Reverb Not Clearly Audible.

M

Mole

New member
Hi Guys,
I wonder if you can help. I am relatively knew to the home recording scene, so forgive my ignorance. I have a fairly simple, but quite effective set up, based around a pc running Cubase32 5.0 and a Delta 44 soundcard. I have lots of neat plugins, such as Waves, but feel that I am not making the most of them. In particular, I find that when I use reverb, for example, on a vocal, it sounds fine when I solo the track, but when I play it along with the backing track, the effect is barely audible (the vocal itself is fine), even with the send turned up quite high. Is it just a question of cutting competing frequencies in the backing track and, if so, where is the best place to make such cuts if the reverb is to shine through? Do you have any tips for me. Is there something else that I might be missing? Any help would be greately appreciated,
Cheers,
Alan.
 
Before making a decision of whether the effect is able to be heard, compare your mixes with commercial CDs of the same type of music. Much of pro audio is very subtle and most newbies to recording have most of their effects up too high. With that said, there are a LOT of reasons why your effect may not be heard, some are engineering related, some are how the music was performed.

Recording is different from performing. In a recording situation, you have to always focus on the song and create space for the singer. A lot of newbies to the recording world "overplay" on records. Remember always play for the SONG. Leave musical space/silence for the vocals.

I have a general rule that there will never be more than three ideas happening at the same time. That is, there has to be something stable... that the listener can count on to be the same from one measure of music to the next. Most of the time, the stable instruments may be the drums, bass, keyboard sustaining sound (e.g. a "pad" sound), rhythm guitar. The vocal is another idea and there may be another instrument that answers the vocal or does something that is a different idea from the stable instruments. Most of the time, anything more than three simultaneous ideas are too much and makes the mix loose space, so you cannot hear subtle elements like an effect. Just make sure that if you have vocals, then everything should be played as a slave to the WORDS/Lyrics.

Engineering-wise, volume of tracks, proper equalization and proper panning will also create space. Try a different panning. And remember that following the same idea of just a few ideas at a time, you shouldn't have too many RADICAL effects fighting for attention. I generally listen to effects mostly in context with the mix... that is, I rarely solo. I listen to stuff with the whole mix. Rather than solo, I will mute some instruments. But I keep drums, bass playing while adjusting another instrument. so that things stay in context to the whole mix.

E.

P.S. you may also try EQing the actual effects also... cut some mid frequencies. Boost some of the "presence" frequencies or whatever is necessary for the mix to cut through. I could have suggested this first, but most beginner mixes that I hear suffer from the above problems of overplaying or wrong volumes, panning rather than just simply fixing the effects.
 
The rule of thumb I like and have seen elsewhere is that in general, reverb should be "sensed" more then heard. Otherwise things can get muddy quickly.

Cheers
Kevin.
 
To Rev E and Kevin,
That's sounds like extremely good advice. Thank you for taking the time and trouble.
Best Wishes,
Alan
 
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