How does H9 reverb stack up vs UA, Strymon, Poly … ?

I’m not well-versed enough with the first two to offer any comment.  For the third, I believe you mean the new Poly Effects Verbs pedal, as opposed to the (shorter IR) reverbs in the Beebo / Hector.  I have the latter, along with ITB alternatives.

It’s important to differentiate between algorithmic & convolution reverbs. In general. I find the algorithmic reverbs (H9, H90, even Beebo algo-verbs) to be more immediate & configurable, with the added ability to create unusual spaces.  They can be many reverbs-in-one.

With convolution, the focus is often on “natural” spaces, and it does that very well.  It can really feel like you’re in that IR space, enveloped by the reflections.  The variations come with loading up completely different IR.  And yes, that can be a natural environment, or something completely off-the-wall (no pun intended).  The Verbs pedal seems very versatile in that regard.

So, between the H9 & Poly Effects, anyway, it’s different strokes. “Improved” is going to be subjective, of course.  But to be honest, the hardware surrounding the H90 has given me a renewed appreciation for the H9 reverbs, based on the same coding.

I wouldn’t call it more pleasing.  Just a different set of tools.  For lack of a better term, more ‘realistic’ in the Beebo convolution reverbs, capturing an actual environment.  The Beebo is limited to 3.5 sec IRs, so it is less valuable in my setup than, for example, the Verbs pedal might be. The longer IRs, switchable, and dedicated processing power in Verbs certainly expands on the possibilities.

But again, I think we’re comparing apples / oranges.  BlackHole wouldn’t be a natural sound environment, but you can tweak it down to be more room-like.  Conversely, you could probably load, say, Pool Of The Blackstar in Verbs, and tweak it to come close to BlackHole or WormHole.  But I’m speculating that you’d need to do additional processing externally to get you there.

As an aside, I’ve come very close to my own IR room captures using the more common algorithms (like Hall) in the H9.  There’s just a little something-something-extra in convolution reverbs that I can hear in isolation (and not so much in a mix).  It seems to bring a tangible difference in solo acoustic recordings or passages.