Waves Clarity vX DeReverb Pro

Waves Clarity vX DeReverb Pro

Ever wished you could control the level of room sound that’s baked into a dialogue or vocal recording?

The latest developers to join the AI reverb‑removal revolution are Waves, with a pair of plug‑ins in their Clarity vX noise‑reduction range called DeReverb and DeReverb Pro. Both are available in the usual Mac/Windows plug‑in formats, bought through a Waves subscription or a perpetual licence, and authorised using iLok (no dongle required). They employ the same ‘engine’ but the standard version keeps the GUI and control side of things simpler and more beginner friendly, while Pro offers more visual feedback and many more tweakable parameters. Unlike other such tools I’ve used, they offer a choice of three neural networks, two trained to identify dialogue and the other to recognise sung vocal parts. That opens up some interesting applications, and hints at possible avenues for development (I’m waiting for such a plug‑in that successfully reduces reverb on other home‑recorded sources such as acoustic guitar...)

DeReverb

Operation of the ‘standard’ DeReverb couldn’t be simpler. It defaults to the first dialogue algorithm, and operation can then be as simple as turning the main knob until the reverb is turned down to a workable level. If you just want to make a part more intelligible without losing the feel of the space, just a touch can be enough, but with more assertive removal you can often transform dialogue so it sounds much drier — think radio or ADR — before artefacts become annoying. When they do, dial things back a touch and you’re usually good to go. A small frequency analyser on the right shows you where in the spectrum reverb is being detected/removed. Used like this on the same material, the results weren’t identical to those I could obtain with one knob in DeRoom Pro’s single‑band mode but, on the whole, equally impressive. The only dialogue to pose significant problems was either a poor‑quality recording or something with a very prominent first reflection (just as much a stumbling block for Waves’ competitors).

The ‘lite’ version offers the same performance, but with fewer controls to refine the results — for a much lower price.

Digging deeper, there are the usual tools such as undo/redo, GUI scaling, presets, and A/B setting comparison. Also, there are mono and stereo versions of DeReverb (and DeReverb Pro). The stereo version has an Analysis/Width drop‑down menu offering a choice of how to analyse the input signal channels and how wide you want the output. A horizontal Presence slider adds some high mids and highs to the result — helpful if there’s a lot of high end in the reverb you remove, but also to dial in a slightly ‘closer’ sound. It’s nothing I couldn’t do with other plug‑ins but it works well and is useful to have at hand. An ‘undo arrow’ button resets the neural network, and there’s also the option to choose a different neural network. Typically, I didn’t find the two dialogue options vastly different. Both worked well on plenty of sources, but one or other always seemed marginally better on a given source.

I can imagine plenty of producers wanting to use this tool to breathe new life into sample libraries.

Choosing the singing setting doesn’t change how you use the plug‑in but on what material it’s most effective. And it is effective! Used to dial down the natural reverb in a domestic space it worked really well on both male and female vocals, and it became possible to obtain better results when adding artificial reverb — the drier, more present vocal cut through against the reverb tail that bit more. It was similarly effective with long reverb washes on vocal samples, and I can imagine plenty of producers wanting to use it to breathe new life into sample libraries. When it comes to heavily treated samples it can’t work miracles, of course: it only removes reverb, not discrete delays, and it definitely works better on ‘clean’ vocals without much compression, distortion and so on.

Pro Tour

DeReverb Pro offers much more control. A hideable six‑band EQ‑style section features a much larger analyser. The outer bands are akin to shelf filters and the others bell filters, but it’s not an EQ as such. Bandwidth and frequency controls function as on an EQ, but the ‘gain’ determines the de‑reverberation strength, from zero to 200 percent. You can solo each band, which is useful for fine‑tuning, and decide if the analyser displays a representation of the neural network or what, to my mind, is a crisper, more helpful view without it — or neither. It’s intuitive, works well, and offers more control than DeRoom Pro 2’s three‑band mode or Acon Digital Deverberate 3’s four‑band emphasis control.

Beneath this is an enhanced main control section. You have the same neural network and mono/stereo options as the standard version, though there’s now an extra control to automatically reset the neural network after a period of inactivity. Adjacent to the main de‑reverb knob is a Strength Multiplier control, which as you might expect increases the amount of reverb reduction across the whole spectrum, without changing the balance that you create using the ‘EQ’. Above the Presence knob is another for Tail Smoothing, which, effectively, is a release control for the de‑reverb process, with higher values retaining more of the original tail. You also get some output controls: a knob to set the overall stereo width, an output fader (with separate faders for the left and right channels in the stereo version), and an output limiter. I suspect the last one is there to protect against any increases that result from using the Presence control. Finally, and crucially, there’s a Difference button above the analyser: hit this and you hear the delta signal — in other words, what’s being removed. That can make it much easier when listening out for side‑effects as you adjust the sensitivity bands or the main de‑reverb and Strength Multiplier controls, and is a big advantage of the Pro version.

DeVerdict

As you can probably tell, I have been impressed by both DeReverb and DeReverb Pro, and I found the GUIs of both really intuitive. To my mind, the key questions when evaluating a reverb‑removal tool are how quickly and effectively they detect and reduce the natural reverb that’s present in a signal, at what point and to what degree unwanted artefacts become audible, and how much control the tool affords the user in terms of refining the result. DeReverb Pro scores highly when assessed against all of those criteria, and the standard DeReverb does so against all but the last. In terms of the quality of results on dialogue, I worked on a number of podcasts over the review period and while DeReverb Pro didn’t convince me to ditch DeRoom Pro, it’s up there with it, and my preference changed marginally depending on the source. The only real issue is its ability to deal with strong first reflections, and as I said above, it’s not alone in that struggle — and I understand that Waves’ developers are working hard to jump this hurdle. DeReverb Pro is certainly my preference when working with sung vocal parts, though, and that opens up a range of applications in music, not least because while dialogue is often exposed, some of the artefacts of very aggressive processing can often be masked in a music production. DeReverb Pro is competitively priced, but many will find that the standard DeReverb does all they need, making it even better value.