i went over to ewww-tube and listened to the sisters of mercy tracks they have up. (btw thanks as i got to take a short leonard cohen detour) :)

not really "big" reverbs. more like room reverbs (pre delay 150 ms) ... shorter gated room verbs on the snare. if you are using live drums you only want the snare to go to the verb. patch in a gate between the aux send and the reverb to keep other drum sounds out of the reverb send. delays and short room verbs on the vocals ... it sounds like they use the same verbs for the vocals and the snares. it does sound like the drums are samples or a drum machine. everything else sounds dry .

Some folks are lucky and they get to track their productions in actual large studios that actually have some kind of acoustic value to the room. Other recordings are recorded in small dead boxes. And then you have to artificially build your sonic infrastructure, utilizing all sorts of multiple time delays with both long and short reverbs, lots of compression, lots of limiting, lots of gating. Overly compressed room microphones, all that gobbledygook. Room microphones can still be utilized even in little dead boxlike studios, like bedrooms. You simply take those and see those into a very short, extremely short, reverb setting with some pre-delay and some first reflections. You adjust diffusion to taste. Ya might even have the ability to vary the high and low frequency decay times? And isn't that cool to think about? Want that EMT plate like sizzle? Then you create a huge high frequency preemphasis boost of your auxiliary sends to your reverbs. And you'll get that sizzle that almost sounds like you have a plate reverb. No Universal Audio gizmo necessary. This is available in almost any multi-track software program if you start reading between the lines of the presets. We'd layer up our recordings why not also layer the way you make your artificial room environments? Sometimes I've actually adjusted stock algorithmic reverb programs to match a live sonic scenario. And that is a little more fiddling without the need of a violin LOL. I will certainly say there are certain algorithmic reverbs I prefer over others. Some of course better than others. For instance, Adobe Audition has a number of different types of algorithmic reverbs available within the program. Some I like better than others. Some are real-time and others not so much so because of their complex algorithmic depth, which require rendering and are not appropriate for real-time purposes. Of course those are the better sounding ones. So unlike ProTools, it requires rendering. ProTools does everything in real time including their reverbs from all of their third-party cohorts. So depending upon the type of computer and programs you are running, this will in turn determine the outcome of your success.

I love creating my own spaces, algorithmically.
Mx. Remy Ann David