Awash in reverb!

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robjh22

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Eureka!! I started to write to tell everyone that I couldn't raise any reverb on my vf80. Or set any EQ. I had resigned myself to living with dry, flat and boring tracks for all eternity. "At least it records," said I with a sigh to myself.

Then I looked at the manual, for the 51st time (50 wasn't enough) and discovered that you have set the send levels up off of zero for the effect to have any . . . effect. Can I get a "duh"?
I thought those little round clocks that came up when you hit "effects" were for panning left or right. I didn't care about panning, so I have had them set at zero for 4 weeks! Now I've got them all at 99. I am awash in excessive, Zeppelin-esque reverb. I luxuriate therein. When I sing, I sound like Merle Haggard in an English hardwood dance hall by the sea. I got reverb and a frisky muse, and all in the space of 10 minutes! Forgive me, friends, my mouth runneth over. I feel like I just got outta prison.

I'll close with this, my question of the day: what's with all the
preset hall effects? if I can set reverb on any track, from 1 to 99 using, say, the "normal hall," why go to the other halls? Convenience? You still got to set the send level on each track with every hall you select. And what is "delay?" Okay, that's 2 questions.

Rob "free at last" Herrington
 
I don't know how it is on the VF-80, but the different room sizes on reverb are to give a wider and deeper effect. Say for instance you had a medium hall and a large hall reverb. You would think that you could turn the medium hall up and equal the large hall. But there is not only a wideness to the verbs, but also depth. If you get to the point (and you very well maybe) where you are transferring songs to your pc and using a program that accepts DirectX plugins get anwida reverb light. It is free and one of the best reverbs I've ever heard.
www.anwida.com
 
depth v. width

Thanks, gosp, I'll experiment. One step at a time, just like you all
have been telling me. In a hundred days , I should know a hundred things! Time will tell.
 
Delay...

Delay is very important. It tends to either shorten or lengthen the reverb. So a reverb set with 0 delay might not sound like any reverb at all. My understanding is that John Lennon liked a 100ms delay on his vocals.

By highlighting the delay icon on the given screen related to the type of effect you've chosen, you can adjust up or down from the preset delay figure.
 
less is more...

While effects are cool, and very helpful, less is more. try to use effects to enhance, tweak, and season a track. Too much and it becomes a muddy wash. You want to make your recordings sound clean, not covered over in a ton of gloss. If you've got a good song, why hide it or hype it -- let it speak for itself.
 
Right-o, Bill. I was exaggerating the effect of reverb I use
just for comic effect. I do admit, however, that once I found out how to do it, I did crank it all the way to 99, just once -- okay, twice -- to see how "rich" it could get. I sounded like a whale in
an empty grain silo. But I'll be guided by the "less is more" precept.

In one of the other threads I got lost in this weekend, in a post by Blue Bear, I think, I discovered that EQ'ing is something
pros do last, or at least not first; getting a good instrument, playing it well, putting it in a good room, selecting an appropriate mike, and then experimenting with mike placement, apparently are all of higher priority than fiddling around with EQ. Do you agree? As I understand it, a good sounding instrument shouldn't need ANY EQ'ING. If true, this makes sense -- consider Caruso or Segovia playing live, or recording, 70 - 100 years ago. What EQ did they have? Anything wrong with their sound?

Thanks to you good folks for your encouragement and the continuing stream of good information.
 
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