Reverbs - how do you use them in a mix?

Greg_L said:
Absolutely. And FWIW, I don't think your mixes sound too dry at all.
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That's good. I have started putting a little more on them lately, the last 2 or 3 songs.. Not enough to be extremely noticeable, but enough so that nobody tells me they're really dry. :)
 
Tadpui said:
I'm curious about this:



In a DAW like Reaper, where send/return effects are hosted on a regular track and other tracks are routed to them, how would I implement something like this?

Say I have a reverb hosted on one track, 100% wet/0% dry, and a vocal on another track. Normally I'd route the vocal track to the reverb track and adjust the return level to taste. How would I go about putting a de-esser between the two?

My first thought would be to host the de-esser on another track, route the vocals to the de-esser track, then route the de-esser track to the reverb track. But does that accomplish what MM described above?
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Yeah, I had that question too... I'm going to experiment when I get home from work tonight. I'll post here if I actually work anything out...
 
Armistice said:
Yeah, I had that question too... I'm going to experiment when I get home from work tonight. I'll post here if I actually work anything out...
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I'm guessing you can just put the de-esser as an effect on the reverb channel itself, as if the reverb is an instrument??? Just guessing until MM comes back to clear this up for us.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Just stick on there ahead of the reverb.
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Ok, that makes sense. What I said made less sense. The reverb goes in the effects strip of the channel it's on. So, you're saying just put the de-esser in there, too, before the reverb?
 
RAMI said:
Ok, that makes sense. What I said made less sense. The reverb goes in the effects strip of the channel it's on. So, you're saying just put the de-esser in there, too, before the reverb?
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You put the reverb on an effects bus/track like normal, with the de-esser ahead of it on the same bus/track. It will suppress any strong sibiliant sounds going into the reverb so it doesn't react so much to them. I prefer a simple eq ahead of the reverb, especially if some voices' sends to the 'verb are lower and may not be affected by the de-esser. You could also play with the HF damping settings if the 'verb has them.
 
LOL - thanks RAMI/boulder... it seems so obvious now... never thought of actually having more than one thing on an effect bus/channel!

Damn technology is so hard to keep up with.... next they'll be building cars that you don't need to change gears on.:thumbs up:
 
I had one a few nights ago (sonar) where I wished I could have inserted that eq into the track's aux send path-- Already have the track eq'd, send to a verb, but the verb bus has threre or five' other things in it that didn't need thaty taming'.
 
Armistice said:
LOL - thanks RAMI/boulder... it seems so obvious now... never thought of actually having more than one thing on an effect bus/channel!

Damn technology is so hard to keep up with.... next they'll be building cars that you don't need to change gears on.:thumbs up:
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Or drive themselves.
 
Excellent, thanks for the suggestions fellas. I'm booting up Reaper as I type to give this a try.

So let's say that I only want the vocals to be affected by the de-esser and/or EQ on their way to the reverb. Say I want the same reverb on a snare or a guitar track, but without the EQ in the middle of things. Would that be a situation where I'd need to start daisy-chaining send/return tracks, one with the verb and one with the EQ? Vocals go to EQ->reverb, guitar goes straight to reverb? I'm just not used to putting filter or compression effects on an aux bus like that.
 
Tadpui said:
Excellent, thanks for the suggestions fellas. I'm booting up Reaper as I type to give this a try.

So let's say that I only want the vocals to be affected by the de-esser and/or EQ on their way to the reverb. Say I want the same reverb on a snare or a guitar track, but without the EQ in the middle of things. Would that be a situation where I'd need to start daisy-chaining send/return tracks, one with the verb and one with the EQ? Vocals go to EQ->reverb, guitar goes straight to reverb? I'm just not used to putting filter or compression effects on an aux bus like that.
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I'd just set up a second bus/channel in that instance... one with reverb only, one with EQ and reverb... keep it simple...
 
Armistice said:
it seems so obvious now... never thought of actually having more than one thing on an effect bus/channel!
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You can create monsters on this... I'd say it's pretty rare that I run a single effect (I'm counting EQ here as well) on an auxiliary send...

Try using a really thick chorus on the signal before the verb. Feed a delay into a verb (well, if I'm using echo/delay on a vocal, it's sort of a must - Otherwise, the delay is totally dry. You can always send that output through an aux to the same verb on the vocal, but I tend to use something different). Instead of a chorus on a vocal, send an early-reflection room into it.

Compress the snot out a signal feeding a delay and make it telephonic (Pink Floyd...?).

Totally endless possibilities.
 
Just set up a reverb track. Send whatever you want to that reverb track. Put the EQ on the vocal track itself, then send that to the reverb.
 
Armistice said:
I'd just set up a second bus/channel in that instance... one with reverb only, one with EQ and reverb... keep it simple...
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But depending on the reverb, and computer, that might be a bunch of processing. My machine would choke for sure.

A De-esser/eq probably uses less CPU than a reverb in most cases.

Just a thought. I bet people aren't using 6 year old computers around here! :o
 
sixer2007 said:
But depending on the reverb, and computer, that might be a bunch of processing. My machine would choke for sure.

A De-esser/eq probably uses less CPU than a reverb in most cases.

Just a thought. I bet people aren't using 6 year old computers around here! :o
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Mine's 8 yrs old.
 
Greg_L said:
Mine's 8 yrs old.
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Dang! Here in a couple more years, you're gonna have to give your computer the "birds and the bees" talk. Before you know it, it'll be old enough to drive! :D

Anyways...The problem with just putting the EQ or whatever on the vocal is that I want those frequencies in the vocal, but I don't want them triggering chirpiness or other irritating reverb artifacts. Some sibilance might not be too bad on the vocal track itself, but some verbs will exaggerate it.

I know, I know...don't use so much reverb. I keep telling myself I'll quit some day.
 
Here's another bit to add- Mostly it applies to stating 'there's a large space', but avoiding muddying things up is to selectively trigger big space cues. Example, for the drums it only gets placed on the tom hits is (was?) common.
Similar to-- Having very deep frequencies speak occasionally (relative) can be enough to portray 'huge size or weight.
Playing presumably with a bit of 'bait and switch and the power of suggestion

(disclaimer; It's one thing to 'get' this stuff.. i hardly make it that far. Too used up polishing the tur.. :rolleyes:
 
If you choose to send from the vox track to a de-esser track and then to the reverb track, be sure to disable the Master/Parent Send on the de-esser track or else set its send to the verb as Pre-Fader (Post FX) and turn the fader all the way down so you don't hear the de-ess track itself in the mix.

You could probably also set up the reverb track as a 4 channel track. Then you put the de-esser ahead of the verb as above, but you set up the de-esser for I/O on channels 3 and 4. Set the reverb to route 1 and 3 to its left input, and 2 and 4 to the right. Then on any track you're sending to the verb you set up the send to go either to 1 and 2 (without de-esser) or to 3 and 4 (with de-esser).

Personally, I think that's a bit too convoluted, and would rather just have the extra de-esser track so that I can more easily see at a glance whether ive got the de-ess on a given send. You could probably also set up your vocal track as multi-channel and put the de-esser right there on the vox track's channel 3-4, and then only send those channels over to the reverb. This would allow different de-esser settings for each vocal track, at the expense of processing power. You might have to do something to keep those extra channels from getting merged back to the main L/R out at some point...
 
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