Reverb Tips

[anoopbal]

I always struggle with reverb for vocals.

I use the Ableton reverb and have the Valhalia reverb too. Though everyone says it is great for vocals, I could never get the valhalia reverb right for some reason

Does anyone have any general tips or something you learned from your experience that made a big difference in your reverb or the "light bulb" moment as they say.
.
For example, I usually high pass my reverb around 35KHz and then low pass around 5K which did make a big difference. Every time i increase diffusion in Ableton, it doesn't sound right.

Anyone use Ableton reverb and have any tips? Or any other tips that they found useful for vocal reverb

 

[easlern]

Are there any particular goals you have in mind for using it? Usually just throwing a stock short reverb on (half a second maybe) does the trick for me: widens the image and reinforces it a bit, that's pretty much all I'm looking for.

 

[7string]

You might try the Abbey Road Reverb Trick

 

[Jake_JW]

The low-pass you're putting on the reverb might not be helping. You might be losing quite a lot of stereo information (assuming you're using a stereo reverb) and detail by removing high frequency content from your reverb. I find that using a bit of EQ on the reverb channel helps to tailor it to each mix if it's not blending in with the track nicely.

What types of reverb are you using on your vocals (room/spring/plate/hall/other)?
Are you mixing vocals early on in the process or later? I find that doing things in a certain order in my workflow changes how I mix and how much reverb I use. For me mixing vocals dry early on in a mix and then adding reverb to them as one of the final steps to help them sit works. Obviously this will be different for everybody/different genres of music but it's worth playing around with if you're having problems getting things to where you want.

 

[Bobbsy]

The trouble is that there's no single silver bullet, one size fits all solution on reverb. You have to listen and adjust on an individual basis.

I do agree that the low pass may be set too low--there's a lot of information above 3.5K and that's also where a lot of the "sheen" and detail lives.

However, when adjusting reverb, the three controls that do 90% of the work are Pre-delay, Decay Time and Wet/Dry Mix (to use the Ableton labels...other verbs have slightly different names sometimes). By all means experiment with everything but I alway find that adjusting those three and getting something you're happy with goes a long way...the rest is icing on the cake.

 

[anoopbal]

Are there any particular goals you have in mind for using it? Usually just throwing a stock short reverb on (half a second maybe) does the trick for me: widens the image and reinforces it a bit, that's pretty much all I'm looking for.

Thank you! I guess just to make it wider and sweeter too. I usually use backing tracks so not much to wrap things around, so reverb helps to spread it, I think.

 

[anoopbal]

You might try the Abbey Road Reverb Trick

I have tried it. Thanks!

When I high pass it so much, the vocals doesn't fit well I think. I don't know if some of the problems I have is because I mainly use a backing track and try to blend my vocals with it.

The low-pass you're putting on the reverb might not be helping. You might be losing quite a lot of stereo information (assuming you're using a stereo reverb) and detail by removing high frequency content from your reverb. I find that using a bit of EQ on the reverb channel helps to tailor it to each mix if it's not blending in with the track nicely.

What types of reverb are you using on your vocals (room/spring/plate/hall/other)?
Are you mixing vocals early on in the process or later? I find that doing things in a certain order in my workflow changes how I mix and how much reverb I use. For me mixing vocals dry early on in a mix and then adding reverb to them as one of the final steps to help them sit works. Obviously this will be different for everybody/different genres of music but it's worth playing around with if you're having problems getting things to where you want.

Thank you! What low pass do people usually use?

1. I jut use a hall or room reverb. I haven't seen anything named plate in Ableton.
2. Later.. it is the last in chain

What reverb or decay time you suggest to start with for vocals?

I do agree that the low pass may be set too low--there's a lot of information above 3.5K and that's also where a lot of the "sheen" and detail lives.

However, when adjusting reverb, the three controls that do 90% of the work are Pre-delay, Decay Time and Wet/Dry Mix (to use the Ableton labels...other verbs have slightly different names sometimes). By all means experiment with everything but I alway find that adjusting those three and getting something you're happy with goes a long way...the rest is icing on the cake.

Thank you! What low pass do you usually use or start with?

What about diffusion?

Maybe I will upload a sample with my vocals and with my erevrb and maybe you can tell me how it sounds.

Thank you so much everyone!

 

[RAMI]

You might try the Abbey Road Reverb Trick

Thanx man, that was cool. I just tried it on the tune you had already commented on in the Clinic. I like it.

Against conventional wisdom, I already low pass a lot of stuff more than what most people would find normal. I find that low passing vocals and guitar anywhere from 8-12k really allows the drums to shine. Now, with this low and high-passing the reverb, it helped even more, and didn't take away any sheen at all. In fact, it added some to the instruments that I didn't low pass.

Cool stuff. Thanx. buddy.

 

[Massive Master]

I have to start publishing stuff like this. This could've been the "John Reverb Trick" back in the 80's. Same with "New York compression."

That said - the actual "John" reverb trick has a compressor after that EQ also... Think about what you want it to do and that will guide your settings. Typically (for example, on a dynamically energetic song as I'd assume the one used in the video), you wouldn't want any gain reduction on the softer parts, but a dB or three on louder passages. That allows the verb to fill some of that sonic space during those softer passages, but as the energy rises, the reverb gently pulls back a bit. That avoids the "over-verb" that happens during the louder parts. It could also be set to quickly "duck and move" on the snare hits (if that's dialed into the compressor's side chain) to let it "blossom" a little.

** Add a gentle chorus before the verb to "detach" it from the source -- Important to keep it post-EQ but pre-verb (or else you're adding a chorus to the verb - which isn't illegal, but I'd argue that it's not typical).

** Aux your delay return back out to the same verb you're using on the vocal. [self-explanatory]

This sort of stuff is soooo easy to experiment with digitally... Back in the day, I had whatever EQ I had lying around (usually some POS 31-band stage EQ) running into the worst compressor in the room. Time and patch cables. Now, it's a few clicks.

 

[Bob Ross]

Same with "New York compression."

Ha! When I first started hearing other engineers talking about "New York compression" in the early 2000s I was like "Huh? WTF are they talking about? I'm from New York and I've never heard that expression!"

But then when I found out what they were talking about I was "Oh, you mean 'late 70s Frank Zappa compression'!"

 

[Bob Ross]

As others have already said, there's no single magic bullet, it's all about context.

But that being said, the two things that really helped me get my vocal reverbs to integrate with the track (rather than sound like some syrupy layer poured on top of it) were:
- ducking the reverb returns with the vocal track, so long dense tails don't step all over the clarity of the vocal; and
- de-essing the send to the 'verb, so that crisp sibilants don't cause extreme "plate sizzle"

 

[anoopbal]

Thank you, Bob.

I have extended my low pass from the suggestions here, but I had to lower the reverb time for vocals. But it do sounds better. So all these little tips are helping.

-What do you mean by ducking the reverb tails?

- So you put a desser on the main track and the send to reverb too?

Also, I tried the Redline Reverb and I thought it was very easy to use and sounded very natural. Has anyone tried it? They have a 60 day trial.

 

[Robus]

I saw that Abby Road Trick video linked on a different thread within the past few days. I gave it a try on a song that I am working on and the results were intriguing. High passing and low passing I've done, but the notch cut in the presence frequencies was new to me. In that video, the mixer was using way, way, more reverb than I ever put on a vocal. I would expect the vocal would be swimming, but it wasn't. In the mix it sounded great. It was an eye-opener.

 

[Bob Ross]

-What do you mean by ducking the reverb tails?

The output of the reverb unit goes through a ducker (a compressor with a sidechain input) ...so usually the ducker is strapped across the inserts of the reverb return channels. Route (either via an unused send or a mult) the dry vocal signal to the sidechain input of the ducker. Set the ducker's threshold and gain reduction parameters such that whenever the vocalist is singing it attenuates the reverb by several dB. When they stop singing the reverb returns to unity gain as the compressor releases.

- So you put a desser on the main track and the send to reverb too?

No (...or at least, not necessarily). Irrespective of whether or not there's a de-esser on the main track, I strap a de-esser across the send from the main vocal track to the input of the reverb. So that de-eser is having no effect on the dry vocal track, it's only effecting what goes in to the reverb.