Universal Audio also has their holiday freebie announcement, and it’s lovely – the Pure Plate Reverb, licensed for both native systems and their UAD-2/Apollo hardware.
Odds are, like me, you’ve accumulated a handful of emulated plate reverbs at this point – and impulse responses for plates, and more. But no matter: UA has done a typically beautiful job of recreating the sound of the hardware, and because these plate units varied so much between individual units, having a mix can actually be useful.
Theoretically, as the image shows you, the Pure Plate is meant to be an EMT-140. But in this case, they’ve really tamed that model for something that’s a lot easier to use in the mix. Tape Op did an excellent review of this plug-in already. (I’d turn to Soundtoys SuperPlate or Valhalla Plate if I wanted a single plug-in with multiple models. Soundtoys’ EMT model sounds a bit more like the original hardware, though it also comes with controls to tame it. Arturia’s Rev PLATE-140 gives you more of that “greasy” resonant tone, if that’s what you desire.)
If you have a Spark subscription, or bought this individually, then it will be redundant – and UA will send you a discount coupon trying to get you to buy more, but there you are.
Otherwise, it’s worth picking up. The free offer lasts through December 24:
Universal Audio Pure Plate Reverb
The secret of this is much like the secret of many plate reverbs – a lot of the time, you’ll use it with only a bit of wet signal and short delay times and get some oddly magical results. UA’s model performs particularly well at that, and they have an uncommonly good set of presets from major producers. (I’m not ashamed to dial up these on UA’s presets, just because they are so well-organized and well voiced.)
Here’s their demo:
Enjoy! And Merry Plate-mas!