New Music Gear Monday: Soundtoys Superplate Plate Reverb Plugin

There are so many good sounding reverb plugins available that you’d think that the world doesn’t need another. If you thought that you’d be wrong, because Soundtoys new Superplate plugin takes the genre of plate reverb plugins to a new level.

Lots Of Plates To Choose From

Most good sounding reverb plugs that have a plate algorithm that’s based on a generic plate sound. The fact of the matter is that different makes and models of plates sounded distinctly different. While most plate emulations rely on just one model, Soundtoys picked five that were the most popular – The classic EMT 140, the EMT Goldfoil 240, the Ecoplate III, the Audicon (the Nashville standard), and the Swiss-made Stocktronics RX4000.

Not only that, you get to select from 3 different preamps:

• The Tube preamp that’s modeled on the original EMT V54 in the earliest EMT 140 plates
• The Solid-State modeled on the EMT 162 preamp that was used in later versions of the EMT 140, which has a built-in compressor that can be used to help control and tame transients on their way into the reverb.
• SuperPlate’s Clean mode which strips out all preamp modeling and preserves the pure sound of the various plate models without any additional harmonic distortion or dynamics.

You can zero in on the exact sound you want by mixing and matching plates to preamps, which can really help when you need a reverb to either stand out in the mix or blend in.

And Lots Of Parameters To Tweak

The plugin has the usual controls of reverb time (it goes to infinite!), Predelay, Modulation (nice) and Low and High-pass filters. Then theres the Input and Output controls (with simple level indicators) and a Mix control. All pretty standard.

It gets interesting in the Tweak window, where you’ll find a 4 band EQ where you can shape the reverb’s sound. This is post-reverb, by the way (I prefer pre-verb, but that’s another story). There’s also a ducking control with Threshold, Target and Recovery controls, and stereo Width and Balance. Although ducking is a nice feature, if you have the reverb set up properly, you probably won’t need this often, but it’s still nice to have.

Soundtoys Superplate is now available for an introductory price of just $79 (normally $149). It’s available for both Mac and PC and in all plugin formats. Click to find out more about Superplate, or watch the video below.

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