Warning: long post incoming
I feel like the Context 2 hasn't been talked about much here. I've spent the last days jamming with it and noted some general considerations:
Personally i'm more of a bread and butter guy when it comes to reverb, i like either simple or super weird reverbs, and i don't lose hours trying to replicate the exact reflections of the roof of that particular ancient church built with aged woods cut the night of the equinox by a blessed monk with a silver axe while leprechauns were dancing backwards singing in foreign languages. (how cool would it be btw?
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BUT
If you are a reverb freak and like to tweak everything in a maniacal way, the dedicated controls for hi/low freq damping and dynamics response let you calibrate the exact sound you need in relation to the entire signal chain.
The pedal layout and knob functions (and secondary functions) make it equally easy to set the reverb on the fly or dig deep into it.
Favorite thing: the ability to use the secondary footswitch to jump between current patch/knob position and a different patch/preset with tails that spillover is amazing, as you can have two totally independent reverbs (or delays, or use the secondary footswitch just to add delay to the existent reverb, or the contrary and so on..).
Since GATE is one of my favorite reverbs, I did a side-by-side comparison of the mode on the Atmosphere and the Context 2, and i think the one on the Atmos is more versatile, particularly when set to short decay/short gate length, as it can close way faster and more abruptly compared to the one on the Context, but it can also be softened and be less aggressive, while the one on the Context sounds good but generally stays in a more standard area, due to the fact that it doesn't have a gate length control.
Using the dynamics function you can trick it a bit and get a faster closing, but it's not the same as a dedicated control, and it's not as fast to set up.
I was not particularly impressed by SPRING mode, but Context 2 has one of the best sounding PLATE patches i ever heard: simple but effective, i'd keep it for that alone.
I personally enjoyed using ROOM to add just a bit of air and space around the signal when playing with headphones, very subtle but effective.
GRAIN mode is surprisingly good: it sounds a lot less granular than i thought, and overall really... warm i guess? I'm in a rejection phase for granular stuff, but found myself playing with this mode more than I expected, it's perfect for lively background ambiences and stuff like that, it doesn't sound static at all.
The other modes are OK, i don't have much interest in hall or cathedral reverbs unless for occasional droning etc, and never enjoyed reverse reverbs, so i haven't dedicated much time to those.
So, to put an end to this endless blabbering, it's a perfect end of chain reverb, overall not invasive and focused on the fine-tuning / space-shaping / background-moving side of things.
I regularly use reverb as a radical effect that totally alters my signal, and I don't have room for 2 reverbs on board, so I'm gonna stick to the Atmosphere for its good combination of standard and "weird" modes.
