how to make your mix space-coherrent

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dontouch

New member
Hey newbie question for you guys:

How to make a mix more space-coherent? Especially when most of the inst. were recorded in different spaces/DI?

Why some people opt to use a couple different reverbs in a mix? I thought the same verb would make everything sound more like they were recorded in the same space, wouldn't it?

Thanks!
 
Yes, putting everything through the same reverb buss will help. What you need to do, though is work on 'why' the tracks sound so different - if you've got some recorded with room mics in a big room and some mic-ed close in a tight vocal booth or 'dead' room, etc, then you're going to have a tough time pulling them altogether.
 
An example would be that I would use a reverb on snare that I would never use on vocal. I often put a short plate verb on the snare to give it a little life and extra snap, not so much that you would even notice it was there unless you soloed the snare. On vocals it has to suit the style of the song, if any is used at all.

There is such a thing as mastering reverb, this is put across the whole mix, I have only used this a handful of times and it is usually when putting all the songs together for the CD a particular song stands out as a too dry mix when compared to the others, so a little verb is applied to the mix, this could be referred as a room sound.

Alan.
 
If you want to get a visual representation of some different reverb techniques, check out some video tutorials. They usually are done by pretty solid guys, with some real experience. I use macprovideo.com because of their juggernaut of a library.
 
The secret to a spacious mix is not putting reverb on everything or attempting to make everything wide.

Width comes from contrast between mid and side. If everything is wide, nothing is wide, right? Same is true with the spacial aspect of mixing. It's like you'll never know what skinny is if all you see is fat people (excuse the analogy). True, reverb can add depth on the Z plane (back to front) but too much of it will just wash everything out and will work against clarity. There is also a frequency aspect to this as well. If all sources are struggling for the same frequency range, it'll eat up a lot of your bandwidth and you'll get muddy results where clarity suffers. Clarity is a big part of getting depth and space to reach the listener.

The paradox here is that in creating space, your goal is to GLUE everything together, not separate everything. It sounds counterintuitive but it's actually one of the biggest parts of the art of mixing and takes a long time to get right. Mixing (and to a large extent, recording) is about creating contrast within all the parameters and tools at our disposal.

Hope that helps.

Cheers :)
 
I don't think the OP is tryiing to make the sound SPACIOUS, he trying to get it so it sounds like it was recorded in 1 space.
 
Sure, it's all part of the process. Gluing together, as I called it.

My post was an holistic overview of the whole idea.

Cheers :)
 
Why some people opt to use a couple different reverbs in a mix? I thought the same verb would make everything sound more like they were recorded in the same space, wouldn't it?
Click to expand...

Because different reverbs have different characteristics which may or may not be beneficial to YOUR mix.

For example, you can have a verb set up to do nothing more than act as a blend mechanism - nearly all Early Reflections, no Tail, EQ'd heavily

Then you might want one to emphasize size, where the focus is more on the tail than the ER

There are several other common applications for reverb, not just the obvious ones I've mentioned above.

Check out Mike Seniors "Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio" (he's the guy that runs Mix Rescue in SOS)
 
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