I'm curious....why the need for
reverb?
I have yet to work in a room, including those with extensive acoustic treatment, that needed more
reverb. In fact, I wish I could suck some out in most places. This also includes musicals I have done (which I specialize in). There are a few times where for special
effect I want
reverb, but I can do that with a midiverb.
What I have needed was good digital delay. I recently did West Side Story and the band (which was mic'ed) was 30' upstage of the
FOH speakers. the result was the acoustic energy from the band was 30 ms behind the sound coming out of the speakers. I sub-grouped the band, and used a digital delay set for 30 ms to delay their mics. The result was all the musical smear was gone.
Unfortunately, most "cost effective" processors being made today do not allow you to set the delay time directly. Units like the Lexicon MX-200 require you to tap the delay, the use the control knob to adjust percentage of tap. Ever try tapping 30 ms?
As an independant engineer, I carry my own toy rack and it's got 8 channels of old DBX red-knob compression (the 160A, I think). Also in there is a TC 2290 (which I used for the delay), 2 Alesis
PEQ 450s, an older digitech quad 4, an m-audio 1814 and 410 for digital i/o,
power conditioning, patch bay, and headphone amp (for when I had to drive the music directors
headphones over a long distance) and a dbx driverack PA for venues which do not have a proper
system controller and analyzer.
If I had to choose outboard processing (not counting
system management) in terms of what I use most it'd be
compressor, parametric eq., time alignment delays, and then somewhere further down is
reverb and then, only in conjuction with a
compressor for gated 'verb for a soloist who isn't used to singing in a theatrical setting.
This really caught my eye since I have found very little need for
reverb in musical
theatre.