Like every other category of audio effect, reverb is well represented in the classic hardware emulation arena – if you can’t find a plugin version of your favourite real-world analogue or digital box, you’re probably just not looking hard enough. And if you think that such things merely serve as curios for the retro-obsessed, you couldn’t be more wrong: from vintage Eventides and Lexicons to the Bricasti M7, there are very few high-end reverb units from the last 50 years that aren’t still eminently effective and desirable today, so quality emulations of them are well worth having in your locker. Here are seven of the best.

Arturia LX-24

Playing a significant role in defining the sound of late ’70s and ’80s pop, Lexicon’s 224 was one of a handful of groundbreaking studio boxes that really put digital reverb on the map. Arturia’s virtual recreation of it not only looks the part but delivers every bit of that rich, glossy sound, with eight preset algorithms “inspired by the original hardware”, and the option to kick the high end up another gear via the super sparkly Modern mode. And if wilfully retro GUIs aren’t your thing, LX-24’s Advanced view presents a more empowering modern interface, in which many parameters are adjusted using an interactive graphical display, and a few new ones are introduced, including ducking, gating and tremolo. A cleverly expanded new take on a truly timeless classic.

Eventide SP2016

Eventide’s plugin resurrection of their legendary 1982 hardware debut – the SP 2016 – serves up Vintage and Modern versions of the original Room (standard room, mono with stereo outputs), 2016 Stereo Room (large hall) and Hi-Density Plate (dual-pickup plate) algorithms, the latter three coming at a higher bitrate and thus being brighter and more detailed. The control panel is perfectly easy to operate, but enables a great deal of adaptation of the algorithms, and the preset library is bursting with fine work by the likes of George Massenburg, Dave Pensado, Richard Devine and Joe Chiccarelli.

Crucially, SP2016 sounds incredible, yielding everything from tight, bright echoes and airy rooms to massive halls and cavernous plates. Eli Krantzberg puts it to the test in his video review.

LiquidSonics Seventh Heaven Professional

Unarguably one of the greatest reverbs ever made, the Bricasti M7 has established itself as a big-budget studio essential, but for those who don’t fancy shelling out four grand on the real deal, LiquidSonics’ emulation of it isn’t just the next best thing – it’s all but indistinguishable in the mix. Powered by the company’s proprietary Fusion-IR technology (greatly enhanced impulse responses), Seventh Heaven Professional incorporates every preset from the M7’s V1 (realistic rooms, halls and other spaces) and V2 (much more modulation, for less overtly realistic, vintage-style reverbs) firmware, as well as the nonlinear mode.

A spectacular reverb that manages to feel like an algorithmic design in use, despite being convolution at heart, Seventh Heaven Professional is simply unmissable.

Universal Audio UAD Capitol Chambers

Pushing the definition of ‘classic reverb’ slightly, our next entrant is a modelled emulation of four of the echo chambers buried away beneath the iconic Capitol building, as designed by Les Paul and deployed on countless recordings since the 1950s: namely, chambers  2, 4, 6 and 7. UA’s Dynamic Room Modelling technology combines impulse responses with algorithmic DSP, and provides plenty of setup options around the fundamentals of each chamber, including speaker (various Altecs or a Tannoy System 8) and microphone type (Altec 21D, RCA 44, Sony C37A or Shure SM80) and positioning, and a Decay control for ‘magically’ reducing the reverb time down as far as 1s. You also get filtering and simple EQ, up to 250ms of predelay, and narrowing down from the full stereo image of each chamber to mono or anywhere in between.

Despite its archaic technological basis, Capitol Chambers remains wholly effective in any modern context, standing as a wonderfully earthy option for placing vocals, guitars and other instrumentation in a variety of evocative spaces.

Waves Magma Springs

Before we get back into specific reverb hardware emulations, let’s conclude our brief conceptual detour with with Waves’ stellar spring reverb plugin. Flipping between seven unnamed spring tank responses, Magma Springs ranges in faux reverberant flavour from dirty 50s blues, through hefty Motown R&B and ’60s LA shimmer, to full-on booming dub clatter, and couldn’t be easier to use, with – rightly – nothing in the way of shaping beyond drive, predelay, feedback, filtering and a choice of Short, Medium or Long tail lengths. Nuff said – check out Luke’s First Look for more.

Native Instruments Reverb Classics

Returning to actual ‘name’ hardware emulations, NI’s keenly priced two-plugin bundle comprises RC 24 and RC 48, the first inspired by the Lexicon 224, the second by its follow-up, the Lexicon 480L. Neither is meant to be a comprehensive recreation, with the available algorithms limited to Room, Small Hall and Large Hall in RC 24, and Hall and Random Hall in RC 48, but the two are sufficiently different in their characters, relative ‘vintage-ness’ and editability (RC 48’s Pre Echoes panel is a highlight) to cover plenty of ground between them. And most importantly, with retro emulation specialists Softube at the coding helm, they both sound fabulous, both on their own terms and as authentic virtual Lexicons.

Wave Alchemy Glow

Finally, no vintage reverb round-up would be complete without the AMS RMX16, and here it’s aped by Wave Alchemy’s charming and affordable 2023 plugin. Based on a bank of 1000-odd impulse responses, Glow gives you 14 algorithms to play with (rooms, halls, plates, nonlins, reverses and more), and offers a variety of tasty extras including ducking, pitch modulation, transient smoothing and a universally applicable gate (ie, beyond that of the NonLin 2 algoirithm) with which to take them to places new. Exuding all the colour and grit for which the hardware was so beloved, it’s the very epitome of the ‘character reverb’, and well worth checking out if you’re serious about your old-school ambience.

What’s your go-to classic reverb plugin? Let us know in the comments.