As I started typing this blog post, I figured I’d put 2024 in the title so I can revisit this each year and update my recommendations.

That said, I’m not confident anything will ever jump in front of this recommendation, although I’d love to be proven wrong by future me.

What I look for in a reverb

This will be MY favorite reverb plugin as of 2024. Everybody has different needs for a reverb plugin. Some want an authentic sounding spring reverb, some want something low price, some people may just want massive reverb that also happens to come with delays and 20 different modes..

The type of music I make tends to be “washed” in reverb. That means I rely on reverb as a core element of my sound design. I say this because clearly what I value in a reverb may not be typical.

The winner

Given my needs above, my favorite reverb plugin for 2024 has to be the Valhalla Super Massive. Why do I love it?

• It lives up to the name. This thing can produce some absolutely massive, ethereal, atmospheric sounds that I just love. I get so inspired by plugging my guitar in, loading up Supermassive, and playing around with all the presets. It’s so easy to get a huge sound out of this thing.

• Price. It’s free.

• Controls. It has enough knobs and parameters to get exactly what you want out of it but nothing more. It’s easy to tweak to your needs.

• Extra effects. Supermassive also comes with impressive sounding delays, choruses, and flanges. Making it an all-in-one plugin for your spacey modulation needs.

My favorite settings

Now I’ll walk through some of my favorite presets on the Supermassive. For context, the reverbs are divided into four sections: Small, Medium, Large, and Massive.

I’ll give a recommendation for each, plus my favorite delay. If you haven’t already, definitely check out the ‘Modes’ section on the Supermassive page. They have done a great job at describing all these different algorithms and how they behave.

Small - Reverb2000

This is probably my most used setting on Supermassive. While it is in the ‘Small’ category, it can get pretty large depending on how you configure it. My favorite way to use this is to set the mix pretty low (15-20%) and use it as a more “subtle” reverb. (remember that subtle for my style may be not-so-subtle for you)

Medium - LostSaucer

LostSaucer is part of the ‘Hydra’ mode which is characterized as ‘double echoes / long decay’. I think this sounds best with the DENSITY knob dimed, giving you a long and lush reverb.

Large - CirrusMajorEchoHall

Aptly named, this one gives you some initial echoes and then a long tail of reverb when the DENSITY is at 100. Turn the DENSITY down, and you’ll start to get some odd repeating echoes that’s a joy to mess around with.

Massive - FinalFrontier

This is my favorite setting for any type of reverb where I want it to hang around for infinity and just drone on in the background. This is part of the ‘Great Annihilator’ mode which is described on Valhalla’s website as “Slow attach with a fair amount of predelay, and super long decay times”.

Delay - DottedEighthOrbits

I. love. this. delay. For one, I’m a huge fan of dotted eighth delays. I think I feel in love with them the first time when listening to Tycho but I’m a sucker a dotted eighth delay on a palm muted guitar any day of the week.

This one is special though, it adds in this panning effect to the echoes which makes them feel like they’re bouncing around in your head. Really, really cool effect and it’s dead simple to get a great sound.

Also just by the way, when poking around the UI, you’ll see that the delay effects are referred to as ECHOES. Another fun fact if you’re not aware, reverb is just a form of delay.

My gripes

I just wrote 600 words praising this plugin and I would do it again in a heartbeat. That said, it’s not perfect.

My main issue with it is when you’re using any sort of ECHO and setting the delay timing to Note - 1/4, 1/8, etc.. There is a bug in the plugin where sometimes when you render the track with the delay, the timing will get all out of whack.

Have no fear though, there’s an easy fix. Once you have your delay set with whatever note setting you choose, switch the Note value to msec instead which will convert the note value to a millisecond value based off your project’s BPM. This will get rid of that issue and it’ll cleanly render.

Summary

In short, if you’re looking for a reverb plugin with huge sounds and awesome delays, look no further than the Valhalla Supermassive. If you’re not looking for that, you may as well still download it because it’s free.

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