UA's renowned plate reverb modeling in an easy-to-use plug-in.

The Pure Plate Reverb plug-in provides UA's revolutionary plate reverb emulation in a simple package, with all of the essential features. By harnessing the musical, deep, organic sound of this classic effect, Pure Plate Reverb gives you warmth and texture to your sources that only plate reverb can provide.

• Easily add natural depth and shimmer to vocals and instruments
• Sculpt with classic plate reverb controls like mechanical damping and input filters
• Quickly tweak the perfect reverb tone with Bass and Treble controls
• Mix with artist presets from Patrick Carney (The Black Keys), Richard Chycki (Rush, Dream Theater) Chuck Zwicky (Prince, The Time) and more

Groundbreaking Reverb Emulation Technology

The Pure Plate Reverb plug-in was engineered by the modeling experts at Universal Audio to be a no-compromise emulation of this classic effect. By capturing all of the sonic and mechanical nuances of the steel plate, transducers, and dampers, the Pure Plate Reverb plug-in gives vocals, guitars, strings, and synths a lush, satisfying space that gently flatters any source.

Easy to Use

Whether you're tracking in realtime using an Apollo interface, or mixing in your DAW, Pure Plate Reverb's intuitive controls deliver musical results for beginners and pros alike. The ultra-effective Baxandall-type Bass and Treble controls sculpt the timbre of the reverb, while the Low Cut Hz input filters and Pre Delay further season the reverb's character. Finally, the Balance control lets you place your "space" perfectly in the stereo spectrum. No matter the source, Pure Plate Reverb gives you the rich analog dimension and depth of an old-school plate reverb system.

Features:

• Instantly musical and familiar sound of mechanical plate reverb used on records from the '50s to today
• A one-stop reverb that sounds right on any mix, any source, any genre
• Simple control set, easy to dial in
• Low frequency input filtering, Pre Delay, Decay, two-band shelving EQ, Balance, and Dry/Wet mix
• Includes Artist Presets from Patrick Carney (The Black Keys), Richard Chycki (Rush, Dream Theater) Chuck Zwicky (Prince, The Time) and more

Pure Plate Reverb

Operational Overview

This section provides a general overview of Pure Plate Reverb operational concepts. For specific details about individual controls, see Pure Plate Reverb Controls later in this chapter.

Classic Plate Reverb Sound with No Frills

Pure Plate Reverb delivers a shimmering, authentic plate reverb sound with a minimum of fuss. It's easy to take control of the damper mechanism to set reverb duration, and shape the results with the provided tone controls.

Predelay allows for adding distance between your dry signal and the arrival of the wet signal.. The two-position Low Cut Filter banishes rumble and helps govern the role of bass frequencies in the reverb output.

On the output, a wet/dry Mix control lets you blend your source and reverb to just the right amount, and the Wet Solo switch lets you disable the dry signal instantly, for easy use on effects returns. The Balance control lets you set the relative volumes of the left and right reverb signals for effect positioning.

Artist Presets

Pure Plate includes presets provided by prominent artists. Presets are accessed with the preset browser. 

Artists that have provided presets for Pure Plate Reverb

Pure Plate Reverb Controls

The Pure Plate Reverb interface is an amalgam of controls normally found at the plate amplifier itself and the remote damper controls, plus a few DAW-friendly controls added for convenience.

Low Cut Filter

The Low Cut Filter is a dedicated pre-plate equalizer that is used to reduce low frequency content in the reverb. On hardware plate systems, this setting is rarely modified because it is found at the plate amplifier unit itself and is not easily accessed from the control room.

When the LOW CUT Hz control is set to OFF, no filtering occurs. When set to 90 or 180, a 12 dB per octave high pass filter is applied to the reverb signal, with its corner frequency set to the associated value.

Predelay

This continuously variable slider sets the amount of time between the dry signal and the onset of the reverb. As Predelay is increased, the perceived size of the reverb "room" increases. The available range is 0 to 250 milliseconds.

Reverb Time (Decay)

The Reverb Time meter displays the current reverb duration, in seconds. Reverb Time adjusts the amount of physical damping applied to the acoustic plate, thus changing the reverb time. The available range is from 0.5 to 5.5 seconds, in intervals of 0.1 second.

Any of these techniques can be used to adjust Reverb Time:

• Click the "–" or "+" damper buttons on either side of the Reverb Time meter
• Click or drag anywhere on the Reverb Time meter's indication needle
• Drag horizontally anywhere on the plate damper display animation (at the right of the control panel)

Tone Controls

Bass and treble tone control filtering can be cut or boosted for flexible tonal shaping.

Note: EQ is applied only to the reverb (wet) signal. It does not affect the dry signal.

Bass

This parameter sets the amount of low boost or attenuation. The available range is ±12 dB.

Tip: Click the "0" text label to return Bass to its center (unity) position.

Treble

This parameter sets the amount of high boost or attenuation. The available range is ±12 dB.

Tip: Click the "0" text label to return Treble to its center (unity) position.

Balance

This control balances the level between the left and right channels of the reverb return. Rotating the knob clockwise attenuates the left channel, and vice versa.

Note: Click the "C" text label to return Balance to its center position.

Mix

The Mix control determines the balance between the original and processed signals. The range is from Dry (0%, unprocessed) to Wet (100%, processed signal only).

This control uses a logarithmic scale to provide increased resolution when selecting lower values. When the knob is in the 12 o'clock position, the mix value is 15%.

Note: If Wet Solo is active, adjusting this knob has no effect.

Wet Solo

The Wet Solo toggle switch sets Pure Plate Reverb to only output the effected signal. When Wet Solo is on, it is the equivalent of setting the Mix knob value to 100% wet.

Wet Solo defaults to On, which is optimal when using Pure Plate Reverb in the "classic" reverb configuration (placed on an effect group/bus that is configured for use with channel sends). When Pure Plate Reverb is used on a channel insert, this control can be deactivated to blend dry and wet signals to taste.

Power

This toggle switch enables or disables the plug-in. Power can be used to compare the processed settings to the original signal, or to bypass the plug-in which reduces (but not eliminates) the UAD DSP load (unless UAD-2 DSP LoadLock is enabled).

Tip: Click the Output Meter to toggle the power state.

Output Meter

The vintage-style VU Meter represents the plug-in output level. It is active when the Power switch is on, and slowly returns to minimum when Power is switched off. The Output Meter is illuminated when the plug-in is enabled, and dark when disabled.