Monitoring myself with reverb?

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MidoBan

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Hi, when i record vocals, should i be monitoring myself with reverb or not? What's the most common way of the two?

I'm trying to decide between two audio interfaces when one has an onboard reverb and the other one doesn't. If i wont have the onboard reverb, would i still be able to monitor myself singing with a reverb, or will i have latency problems?

Thanks!
 
As much as everyone likes to hear themselves drenched in reverb, I tend to like it dry personally because I can monitor with much MUCH less latency.
 
Guitargodgt said:
As much as everyone likes to hear themselves drenched in reverb, I tend to like it dry personally because I can monitor with much MUCH less latency.
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Well thats just the thing, with the Focusrite Pro 24 DSP i have the option to monitor with reverb without latency.. do you think its usable?
 
Whatever works in this situation. Even if I was in your situation I would opt not to have reverb on, but it's personal opinion not a hard fast rule.
 
MidoBan said:
Well thats just the thing, with the Focusrite Pro 24 DSP i have the option to monitor with reverb without latency.. do you think its usable?
Click to expand...

does it still record a dry signal? cause you don't want to be stuck with the reverb you record with
 
This is not a question for a forum. It's a question for yourself.

Reverb is given to vocalists to make them feel comfortable and to help coax a great performance. Some singers like their vocals dry and some simply can not perform without reverb.

Reverb is one of those nebulous things in audio and a musician will see it completely differently than an engineer. For an engineer, it's used to create the illusion of distance and space and should be steered clear of in the instance of being used as a crutch or to "hide" a bad performance. For singers, they see it as a way to smooth their vocals and give them a feeling of vibe. Neither is incorrect until it is used to bury a bad performance or is added for the sake of itself.

Use reverb if it makes you feel comfortable. Use it if it helps you perform better. DON'T use it just for the sake of using it.

Cheers :)
 
MidoBan said:
Well thats just the thing, with the Focusrite Pro 24 DSP i have the option to monitor with reverb without latency.. do you think its usable?
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as DSP without latency. What they mean is very low latency, which may be sufficient for you or not.

The way I monitor without latency and with whatever effects I feel will help the performance is to use an analog mixer with enough aux sends to get the job done. I think a bit of reverb really does help most singers. The sound of dry vocals through headphones is unnatural and some reverb helps replace that ambient sound we are used to hearing when we speak or sing.
 
Well, when the latency is nice and low (say 4ms or so) it might as well be no latency.

The big issue is what helps you sing best. My experience is that it's roughly 50/50. Some do better without reverb because they can hear every nuance of their performance and get the best out of their voice. For others, the extra self confidence the "sound good factor" of reverb gives helps them to do better. Only you can decide what works best for you.

However, just to re-emphasise something said early, whatever the choice for monitoring, NEVER, EVER record with reverb. It's always much better to record dry and add any necessary reverb carefully, thoughtfully...and reversibly...later.

Bob
 
Bobbsy said:
Well, when the latency is nice and low (say 4ms or so) it might as well be no latency.
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I prefer latency to be lower than that. I have heard record offset of less than 1ms (46 samples at 48kHz) between the drum tracks and the bass pretty much wreck the groove of a song with a tight rhythm.
 
MidoBan said:
Hi, when i record vocals, should i be monitoring myself with reverb or not? What's the most common way of the two?

I'm trying to decide between two audio interfaces when one has an onboard reverb and the other one doesn't. If i wont have the onboard reverb, would i still be able to monitor myself singing with a reverb, or will i have latency problems?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Assuming a system fast enough for comfortable overdub monitoring in the first place (a few ms latency) try to keep processor loads at a min during tracking, run a basic verb, then reset your latency back up higher for the mixing.
 
I tend to use reverb in my cue mix, but I've done without it a few times....just a matter of adjusting your "hearing".

When I track...while feeding the DAW or tape deck with the signal, I send the output of either back to my analog console where I can easily set up cue mixes and add reverb/EQ and whatever I want to the cue mix....without latency.

I guess...if you tend to mix your final vocals with reverb most of the time...it makes sense to hear reverb while recording, just so you have the same intended vibe from the git-go. If you are just engineering for someone else...then give them what they prefer.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
I prefer latency to be lower than that. I have heard record offset of less than 1ms (46 samples at 48kHz) between the drum tracks and the bass pretty much wreck the groove of a song with a tight rhythm.
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Hmm. That would include any mic more than a foot away..?

:D
 
mixsit said:
Hmm. That would include any mic more than a foot away..?

:D
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Yeah, and monitoring on wedges 5 or 6 feet away would be significant, or overheads 3 feet over the kit, or an orchestra thirty feet wide. But I'm talking about a bass connected direct playing with a very precise drum track, both with initial transient attack that had to lock together, not a vocal part or string section with less defined attack. Note that I did say that the low latency of his setup may be sufficient for his needs, not that true zero latency is absolutely necessary all the time.

Pretty much everything about recording is making it better than real, otherwise we wouldn't use microphones that make things sound better or bother recording one instrument at a time to a bunch of separate tracks or use eq or reverb. Minimizing latency is generally accepted as a good thing so it's just a matter of how far you want to take it.

The fact is we were sitting there after listening back to a take silently wondering if the others heard the same thing. When I brought it up the bass player was relieved that I heard what he heard and that it wasn't his playing that was off, it was the DAW. Of course record offset (or whatever your DAW calls it) is different from monitoring latency, but my point is that differences of less than 1ms are audible and make a musical difference.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
I prefer latency to be lower than that. I have heard record offset of less than 1ms (46 samples at 48kHz) between the drum tracks and the bass pretty much wreck the groove of a song with a tight rhythm.
Click to expand...

All I can say is that if you can hear the difference between 1 and 2 ms latency, you have far better ears than me. To put these numbers into perspective, moving a microphone 1 foot from it's source introduces about a millisecond of delay--if your overhead mics are 2 feet above the drums, that's 2 ms (and so on).

Most top end professional digital consoles (Studer, Calrec, that sort of thing) specify latency from input to stereo output of <2ms with the actual figures generally between 1.5 and 2ms. This figure obviously goes up if you add effects like reverb into the channel but I've never heard of anyone even detecting this (even with feeds into headphones) much less complaining about it.

Edited to add: Sorry, I hit reply on page 1 of this thread before I noticed that it had already extended to page 2. In any case, to respond to Bouldersoundguy's latest post, if there are musicians capable of playing so tightly that there is less than 1/1000th of a second between them, I've never met them. A bass player and a drummer playing together but sitting 5 feet apart have 5ms delay in hearing each other. A bass player six feet tall hears his amp 4 or 5ms after he plucks the string, and so on. Heck, a drummer probably hears his kick drum 3 or 4ms after the beater hits the skin.

Sorry, but count me as a sceptic.

Bob
 
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