KSHMR Reverb Review: A Standard Reverb With Some Tricks Up Its Sleeve

KSHMR and WA Production have collaborated to create a stunning next-level reverb plugin, perfect for any music producer’s toolkit. With customizable settings and high-quality reverb presets, achieving a stadium-ready yet controlled reverb sound has never been easier.

And with the release of his new Reverb plugin about a month in the rearview mirror, we decided it was time to check out what makes this plugin shine and if it deserves your hard-earned dollars and a spot on your hard drive. 

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Main Features Of KSHMR’s Reverb Plugin

When trying to catch the attention of the masses in the production community, X-Fact features and flashy UI is the fastest way to do it. And while there is undoubtedly a ton of super technical work that went into this device, here is a short and sweet list of the things that will likely be the first to catch your attention when looking at this plugin from a bird’s eye view. 

• The Volume Manager panel allows you to shape the tail of your reverb with ducking, fade-in, and gating controls.
• The Tone Manager panel eliminates harsh attacks from the reverb signal and enhances its tonality.
• The Special FX panel includes Reverse mode and an additional harmony Octave control for a thicker timbre.
• It also features a 6-node EQ with five shapes for fine-tuning the frequencies of your reverb tail.
• KSHMR Reverb has a resizable interface with visual feedback showing real-time signal processing through the plugin stages, making monitoring and adjusting EQ and threshold settings easy.

Now let’s dive into the juicy parts about what impressed me and what I didn’t about this plugin. 

What I Liked About It

Here are my two favorite features that made this plugin stand out from other reverb plugins. While these features in and of themselves might not be enough to sway you to snag this plugin ASAP, they should at least be on your radar when considering where to invest your dough. 

Before we dive into the two items below, I wanted to take some time to note that I think this plugin’s biggest X-Fact is its practicality, and the two things below reinforce this concept. While the reverb quality is far from as lush as other plugins on the market, it has so many quality-of-life features in it that you might find yourself using this reverb to get a vibe going with every intention of swapping it out for something else but end up loving the sound and leaving it in. 

It’s easy to use, ready to work for you, and it simply looks fantastic. Now let’s dive into the more detailed aspects of what I liked.

Its Volume Manager 

I make a lot of ambient and spacious music, and I’ve built up a clever little bank of processing tricks for the reverb to make my mixes sound big, spacious, and nuanced. And what took me years to figure out and dial in on my own, KSHMR’s Volume Manager handles with just a few quick and easy parameters.

If you’re looking to sidechain the reverb to the dry signal, duck the reverb tails, or apply heavy Phil-Collins-Level reverb gating to a percussion, the Volume Manager will be your best friend to do so. In just a couple of easy parameters, you can breathe new life into your reverb and have it moving with the track! That’s damn impressive and a feature rarely seen in any other reverb plugin on the market.  

Its Presets

I usually try and avoid presets like the plague, especially when it comes to reverb plugins. They are so essential to the record’s sound, texture, and soul that it’s a missed opportunity to use the space somebody else designed for your record. 

But the massive collection of presets that this reverb plugin comes with is simply stunning, and the fact that many of them rely on the plugin’s powerful volume and tone-shaping features means that they all fit into your productions responsively and fluidly. Because the ducking and the gate features are all input dependent, two producers could use the same preset on two tracks and get wildly different results! 

What I Wasn’t Crazy About

It wouldn’t be an honest review with us, at least voicing some of our hesitations about the plugin. And while the practicality of the plugin might be enough to make some producers instantly run and snag the plugin today, others might be turned off by this straightforward quality…

The Reverb Is Just Okay…

The one thing that stood out to us instantly is that the sound of the reverb itself isn’t much to write home about. It’s not bad, but you will be disappointed if you look for that Hollywood-strings style, lush and ambient reverb of Valhalla or Lexicon. KSHMR’s reverb sound is straightforward and predictable, with nothing more and nothing less. 

You can undoubtedly polish it up a bit with some of the tonal shaping, diffusion, and EQ options, and you can, of course, process the reverb with other plugins in your chain. All the usual practices still work amazingly on this reverb. But out of the box, the reverb is just okay – everything else makes it stand out from the crowd (and for us, that’s all it takes). 

Should You Get The KSHMR Reverb Plugin?

In closing, the final step would be to answer the age-old question of whether or not this plugin is right for you. And to be honest, it’s hard for me to find a reason why you shouldn’t at least check this reverb out. 

It has some incredible quality-of-life features that I have never seen in a reverb plugin, and in the past month since I’ve been getting familiar with it in my studio, it’s quickly wiggled its way into being the first reverb I reach for when I start a new project. I want to hear what “dialed-in reverb’ sounds like without wasting precious creative energy fiddling with the more complex parameters of more “industry standard” options. 

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