Reverb Types
Spring, hall, plate, room, shimmer: different algorithms for different spaces. A guitarist picks reverb by feel.
What Reverb Does
When sound bounces off walls, floor, and ceiling, each reflection arrives at your ear at a slightly different time. The first few reflections are distinct. You can hear them as individual echoes. But within milliseconds, thousands of reflections pile up and blur together into a smooth tail. That tail is what we call reverb. A digital reverb simulates this by running the signal through networks of delay lines and filters, each tuned to produce a particular density and decay shape.
Five Characters
Spring reverb passes signal through a coiled metal spring. The result is a metallic "boing" with a short, bright tail. Room is tight and natural, like playing in a small studio. Plate uses a vibrating metal sheet for a smooth, dense tail favoured on vocals. Hall simulates a concert hall, spacious, with a long decay. Shimmer adds pitch-shifted feedback, creating an ethereal, rising tail popular in ambient music.
Try it: click each reverb type button and listen to how the tail changes character. Switch source patterns to hear how melodies, chords, and plucks interact differently with each reverb type.