TL;DR: It depends!


The best reverb and delay for vocal -- what kind of vocal? a voiceover? an acoustic song? an EDM song? a rock song? and define best, because there are many, many aspects of a reverb that make it good: sound, flexibility, UI, etc.

as a preface, I had the chance to work briefly a few times at some wonderful studios with hardware like the lexicon 480L, PCM 96, and a few other hardware pieces - I still have yet to use the Bricasti

I also get a hold of every software reverb I can to demo, because... I love to try out new things to try to figure out how to use them and learn.. and ..well.. because I enjoy watching progress

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but here are the best reverbs according to some sort of criteria imo:

SOUND FIDELITY:
anything by Acustica Audio.. i have the Analog in the BOX EAR reverbs, the Phonocompatica, Gene Lennon reverbs, etc, and all of them by far outshine every other class of software reverb i've used, algorithm or impulse response, as far as sound quality. It sounds so similar to hardware reverb in feel AND in use.. but the limitations in tweakability are a thing of concern..some of them you can't even tweak; they are just a dynamic impulse response..

other notables: UAD EMT plates, 2C B2

FLEXIBILITY:
Valhahlla Vintage Verb and Vintage Room: These two reverbs have multitudes of sound palettes to start with, and beyond that, they also have tons of tonal controls. Vintage Room for real spaces, Vintage Verb for artificial spaces. The key here to getting a good sound with these are not so much the tonal controls though, it is the magic of the MIX/DRY ... Other reverbs have it.. but none of them work as well as with these when it comes to adding more depth to the original sound while wrapping the source sound in the wet sound. Still

other notables: 2C B2, Artsacoustic Reverb< Waves Manny Reverb (a reverb with built in distortion and phaser? I'll take one please)


QUICKEST RESULTS:
Valhalla Vintage Verb and Vintage Room: Yes, it seems like a pattern doesn't it? But these really get me the quickest sound I want to get. I often will use one of these reverbs and then add an Acustica Audio samples preamp, like the Helios Lustraphone, after it to impart the hardware feel and drift of a hardware piece to close the gap in sound fidelity. The process is simple. Adjust predelay, adjust the tonal aspects and density, then modulation, and then finally a second filter for high and low pass..then finally wet/dry adjust


CREATIVE REVERB:
Valhalla Shimmer, Eventide Blackhole ... Oh wow.. especially for the eventide.. I only was able to demo them, but these can create very, very interesting spaces with their more interesting settings. Shimmer is more simplistic, but it is great for those huge spaces, Blackhole is similar but a tad bit more options, like tempo sync. and they sound cavernous .. love em

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Waves, Acon Digital, 112 db, stock plugins, etc. etc...they all can do in a pinch if you have good enough sound design capabilities.

But if I may play devil's advocate, would we really know how to differentiate the best plugins in a side-by-side comparison? I can possibly listen to something and say for sure that is hardware or software at SOME reverb settings.. but you give me Truverb and then makes similar settings in the Lexicon PCM vst, in short decay settings where the reverb hugs the sound, it would be sooo difficult to tell in a complete mix..

final note:
These kind of questions can be self-defeating, and they almost invariably lead to answering not what the best plugins are available, but rather a race to name all the ones in existence by nameless people whose mixes you haven't even heard.

When it comes to opinions on subjective tools, the more detailed the question, the better answer we can give.

P.S. I didn't address delays because I only mostly use hardware delays .. can't get that same filthy sound as my Line6 Delay ITB quite yet...

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2015