For whatever reason, I just couldn't get the reverb right on a snare for a Blink 182 type of project I was doing. Nothing seamed to work or fit. Then I remembered that I had used the stock Sonic Foundry reverb on snare before and liked it.

Well, when I fired up the Sonic Foundry Reverb plugin, I must admit that I was blown away. The odds of me using it on vocals are about as close to zero as one could imagine. But on snare it just does something I like. It does something that Waves plugins, for example simply can not do.

So anyway, the moral of the story is to not disregard your plugins based on name alone. In fact, overall the Sonic Foundry Reverb is pretty shitty. However, shitty can be exactly what the mix is calling for. With a little experimentation and an open mind, you'll discover that what you thought were weaknesses in your recording chain were in fact strengths when used in the right situation.

The same holds true with microphones and preamps. Sometimes, the ?wrong? sounding mic or preamps is exactly what you need!

Brandon