The new Reverb Plates plugin from Waves uses state-of-the-art modeling of the 4 legendary EMT 140 reverb plates housed at Abbey Road Studios used on recordings by the Beatles. We put it to the test.  
Fig 1 The Waves Abbey Road Reverb Plates plug-in

Blue Plate Special

Fig 2 A view of the inside of an EMT plate reverb, showing the plate itself and the transducer (center) and pickups (left & right)

The Abbey Road Touch

Fig 3 The four EMT plates installed at Abbey Road

Waves Steps Up to the Plate

Fig 4 The controls of the Waves Abbey Road Plate Reverbs, annotated (courtesy of the PDF manual)

The Lush Life

Wrap-Up

Joe is a musician, engineer, and producer in NYC. Over the years, as a small studio operator and freelance engineer, he's made recordings of all types from music & album production to v/o & post. He's also taught all aspects of recording and music technology at several NY audio schools, and has been writing articles for Recording magaz... Read More

Discussion

Jay Asher
Hey Joe, do you think it is enough better than the UAD Plate 140 to warrant the CPU hit? I compared them and am not so sure.
Joe A
Hey Jay -
I haven't had any direct experience with the UAD Plate, so I couldn't say (though in general I find UAD's emulations to be excellent), but I wouldn't worry too much about the Waves' CPU hit -- I tested on a slightly older computer, on a more up-to-date machine it probably wouldn't hit quite so hard, and you likely wouldn't be running too many at one time, anyway.. :-)
Cheers,
Joe

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