Elements Releases Free Gverb VST Plugin (Open Source)

Elements has released Gigaverb and Gverb, two freeware VST plugin ports (32-bit and 64-bit for Windows) of the open source GVerb algorithmic reverb.

Gigaverb and Gverb are both based on the same source code, however the control parameter ranges were tweaked so that the two plugins can produce different reverb types. Gigaverb (as the name suggests) is optimized for emulating huge spaces with long decay times, whereas Gverb (although it can still be used to make huge reverbs) works better for emulating somewhat smaller spaces. Neither plugin will work very well for simulating small rooms and other smaller spaces, though.

See also: Best FREE Reverb VST Plugins!

The GVerb source code has been around for quite some time now. It was originally written by Juhana Sadeharju and later ported to LADSPA and LV2 formats by Steve Harris. If you’ve used Audacity in the past, you’ve most probably seen it included as one of the built-in plugins in this freeware audio editor.

In terms of sound, Gigaverb and Gverb are quite good. I’m not very picky when it comes to reverbs, so saying that both of these plugins sound quite fine to me doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll like them as well, but there you go. The CPU usage is surprisingly low, however, which is a big plus for a reverb plugin. Surprisingly enough, a single instance of either plugin results in only around 2% increase of CPU usage on my test machine (based on a 3rd generation i5 processor). It doesn’t change even if you push the decay and size parameters towards their maximum values.

On the other hand, one thing that could definitely be improved is the user interface. I don’t mind the looks, but the unresponsiveness of the controls is a big letdown for me. The main problem is that the volume of the wet signal drops to zero as soon as you move a parameter. For example, if you’re increasing the room size by +10, the wet signal will go completely silent (you won’t be able to hear the reverb at all) until you release the mouse button, which is when the reverb will return quite abruptly. Needless to say, this is very annoying and makes both of these otherwise rather cool plugins almost completely unusable for me. Hopefully, a future update will fix this behavior, since the sound and the low CPU hit makes these two GVerb ports potentially quite awesome freeware reverb plugins.

Download

Gigaverb and Gverb are available for free download via Elements (ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VST plugin format for Windows, open source).