The 10 Best Reverb Plugins For Vocals (2023)

A good reverb effect for vocal processing is often crucial for a great vocal mix. Luckily, you don’t need a reverberant room, a chamber, or a hardware unit anymore to have the iconic sound. There are great reverb plugins available, providing sophisticated reverb effects to enhance your vocals.
There are many different kinds of reverb plugins with different levels of quality and versatility, as well as different characters, serving different purposes. A good reverb plugin would be one with a good amount of versatility, sound quality, and controls to get you the killer vocal mix that you are searching for.
Here are 10 of the best reverb plugins out there today.
1. Audio Ease Altiverb 7
There are many different reverb types in the plugin, such as the recording studio effect, which makes the vocals sound quite bright. Other examples are the cathedral or the church effect, which makes the vocals sound quite big. There are also different experimental reverb effects, such as castles, trains, and caves, which are all based on real recordings of acoustic spaces.
The use of the plug-in is also quite easy. It comes with plenty of controls, such as multiband damping options, an internal equalizer, brightness control, a positioner, and time-shifting options. The interface is also pretty clean and well-organized.
2. Slate Digital VerbSuite Classics
The plug-in uses multi-sampled IRs called Fusion IR processing for more authentic effects and more detail. This way, the effects you get from the plugin are pretty rich, smooth, and dynamic.
While the effects are high-quality, the user interface is also pretty clean, with traditional controls such as width, decay, attack, and a chorus control for each unit. Additionally, you get a 3-band EQ, gain, and mix knobs to control your signal. Experimenting with all these reverb types takes some time, but they're all high-quality and unique. Slate Digital VerbSuite Classics is a great reverb plug-in to make your vocal mix shine.
3. Waves H-Reverb Hybrid
The plugin is quite versatile as it has many features, from real reverse to advanced analog modeling with drive control. It also has a set of EQ, modulation, resonant filter sweeps, and dynamics processing controls, as well as a rich library with modern and vintage reverb effects. Furthermore, you can use artist presets to copy the settings of famous mixing engineers.
The user interface and controls are pretty simple, making the use of the plugin quite straightforward. Overall, it is a great reverb plugin for vocals with a pretty attractive price tag.
4. Eventide SP2016 Reverb
You find Mix, PreDelay, Decay, Position, and Diffusion controls on the control panel, along with a separate EQ section to fine-tune your reverb sound. Plus, the plugin provides great artist presets that you can use, including presets from Dave Pensado, Joe Chiccarelli, Richard Devine, George Massenber, Sasha, and more.
While the interface is straightforward, where this plug-in shines is the sound quality. The algorithms modeled after the hardware are impressively accurate, and the modern versions are very clean and crispy. Moreover, the artist presets are very well-designed, saving you the time and effort of experimenting with different settings.
5. iZotope Exponential Audio: Phoenix Verb
It allows you to adjust your reverb effect with its internal equalizer, diffusion, and damping controls, ADSR controls, and reverb gain control options. Furthermore, you can fine-tune, balance, and mix your vocal reverb with the attack, the early reflections, the tail’s sound, and ADSR separately, increasing the versatility of the plugin significantly.
The interface is quite straightforward, but you have more options on the control panel compared to other plugins in the list. To shape your sound as you like, you will need to experiment more with the controls. It is great for producers who want to take full control over the vocal reverb effects, but it may be too much for beginners.
6. FabFilter Pro-R
The reverb type and the room model are controlled with the main control knob, the Space. You can’t know how many reverb models there are as they are unnamed, but the classic reverb types, like room reverb, are definitely in the range. Plus, you get the traditional pre-delay and decay control knobs along with unique decay rate EQ to control the decay rate depending on the signal frequency.
You also have unique controls such as character, brightness, and distance to spice up things. In short, FabFilter Pro-R is a unique reverb plugin with high versatility and good sound quality.
7. Ableton Convolution Reverb
Another unique aspect is that the plugin allows you to use two different IRs for a single reverb: one for early and the other for late reflections. This way, you can create hybrid reverb effects. In addition, you can create your own reverb spaces with the IR Measurement Tool.
For those looking for authentic sounds and experimenting with different reverb types, the Ableton Convolution Reverb is the ideal reverb plugin to go with.
8. Valhalla Plate
On the interface, there are Mix, Pre-delay, Decay, Size, Width, and 2-band EQ with gain controls, as well as Modulation rate and depth knobs to adjust your sound.
Additionally, you have the mode control, which allows you to switch between different plates like Chrome, Steel, Brass, Cobalt, and more for different types of real-world steel plate reverbs. The emulations are quite natural, and the sound quality is top-notch.
9. Lexicon 224
The reverb effects from LX224 were used in many iconic recordings, such as U2’s “The Unforgettable Fire”. The plugin offers eight classic reverb programs and one chorus program along with great presets from famous Lexicon 224 users like Chuck Zwicky of Prince and Kevin Killen of Peter Gabriel.
Just like the physical unit, you get the tactical slider controls with plenty of tweaking options like the 3-band equalizer, crossover, depth, pre-delay, and more for the highly tunable reverb image.
10. LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven
The plugin has some of the highest-quality reverb effects with a good level of versatility to shape your sound. The standard version includes plates, halls, rooms, chambers, spaces, and ambiances taken from the legendary Bricasti M7. The controls include pre-delay, mix, low and high cut, gain, very low frequency, and early-late reflection knobs.
The Pro version features all the controls, presets, and modes of the M7 hardware. But, if you are not a huge fan of M7 and want to avoid going deep, the Standard version is more than enough. Its versatility, sound quality, controls, and presets can easily become the new industry standard in the reverb plugin world.
Conclusion
Vocals are some of the most challenging parts of the mixing process as they are the main center of attention and are positioned in the center of your mix. To make them sound as good as possible, you must create the right space that compliments their best qualities. And this can be done with the right kind and amount of reverb with the right settings.