[jnorman]

stand alone reverb has some significant advantages, the first and most important being that it is a dedicated unit which has its own processing power. the best reverb algorithms (and face it - reverb is probably the most important tool you have to make a mix sound good) are extremely CPU intensive. really good plugins can eat your processor and cause all kinds of problems. i have used a lot of reverbs over the years, and frankly you pretty much need to spend a bundle to get a professional quality reverb, such as the lex 480 or tc 6000. yes, you can buy some really nice plugins now, but you better have the computer horsepower to run them or you will be sorry... in my book, stand alone units are a better way to go, and let the computer pay attention to handling the basics.