sonusman
Banned
It is all in where you are at!!! And where I am, crazy is normal!!!
I make a point to listen everywhere I go.
I like warm sounding rooms. I try to emulate those rooms when setting up a reverb. Most music produced in the last 5 years does not use those phoney sounding plate reverbs. They have a place in music, just not a prominate one.
Room reverbs will serve you well. Chamber reverbs will serve you well. Medium to small rooms and chambers for medium to up tempo stuff. Big rooms and chambers for slower stuff.
Three settings on a reverb that will make all the difference.
Pre-delay - This will allow the original signal develope before the onset of reverb. There may be times where you want to wash out the original sound, and will not have very much pre-delay at all, but not very often.
Hi-Cut Filters. This will mellow out the reverb, and make it sound like real rooms you will be in. Seldom do I have this set above 4KHz. You just don't normally need reverb content above 4KHz.
Diffusion - Lower settings creates reverbs that are more distinct. If you want a more subtle reverb that is not very noticable, raise the value. It should seldom be above 20%. It can go as low as 7% to sound cool.
Another setting that will make the reverb develope in interesting ways is the X Bass setting. It may be labeled Hi Filter too, but basically, it is a multiplier for the low end of a reverb. A 1X value is the algorythym as it was coded. If the values run 1-10 like on most Yamaha reverbs, you are on your own to figure out what they wanted to be the original algorythym. I would normally just say DON'T use Yamaha reverbs at all, because they are some of the most garbage can sounding things I have ever heard in my life. I find that .8X works most of the time. Here and there, you may go up to 2X, but usually only for reverbs assigned to very bright sounding instruments.
Spend a lot of time on developing natural sounding reverbs and save those to use later. You will find yourself using a lot of the same 2 or 3 reverbs in most stuff you mix. Really. Don't settle for factory presets. Get into the unit and play around a lot and find reverbs that sound like rooms you have been in before. These are the most desirable ones to use.
Here and there you are going to create special reverbs that are very intentional effects. Use these sparingly over the course of a whole CD of several songs. Overuse numbs the user to the effect.
Whether you assign a channel Pre or Post EQ to the reverbs really depends on what you want the frequency to be accentuated with reverb. You may have some cut eq on a snare drum at around 2KHz, but you may want that to be where your snare reverb to reside. It would make sense in this case to use a Pre EQ aux send to feed the reverb. If however you are boosting like 400Hz to get the snare to have a little body because it was tracked a little thin sounding, a Post EQ aux send may serve you better because a Pre EQ aux send in this case will not have enough low end content to excite the reverb in the way you want. Think it through, and when in doubt, try both ways.
Also, Pre and Post Fader aux sends can be usefull when assigning a track to a reverb send. Sometimes, I have a whole bunch of snare in the overheads, and I am depending upon that overhead track to supply most of the snare sound. Now, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to feed the overhead mics to a reverb, so how do you get a snare to excite a reverb? Easy, you assign a Pre Fader aux send to the reverb and just keep the fader down on the snare track, but turn the Pre Fader Aux send up on the snare channel. Cool eh?
Ed
I make a point to listen everywhere I go.
I like warm sounding rooms. I try to emulate those rooms when setting up a reverb. Most music produced in the last 5 years does not use those phoney sounding plate reverbs. They have a place in music, just not a prominate one.
Room reverbs will serve you well. Chamber reverbs will serve you well. Medium to small rooms and chambers for medium to up tempo stuff. Big rooms and chambers for slower stuff.
Three settings on a reverb that will make all the difference.
Pre-delay - This will allow the original signal develope before the onset of reverb. There may be times where you want to wash out the original sound, and will not have very much pre-delay at all, but not very often.
Hi-Cut Filters. This will mellow out the reverb, and make it sound like real rooms you will be in. Seldom do I have this set above 4KHz. You just don't normally need reverb content above 4KHz.
Diffusion - Lower settings creates reverbs that are more distinct. If you want a more subtle reverb that is not very noticable, raise the value. It should seldom be above 20%. It can go as low as 7% to sound cool.
Another setting that will make the reverb develope in interesting ways is the X Bass setting. It may be labeled Hi Filter too, but basically, it is a multiplier for the low end of a reverb. A 1X value is the algorythym as it was coded. If the values run 1-10 like on most Yamaha reverbs, you are on your own to figure out what they wanted to be the original algorythym. I would normally just say DON'T use Yamaha reverbs at all, because they are some of the most garbage can sounding things I have ever heard in my life. I find that .8X works most of the time. Here and there, you may go up to 2X, but usually only for reverbs assigned to very bright sounding instruments.
Spend a lot of time on developing natural sounding reverbs and save those to use later. You will find yourself using a lot of the same 2 or 3 reverbs in most stuff you mix. Really. Don't settle for factory presets. Get into the unit and play around a lot and find reverbs that sound like rooms you have been in before. These are the most desirable ones to use.
Here and there you are going to create special reverbs that are very intentional effects. Use these sparingly over the course of a whole CD of several songs. Overuse numbs the user to the effect.
Whether you assign a channel Pre or Post EQ to the reverbs really depends on what you want the frequency to be accentuated with reverb. You may have some cut eq on a snare drum at around 2KHz, but you may want that to be where your snare reverb to reside. It would make sense in this case to use a Pre EQ aux send to feed the reverb. If however you are boosting like 400Hz to get the snare to have a little body because it was tracked a little thin sounding, a Post EQ aux send may serve you better because a Pre EQ aux send in this case will not have enough low end content to excite the reverb in the way you want. Think it through, and when in doubt, try both ways.
Also, Pre and Post Fader aux sends can be usefull when assigning a track to a reverb send. Sometimes, I have a whole bunch of snare in the overheads, and I am depending upon that overhead track to supply most of the snare sound. Now, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to feed the overhead mics to a reverb, so how do you get a snare to excite a reverb? Easy, you assign a Pre Fader aux send to the reverb and just keep the fader down on the snare track, but turn the Pre Fader Aux send up on the snare channel. Cool eh?
Ed
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