Waves H-Reverb

Igniting a reverb so as it integrates to the source material in a perfectly natural manner is an incredibly difficult thing to do. To me, only hardware mabages to do it in a natural, systematic and quick way.
But I don’t always have my studio with me, especially on holiday with my laptop computer. So I tried Waves’ H-Reverb and immediately had this feeling of perfect integration. By the way, this is my sole valid criterion when judging the qualities of a software reverb, as in this price range the color and reproduction quality (whether IR or vintage) are of little interest and hard to compare.

What matters is that my idea of the sound and the settings I’m after can easily be obtained (and sound good).

Quick settings and ER choice make this reverb a pro tools with a very good position compared with its competitors. Somehow it’s the missing link between Universal Audio (think of their beautiful EMT and Lexicon renditions) and Altiverb (or other IRs).

Working on the go on a production work, you can get a bit of both worlds at hand and that’s quite clever. I was able to send functional test mixes with no reason to blush. I can also easily compare different reverb sound worlds and colors very quickly, with a single instance of the plug-in!!

+++ takes little resource, all the opposite of what I’ve read here or there
++++ GUI allows for a smart and reasoned workflow
+++++ sound palette is very versatile and easy to access
-- a little less good ans realistic-sounding on heavy reverbs
-- producer presets are difficult to use because of the way they are organized
- some reverb presets end a bit abruptly and require a manual slope setting

Used on ProTools 12, on which it’s 100% functional
Won’t work (crashes) with Cubase SX.

It won’t replace a nice hardware yet, but perhaps someday – who knows?