reverb settings

paresh

Member
Hi - I've never quite understood verb settings for the best sound. I'm running impulse reverbs in Sonar. I send from the vox track to a bus. I keep the send level at 0, the IR fully wet & the dry setting 0. I've always heard to use it fully wet but it's way too much, even with the bus volume almost 0. Do I cut back the send level or the verb wet setting? I'm missing something here. I hope this makes sense. thank you!!
 
Hi,

When people suggest using the reverb 100% wet, they're probably referring to reverb running in parallel where you have a dry track and a wet track.
You'd use the send level, or fader on the receiving track, to set your reverb amount here.

With a single track, no sends, and a reverb inserted, you'd balance wet/dry within the plugin to get the desired mix.

Hope that helps. :)
 
\ I keep the send level at 0, the IR fully wet & the dry setting 0.

The second part is right, i.e. wet = full on, dry = full off.

The first part, send level = 0, is where you are coming unstuck.

This is what you adjust to get a suitable amount of reverb.
 
thank you both! Does it matter whether I use the send level or the receiving track fader to adjust the verb? I'll experiment but I value yr advice.
 
thank you both! Does it matter whether I use the send level or the receiving track fader to adjust the verb? I'll experiment but I value yr advice.
Hardware, a little bit. Software, I haven't actually done 'comparison test on the 'ten verbs I have :rolleyes: ..but I expect they're so quiet it does not matter. (If they're 'modeling crap like the noise floor of old 16 bit units.. boo on em' anyway.
 
An IR should be linear (in fact, they can not model non-linearities, though I suppose the host plug might), and I think any noise built into the response should scale with the input level, so that it really shouldn't make any difference whether you change level going in or coming out.

The IR plug itself should have some way to control its own output level, which I think I would probably prefer to use so that both the send and fader are in the range around unity where they usually have more resolution for fine adjustments.

FWIW, I think it's pretty common to have the reverb 30-60db down from the dry level, so it does make sense that you're having to turn it down "almost to 0", but only if by 0, you mean like on a scale from 0-10, which would actually be -infinity db.
 
I think the OP meant 0 as in the unity point on the slider. I'm usually down at the -15 to -19dB range for vocals and most instruments, -13 to -14 when I want a heavy reverb sound, like on a piano or lead guitar. This is with ReaVerb on a bus with it's output slider at 0 (unity).
 
This is the part I wasn't sure about:
...but it's way too much, even with the bus volume almost 0.
To me it sounds like trying to turn it way down, not just around unity, but I could be wrong.

I think a lot of IRs are naturally just down a bit from unity to begin with. The one I use most often is basically normalized, so requires more manual attenuation. Plus I generally prefer things a little on the dry side - that whole thing where you turn it up til it's just barely noticeable and then back down a bit. Which is to say that I probably shouldn't have tried to quote real numbers. ;)
 
It depends. If you're sending a few tracks to the same reverb, it's best to adjust from the send. However, sometimes I will send a healthy amount to the reverb so I can compress the reverb and then I will adjust the fader for the amount of reverb I want.
 
Thanks for all yr input!! I'm an amateur so sorry for vague terminology. I'm using Perfect Space convolution verb with Sonar X1. I meant turning the bus fader almost down to infinity, way below 0 (unity gain?). Anywhere near 0 is way too much even with the aux send volume way down...sorry I've never been clear on unity & infinity. I do see a volume box on the verb itself from -10 to-70 but don't get much response from it.
 
Assuming you are trying to fit the vox in a mix, regardless of if you overcome the send amount to bus while verb fully wet:

- The most important thing is to EQ the reverb. Preferably an EQ before the reverb instance (on the verb bus) and hipass around 500 Hz or so, while lowpassing @ around 10KHz.
- The 2nd most important thing is timing of the reverb to the track.
- The 3rd most important thing is deciding if you want to have reverb that makes the track sound "bigger" or more distant. If the decay on the verb is fairly long (over 1.8 s or so, the track will sound distant when adding reverb. If the decay is short the track will sound bigger. They should still be timed to the music and "breathe" with it of course.

Then comes the dry/wet knob, and you should also pay attention to pre-delay. 10-15 ms or so on vox will work, which let's the direct signal come through before the reverb kicks in.
 
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