheet which is picked up by two contact mics attached to the surface of the plate. Adjustable internal dampers set the length of the reverb time. Sound vibrations travel quicker through metal than air, this gives plate reverbs a unique tonal characteristic that is instantly recognisable. Plates produce very smooth tails with subtle sounding echoes that sound very nice one vocal tracks.

It can often be quite difficult to pick the best flavour plate in this plug-in as each of the plates sound beautiful! It is a bit of a CPU hog so don't expect to run multiple instances of this within a session.

H Reverb

Waves developed a new technology for H-Reverb called FIR - Finite Impulse Response reverberation technology that Waves say produces rich sounding reverb with deep tails. FIR enables users to quickly shape and customize a reverbs decay envelope well beyond a standard linear reverb which produces perfectly gated and dense reverb tails are easy to sit in a mix.

Like other Waves H series plug-ins, H-Reverb features Waves advanced analog modelling technology which includes a drive control that produces signal behaviour similar to what you would find in expensive outboard reverb device.

H-Reverb is a well-sorted reverb unit that provides users with a vast selection of reverbs from small realistic balanced sounding rooms to large creative "out of this world" ambiences. This is a plug-in that caters for all. Like Abbey Road Plates, this too can be a bit heavy on CPU, however, the results are worth the occasional CPU spike.

Manny Marrroquin Reverb

The Manny Marroquin Reverb is like no other reverb featured in this list. It is not an emulation, nor does it feature any new groundbreaking technologies. It is a straightforward plug-in to use that features common reverb types and sizes. The area that makes this reverb unique is the post effects section. This section enables users to shape the tone of the reverb with EQ along with compression, phaser effects, distortion (with Dry/Wet control) making this a very versatile tool.

Watch our 15 minute mix challenge video to hear how The Manny Marroquin Reverb plug-in performs on a section of tracks in a pop folk mix.

Renaissance Reverb

Named Rverb for short, Renaissance Reverb is one of Waves oldest reverb plug-ins. Don't let its age put you off though, Renaissance Reverb is still a very powerful tool that holds its own against many of today's more modern reverb plug-in offerings. All the controls we expect to find in a reverb plug-in are present including Damping, Time Response, EQ, Pre Delay etc. What makes this a cool plug-in is the quality of the reverb spaces. For a number of years Renaissance Reverb was my "go to" reverb because I always found it easy to use and manipulate quickly. The reverb effects are not what I would consider to be characterful like the previous reverbs in this list, but that's no bad thing. I do feel though that the reverb effects that can be achieved in Rverb are safe, predictable and clean which makes the ambiences in Rverb easy to fit into any mix.

Watch our Rverb tutorial to hear how a rap vocal can be gently spaced in a mix using small amounts of short room reverb.

OneKnob Wetter

Plug-in don't come any easier to use than Waves OneKnob Series plug-ins. As the same suggests, Wetter is a reverb plug-in. Set the main dial between 1 and 10 and you'll get varying amounts of reverb quickly in your mixes. If you are into comprehensive plug-ins then don't let the over easy OneKnob style put you off. OneKnob Wetter is a great tool for adding short bright spaces through to longer and darker sounding reverbs. Like other OneKnob plug-ins, Wetter is an instant gratification effects plug-in thats purpose is to add depth and interest to tracks quickly in a mix.