reverb newbie

  • Thread starter Thread starter dobro
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dobro

dobro

Well-known member
Reverb newbie - yup, that's me. I'm just getting into it.

I find, even with reverb so light that you hardly notice it unless you compare it to the dry track, that the whole song gets a bit darker. So, what's the drill? After you apply reverb, you then EQ great bands of the song to get the air back into it?
 
Excellent question Dobro

I too have very limited knowledge of the ins and outs of Reverb but I find myself using it "because you need reverb" .

My system is sub par for listening but I like what it does after I compress something.

I look forward to the engineers info on this one.
 
Well, I'm trying out reverb, not because that's what everybody does, but to see what it does for the music. Having said that, I really like a dry sound cuz it suits my music - that 'guy right in front of you singing a song with an acoustic guitar' sound. But I wouldn't mind a 'guy with modest backup on a small stage in a coffee house seating 150 people' sound, either. What I don't like about the reverb experiments I've tried so far is that the reverb fudges the clarity, the definition, of the sound.
 
I really like a dry sound cuz it suits my music - that 'guy right in front of you singing a song with an acoustic guitar' sound. But I wouldn't mind a 'guy with modest backup on a small stage in a coffee house seating 150 people' sound, either.
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Wow..........I would love to have these choices instead of
"Grand Canyon" or "Thin tinny toy ax" when I check the presets.

My problem is in the tweaking process of these presets, the different changes I make always seem to make an all or nothing change to my sound.
 
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I use reverb to fatten my drums - and I've found some plugins are better than others for certain purposes, for drums my favorite so far is the beatmodel optiverb. I don't like adding huge verb trails on the snare, and I don't like an entirely dry kick either - so in cubase I insert sends into all the drum tracks then apply the verb to the bus, leaving me with a 50/50 balance of the original and effected signal.. I try to make the verb deep and "huge".. smaller room sizes, relatively short reflections, and a decent amount of predelay do a ton imo to bring out that "room" feel.. in conjunction with the right EQ, whether over speakers or through phones I feel like that drummer is right there pummelling me in the face. I need to experiment more with guitars etc.
 
Would doubling the track and adding the verb to only one of them help keep the clarity? I might be wrong because I'm a reverb newbie too.
 
A shorter predelay would help with clarity, as would less reverb and more dry signal. This would depend upon, of course, how clear the signal was tracked. I like the Waves reverbs.
 
I would have thought a longer predelay would have made the sound clearer - more of the un-reverbed sound would get through before the reverb kicked in. Yes? No?
 
Excellent! That one goes into the folder and gets studied...hehehe.
 
What's really cool about reverb is there are so many parameters that you can play with.

First of all, I always prefer to set up the reverb as an effect rather than as a process. That means I don't use it as an insert, at say, 10% wet, but rather put the reverb on an aux return set at 100% wet and adjust the amount using the aux sends on each channel.
It can make a difference in the overall sound.

The next step is to choose the general reverb type - plate, room, hall, chamber, or special fx (like gated or reverse). It's useful to have a good small room preset handy just to give recorded tracks a little more "life" without actually adding a reverberant tail - especially if the recordings were made in mostly "dead" acoustic spaces.

The small room programs will often keep that "dry" sound you like, while still adding a little dimension. You have options of adding or subtracting to the ambience both by the amount of signal you are sending to the reverb (via your aux pot) or by actually changing the parameters of the reverb program itself. Not only can you change the size of the room, but many reverbs let you change the shape of the room, the composition of the reflective walls, and of course, the predelay. Other reverbs have parameters for density as well. Each box or program will react a little differently, so the best plan is usually just to take some time and play with each parameter to get a feel for what it does.

Finally, eq'ing the reverb itself may give you the results you are looking for. Too much sibilance? Try rolling off some high end on the reverb. Too dark or muddy? Try rolling off some low end.

This is not meant as a complete course in reverb - just a starting point. Others should feel free to add to this.

POST-SCRIPT: I WROTE THIS BEFORE I NOTICED MOSHE'S EXCELLENT ARTICLE IN THE LINK A FEW POSTS ABOVE. HIS ARTICLE IS FAR MORE COMPREHENSIVE THAN MY MEANDERINGS, SO CHECK IT OUT.
 
I prefer a pretty dry sound but I have one favorite way of adding a little ambience. I'll use a room reverb and roll off the lows and highs and set the predelay pretty short.

The predelay is the key to not getting too muddy. It delays the start of the reverb so you can hear the original signal a little clearer.
 
As I understand it, reverb isn't always necessary if you just want to slightly 'fatten' a sound or give it a little more life e.g. a snare or singer's voice if you are going for a dry sounding recording. As one person above described it; the 'sitting in front of you' sound.

A slap-back delay can give the same effect. The delay setting would need to be very short indeed, less than 40ms. Sometimes on a snare I find that I set the delay to 30ms or so then I pan the original sound to one speaker and the delayed sound to the other and it gives a nice boost to the sound. Especially if it is a 'cracking' snare sound you are after.

Chessrock used it on the vocals to one of his tracks with the original and delayed sound panned centre. Sounded nice.
 
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TexRoadkill said:
The predelay is the key to not getting too muddy. It delays the start of the reverb so you can hear the original signal a little clearer.
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Not just......

Even with a proper predelay set, on the same basis the decay time can be a cause of a muddy mix if it is set to long.
 
Shailat said:


Not just......

Even with a proper predelay set, on the same basis the decay time can be a cause of a muddy mix if it is set to long.
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well, duh. ;)
 
After reading that article, I think these pointers really start to stick out for dobro's case:

* "Don't use reverb if you feel the track doesn't need it. If your guitar track is rocking then leave it alone or add a bit until you like the sound but then stop at once! No more (than) you need!"

* "Do try to use a delay unit rather then a reverb on some instruments. This can do wonders to clear up a mix."

* "Do try to use an Eq unit with the Reverb unit and cut or boost the return to change the sound or to change the distance. (See Hi freq. roll off)"

I would also like to ad that I think it is very important to always check your reverbs with headphones. What may not seem like much verb on your monitors may actually be quite substantial when checking them with the 'phones. Plus the cans will give you a better idea of what kind of 3-Dimensionality you're adding (or if you're adding any at all), and the quality (or lack thereof) of the verb itself.
 
Yo Dobro:

Compared to Shailat, I'm a rookie. However, when I first got into reverb and got it cooking with my first 4 track Yamaha tape recorder, I thought I was in heaven when I heard my "scraggily" voice booming through the headset.

Now, to the present. I find the reverb rooms and choices in my DAW 2816 very good. They are very adjustable. I don't think there are too many singers who record who don't use reverb.

But, for guitar of whatever type, or horn, or keyboard [which many presets already have some reverb], it's a game of trial and error and success.

I would just add, it's your ears that decide what you like. If it is the commercial world of buyers, then you might have to adjust to some extent.

Some great information passed on in this thread by the "troops."

Green Hornet:D :p :p :p
 
chessrock said:

I would also like to ad that I think it is very important to always check your reverbs with headphones. What may not seem like much verb on your monitors may actually be quite substantial when checking them with the 'phones. Plus the cans will give you a better idea of what kind of 3-Dimensionality you're adding (or if you're adding any at all), and the quality (or lack thereof) of the verb itself.
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It's funny you should say that, because for me reverb is the one area for which headphones are just about useless. I'm not saying that nobody can do it, I'm just admitting my total inability to make reverb judgements or adjustments that translate well to speakers when listening on phones - so I don't ever try! It's probably the number one reason why I always support the arguments that say you can't really mix exclusively on headphones.
 
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