Reverb is wrecking my head

  • Thread starter Thread starter sausy1981
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sausy1981

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Hi guys, I've been having a problem with using reverb in my mixes. My DAW is sonar x1 producer, and I record my tracks using a br800.
My drums are done using session drummer 3 and all tracks are stereo using the interleave button, My bass is mono, my guitars are mono and my lead vocal is mono, and my backing vocals are in stereo.
I get a good initial balance and introduce any compression to tracks that need it, then I sort out any frequency clashes. At this stage I check my balance and then proceed to add my reverb.
Now the reason I'm adding reverb at this stage is to make my instruments sound as if their played in the same room.
I set up a stereo bus and add my reverb to it, Generally I set up a reverb with a time of between 1 and 2 secs, with a short predelay maybe 30 ms, then i tend to roll of the low end at about 250Hz of the reverb bus and roll off the high end from about 5k.
With my reverb bus set up I start to send my instruments to it, this is where I come unstuck, I have my send set to post on each track I'm sending and when I send the track I also set the pan of the send to match the pan of the instrument in the mix. But however much tweaking I do, my reverb never sounds right. would this be because I'm send mono tracks to a stereo bus using a stereo reverb?
I put the reverb on a track as an insert with the same settings and that track sounds fine and this is the type of room I want my song played in, but when I use a bus with these reverb settings it sounds crap. Also When adjusting the send level of my tracks things don't make sense, for example I wanted an electric guitar to sound further away than my acoustic guitar but I had to send more of the acoustic guitar to the reverb to make it sound right, I thought this was meant to be the other way around.

Any help or tips abut using reverb on a bus would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
 
You have the reverb on the bus set to 100% effect, right?
 
Yep, I maybe using too short of a reverb cos it sounds a bit metallic, I'm goin back to the mix in a bit and gonna tweak a few parameters, after I did a bit of reading last night I think I might be messing up with diffusion and pre-delay settings, I thing both are set too short everytime I set up a reverb.
 
A couple of things. If you are sending all the signals post fader, your send levels arent going to match necessarily. The signal sent to the verb is going to match the fader on the channel. Also, I find a low pass filter to be more effective on a channel if you want to move it back behind something else. I tend to set up reverbs for my vocals, drums and instruments seperately. I like to eq my verbs to the sweet freq of the source. Then if needed, I will take a send from my 2 bus into a verb and blend it in. That way my mix, levels, panning and positioning of tracks are all set up. Then I try to put that into a space by sending to a verb.
 
A couple of things. If you are sending all the signals post fader, your send levels arent going to match necessarily. The signal sent to the verb is going to match the fader on the channel. Also, I find a low pass filter to be more effective on a channel if you want to move it back behind something else. I tend to set up reverbs for my vocals, drums and instruments seperately. I like to eq my verbs to the sweet freq of the source. Then if needed, I will take a send from my 2 bus into a verb and blend it in. That way my mix, levels, panning and positioning of tracks are all set up. Then I try to put that into a space by sending to a verb.

So I should use low pass filters on my indivdual instrument channels to push them further back? I generally use 2 verbs myself, one for vocals and one for everything else.
 
A couple of things. If you are sending all the signals post fader, your send levels arent going to match necessarily. The signal sent to the verb is going to match the fader on the channel.

Using post fader sends keeps the proportion of the reverb to the instrument/vocal constant if the fader for the instrument/vocal is moved. Once in a great while there is good reason to use a pre fader reverb send, but the vast majority of the time it's best to use post fader sends so you don't have to adjust the send every time you move the channel fader.
 
sure, individual tracks, group buses. Whatever works. I usually try to group like sounding instruments to verbs. That way you can eq, and adjust verb/verb type as needed. Drums, guitars, vocals.
 
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