Ableton Forum

Around version 5 there was a poll for Live's reverb, results were not too favourable and I personally felt it was not very good. Well it's a few years later, what do you think about it now? Has it improved? Are you using it in your projects?

"Meh" is the perfect option. It's not bad but it's also not very good either. Let's just say that it's usable.

it's a great synthetic reverb. some expect it to be some physical based one, which it isn't.

maybe one day AAS develops some physical based one, and a version for live? it would quiet all the haters of ordinary reverb. which i would personally still use. as i use reverb as an effect, not as "hall simulation of some real environment". for those cases, vst plugins are the way to go right now.

Meh. It was good for me to learn how a reverb works, but once I tried other reverb VSTs, I liked the sound of them much better and now hardly use Live's at all. Once in a while I'll use it as an obvious reverb effect, but for ambience and subtle settings, I use others.

trikster_b wrote:Meh. It was good for me to learn how a reverb works, but once I tried other reverb VSTs, I liked the sound of them much better and now hardly use Live's at all. Once in a while I'll use it as an obvious reverb effect, but for ambience and subtle settings, I use others.

some ordinary reverbs stacked vertically and or horizontally work just fine.

but vsts are always lovely. put in and it sounds fine. not my way of thinking, but obviously, works well.

Listen to Lexicons PCM Native and you wouldn't call Live's reverb a reverb. Its a poor substitute of a reverb. It puts a glitchy noise flag behind a signal, that's it. I use it exactly for that. But not for giving space or a third dimension.

i listened to quite some reverbs, and can fake them quite fine with live ones. not accurately, of course, but not that bad.

but a convolution style reverb for simulation of halls, churches, all sort of things, why not? let AAS build one. they're good at such stuff.

live reverb is kinda stale..
but when racked up could make beautiful verbs..
(although hard to control stuff inside rack chains)
that said... some reverbs out there give you instant gratification..
so sometimes I'd rather use them and get it out of the way...
my go-tos :
Aether(BRILLIANT)/SpaceMasterII ensemble/epicVerb/LXP15II/ReverbrateLE
but when playing live .. I use lives reverb...as it's suitable for harsh PA...
funny...
I would say Lives reverb needs an overhaul long time...
but I actually don't mind if it stays the same.. usefull/functional/low risk
I'm quite used to it and have many racks that contain it..
and I already have all the reverbs I'll need ...

yeah, i don't like live to have "sounds like this" devices. i like it to have clean, functional, technical devices. if one wants some emulation of some hardware, or some natural effect (like, in this case, reverb the way convolution reverbs do it), etc, then use some vst doing it.

Live's reverb is good for synthetic uses - as stated, it's not good (nor is it designed) as an acoustic space emulator, but in an electronic music context it is fine on synths where you want a more 'metallic' kind of tone.

The best reverbs for emulating physical spaces are any convolution reverb using the Bricasti M7 impulses IMHO. I also recently got into D16's Toraverb, which is great as a sound designer reverb because you can control so much going into it and coming out. For ambient soundscapes it is excellent and it has a great array of presets which are easily tweaked and a nice GUI.

I tend to use a combination of convolution and algorithmic reverbs, layered. Recently TC Electronics gave away the M30 reverb (well the 'Hall' section of it anyway) and that was cool. Epicverb, Aether, Breverb, IK Classik Reverb, Redline Reverb, Toraverb, and plenty of others are good. Audio Damage's ADVerb is a good plate reverb. UAD's EMT 140 and 250 are also excellent if you can spare the expense of a UAD card.

As stated, Live's reverb if racked and put on best quality settings and tweaked can sound better than it's first impression.

leedsquietman wrote:Live's reverb is good for synthetic uses - as stated, it's not good (nor is it designed) as an acoustic space emulator, but in an electronic music context it is fine on synths where you want a more 'metallic' kind of tone.

. . .

As stated, Live's reverb if racked and put on best quality settings and tweaked can sound better than it's first impression.

I agree but I'd also say that Live's reverb works surprisingly well for acoustic instruments in some contexts like live use (I always try to adjust for the room size and sometimes kill the reverb altogether).

Sorry to threadjack, but does anyone use Yellow Tool's Origami for convolution reverb? It's quite affordable and the demo in Independence Free is pretty nice.

I use it for "Live" performing, because of CPU. I wish it sounded more like a few plugs I use when recording.

I use free Omniverb. It isn't the best out there but it has a low CPU hit and a good sound for what it is.

I use it as a place-holder and then when it comes time to mix-down if they various Live-verbs don't offend me I leave them in. They often get used in racks as part of a synth sound.

I'd usually use something a bit posher on the main sends though.

Angstrom wrote:I use it as a place-holder and then when it comes time to mix-down if they various Live-verbs don't offend me I leave them in. They often get used in racks as part of a synth sound.

I'd usually use something a bit posher on the main sends though.

, i like the posher bit