Ratshack Reverb 3 £20

Web audiodamage.com Format PC/Mac/iOS, VST/AU/AAX Audio Damage’s emulation of the legendary Realistic Electronic Reverb (the name refers to the Radio Shack stores through which it was sold in the 80s) has been around for yonks now, and from a user perspective, version 3 is a relatively minor upgrade – part of the company’s ongoing catalogue-wide ‘modernisation’ revamp. The plugin has been completely rewritten in JUCE, and blessed with a new vector-based GUI that can be freely resized for Retina and HiDPI displays with no loss in clarity. It’s also ditched 32-bit compatibility on Mac – if you can call that an upgrade. Most importantly, though, Ratshack 3 sees the separation of the previously-mono Delay time parameter into separate Left and Right settings, opening it up to stereo processing. Purists might balk at such sacrilege, but those who want it can return to the old behaviour via the Link switch.

Beyond that, this is the same gloriously filthy bucket brigade delay we’ve known and loved since 2005; and with its characteristic BBD pitching and optional mic input overdrive, it still delivers the ‘analogue’ goods when it comes to short delay and reverb effects.

n9/ 10n