I prefer using “one side” of a reverb for mono (like I would if I were using a real plate in mono- I think it’s a bit cleaner) but you can still just pan both sides up the center if you want. Not all plugins support multimono, though.

It’s sort of an old Pro Tools feature, that there are two categories of plugins: multichannel and multi-mono. You’d solo the vocal and there’d be way more verb than you ever realized, because it’s in mono printed on the vocal track (there were only four tracks!), so it would blend into the track with everything else. You can hear this on those Sgt Pepper multitracks that were floating around years back. Really helpful to be able to use as an insert on a mono guitar, snare, vocal track to add some depth without washing out the stereo image. Mono verbs and especially plates can be awesome, and using an actual mono plate (or one side of a plate) sounds better than panning both sides of a stereo plate up the center, IMO. You can drive the input a bit or use the delay multiplier for more vintage grit.Īlso, unlike a lot of verb plugins I have, Little Plate has a mono or dual mono version in ProTools. It’s a lot like what I do in a studio with real plates where I would patch the send to a hardware delay before going to the plate or chamber, and those old Lexicon PrimeTime and PCM42’s were always perfect for that. I sometimes like to put Soundtoys’ Little PrimalTap before it for predelay. Like Valhalla VintageVerb, it usually sounds pretty great the second you bring it up, making it useful as a monitor reverb when tracking. I’m glad I’m not alone, I use Little Plate all the time. And when done really well, like with a Bricasti or an old Lexicon or Valhalla Room, they can be stunningly realistic. They are not always 'realistic' sounding, but they can be especially goosebumpy.

When you want that vast, haunting, evolving, cinematic, 'Stranger Things' sound, algorithmic reverbs are where it's at. It's like, they get an A+, but I don't want to get lost in their sound, the way I do with an old Lexicon PCM70 or eventide H3000 or something. They can sound very 'realistic' in a clinical sense, but they somehow never seem to sound beautiful or 'good'. This is going to be controversial, but I generally dislike impulse-response reverbs. Plate reverbs are great for when you want the 'sound' of reverb, without pushing something back in the soundstage, but they can also make things sound cloudy and veiled, especially if you use it on multiple tracks. Valhalla Room, Valhalla Vintageverb, and Waves H-Reverb are all affordable, outstanding, and versatile additions to a good plate-style reverb.

Soundtoys reverb