Plate reverbs are as unmistakable as they are unwieldy—the classic EMT 140 weighs in at nearly 600 pounds. Audio plug-in company Soundtoys long had one of the best software emulations of that reverb, called Little Plate. Now, it's unveiled SuperPlate, modelling five plates instead of just one and expanding the tools to shape and tame the results. The result is a plate plug-in you might use on anything, not only when you want a sumptuously long reverb tail.

Real plate reverbs emulate acoustic reverberation by vibrating massive sheets of metal, then recording the result with a pickup. The result is a distinctive, complex and organic sound. They were invented in the 1950s and still find use today: Berghain resident and Leisure System cofounder Barker constructed a small plate reverb in his home studio. But the behemoth originals have always been limited to big studios, and they're starting to break down. Plug-ins are the best way to capture historical originals like the EMT.

Various developers offer plate reverb plug-ins, but many focus on digital plates, or offer up individual plate reverbs as one-off plug-ins. What sets SuperPlate apart is that Soundtoys has managed to meticulously model five different historical plates with contrasting sonic characteristics in a single plug-in. It's an unprecedented amount of accurately modelled plates in a single plug-in, and you can shape your sound with a consistent interface and swap plates as you like.

You don't need to know the historical labels—you get a big knob that lets you try them out, and trial and error is the best approach. But the models are:

1. EMT 140—the best-known historical plate and the basis. of Soundtoys' previous Little Plate plug-in.
2. EMT 240—the 140's shorter, darker counterpart.
3. Audicon—a punchy, lighter plate from Nashville.
4. Ecoplate III—the brighter, percussion-friendly plate associated with tracks by Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones.
5. Stocktronics RX4000—a bright, stainless-steel plate from Sweden.

Many of these are available in convolution reverbs, which use pre-recorded results. But you can hear the difference working with an actual model—you'll often be surprised by the way the plug-in behaves as different sources are fed into SuperPlate. Soundtoys said the team there has been busy buying up, studying and measuring plates in the years SuperPlate has been in development. Since individual physical plate reverbs often have their own unique sound, different even from other versions of the same model, Soundtoys worked with multiples wherever possible. For the Stocktronics, for example, they travelled to a Finnish studio to make measurements of its RX4000.

To create additional colour, you can swap different preamps adopted from the EMT plates: tube, solid state or clean (no preamp). Those don't do much unless you operate them with the input gain and source material. The tube can add some gentle distortion and the solid-state option features some compression circuitry from EMT. The impact is fairly subtle, but adds some detail. What makes Soundtoys' plug-in special, again, is that you aren't tied to using that EMT circuit with its accompanying plate—you can mix and match.

You also have powerful shaping controls, expanded into an additional panel when you click the "Tweak" button. There's a low-pass and high-pass filter (before the plate), plus a graphical parametric EQ for the output. Input and output levels let you adjust gain, but the input also impacts how the plate and preamp models respond. Some controls can also be used as creative tools—modulation gives you an LFO with an adjustable rate for the tail, which can create subtle variations in the reverberation or more obvious tremolo effects.

When you do want epic, endless reverbs, SuperPlate is there for you—crank the reverb time to massive values, and there's an "infinite" setting, as found on Little Plate, that effectively acts as a freeze function.

Thanks to the new Auto-Decay, there are also new possibilities for percussive materials and effective shorter reverbs. The results are similar to ducking, but distinct—they work directly on the delay time. Set a threshold, a target decay value and recovery time, and SuperPlate will shift its decay based on input material. That means you can add rhythmic delay effects and reverbs that get out of the way of grooves. There's also a useful animated visualisation on the decay knob so you can easily see what's happening. Auto-Decay alone lets you do things with SuperPlate that aren't possible with other reverbs without a significant amount of manual automation.

SuperPlate also shines in the context of the rest of Soundtoys' plug-ins—either in the Soundtoys Bundle or Soundtoys EffectRack. That opens up lots of possibilities combining different effects. For instance, try adding Tremolator after SuperPlate to create pulsing rhythmic patterns by modulating SuperPlate's reverb tail.

The only complaint with SuperPlate is that Soundtoys hasn't updated its UI in years—though at least the displays are now resizable and scale properly on high-definition displays. The faux-wood panelling and vintage-style interface feels a bit like you decorated your advanced spacecraft like a late '80s Chrysler minivan. But that's a purely cosmetic complaint—apologies to Soundtoys and fans of the look; maybe a reskin option will come with a future update.

SuperPlate does a lot with a straightforward interface and just a few controls. This is a deceptively simple plug-in, and proof positive that plate reverbs aren't just for vintage effects or lush ambient tracks. SuperPlate is an instant classic and a benchmark for reverbs. And you don't need a spare closet and mechanical repair experience to make it work.

For November, Soundtoys offers the full version of the original Little Plate for free. That gives you the same EMT 140 emulation, controls for extended and infinite decay times, the mod switch, and low- and high-pass filters, though not all the extra tweakable settings available in SuperPlate.

SuperPlate is available now from Soundtoys for $149, or as part of the Soundtoys 5 bundle.