Plate is a form of echo/reverb with a shorter delay. It is literally named after the echo that vocalists from back in the day ( late 40s through the 50s) used to create by singing with a metal plate behind the mic. The mic would not only pick up thier voice in the mic, but would pick up their voice bouncing off of the plate, creating an echo that could be controlled by how far the plate was from the mic. Instead of the echo having a longer delay period like it would in a concert hall, this created a shorter, and controlable, delay period for a new echo sound.
BTW, when it comes to music, reverb is just a generic term for artificially created echo that is sustained instead of decaying like a natural echo.
Anyway, I learned from a sound engineer a long time ago that the BEST way to use a vocal effect is to turn it on then slowly raise the parameter/level setting until you can actually hear the echo, then back off of it just slightly to where you can sometimes hear it and sometimes can not.
In karaoke, the primary purpose of vocal effects is to mask small mistakes in pitch that the singer might make, and in theory if you are using it correctly, the longer delay periods will mask more "macro" mistakes but alter the raw mix more noticably while shorter delay periods will cover only more "micro" mistakes but will will be a less noticible effect that will sound truer to the raw mix.
Some songs do call for a purposely altered vocal with a thick effect. Purple Rain by Prince and Only God Knows Why by Kid Rock immediately come to mind. In this case, the artist used the effect to create a particular mood to the voice and it is meant to be prominant, so it should be in your mix as well.
Anyway, point being, don't be one of those karaoke DJs that has the reverb jacked up all the time, as you are missing the point of having it at all (unless you just want everyone to hear the effect, that is), and it is actually making your overall vocals worse, not better!!
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. If you have some good reverb in there for certain, especially slower songs, without over-doing it... most people should be happy.
