reverb newbie

  • Thread starter Thread starter dobro
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littledog said:


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.

Interesting that you bring this up...I was just discussing this issue with a classical (music) engineer as I was surprised to hear how he uses headphones quite a bit. He refered me to a article written by Robert Auld which I found very interesting.

One of the conclusions was that judging Reverb is some what problematic on headphones as it is missing "aurl masking" and therefore tends to sound "Wetter" then it really is.....If you want the full tech explanation I'll write it...

Some other interesting cons and pros were written there for using or not - Headphones.
The most interesting one for homerecorders was the fact the Phones eliminate the room factor giving people with a extremly poor treated room the chance to try and work out some of the problems in their mix.

I'm against using phones as well to mix from top to bottom but I can't rule them out totaly as a partial solution.
 
littledog said:
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!

I didn't exactly say that you should ditch the monitors. :D Use both, silly. :D
 
Reverb is one of those things that separate the boy monitors from the man monitors. Among other things, imaging has alot to do with it.

I find the minimus 7s great for checking reverb.
 
Really useful thread for me.

Okay, I went away and read Ed's article on reverb and Shailat's. Ed's is good, and Shailat's is better. Sorry, Ed. :D I also got into the best reverb in Cool Edit 2.0 and tweaked up a subtle reverb that sounds better than anything I'd come up with before. I like the sound of it, but the one thing that stops me from going with it is that the dry mix is still clearer. I may learn how to get a clearer sound working with the delay and the wet/dry ratio more.

My place also got hit by lightning and my computer got knocked out, but that's another story...

However, I came across this, and I think it's really useful. I record my voice with one mic. I record my guitar with two mics and pan the guitar tracks. The result is a spacious guitar behind a dry vocal. There's a kind of discrepancy between the two sounds, if you know what I mean. But when I put a taste of mild reverb on the whole mix, it pulls everything together - it makes it sound more like both the voice and the guitar were recorded in the same space at the same time. This is so useful that it *really* makes me want to find a reverb that's as clear as the dry mix.

BTW, here's a suggestion from the Cool Edit HELP on reverb: they suggest a good starting point for delay is to have it about 10% of your reverb/decay time.
 
Oh yeah - there's another idea I heard about that fits in with what Littledog and maybe Texroadkill were saying: a guy I know on the net doubles the track he wants to put verb on and then makes the doubled track 100% wet. He says it gives him more control over EQ and volume, not to mention the panning opportunities involved.
 
dobro said:
Oh yeah - there's another idea I heard about that fits in with what Littledog and maybe Texroadkill were saying: a guy I know on the net doubles the track he wants to put verb on and then makes the doubled track 100% wet. He says it gives him more control over EQ and volume, not to mention the panning opportunities involved.

That's a good idea if you have to do rendered effects like in CEP1. It will give you more options during the mix when wet/dry and EQ choices should be made.

I found it incredibly difficult to get good reverb effects in CEP1 because you have to keep auditioning settings instead of just tweaking as you listen to the track in the mix. Using realtime effects is MUCH easier.
 
Cool Edit 2.0 does real time effects, and it's got a reverb with loads more parameters you can control than before - room shape for example and related issues. I don't even want to start to get involved in that right now. :D
 
A couple of reverb tricks to try.

-I will frequently EQ the send to the reverb differently from the dry signal. Vocals can muddy up from most natural sounding reverbs because, with a natural reverb (as in a real room or hall or plate), the high frequencies decay faster than the low frequencies. You can add a huge amount of reverb without muddying up the mix by using a high pass filter on the reverb send. This does not work as well when you EQ the return. You can also EQ different instruments going to the same reverb differently if you EQ the sends. On the SSL I used to work on, we would just bus the signal to two channels, and one would go to the reverb, the other would go to the mix. This would be more difficult with fewer channels, though.

-I, unlike many other engineers and producers, do not like to use a lot of different reverbs in a mix. I read about a producer who said he would rather have eight crappy reverbs than only one really nice one. I feel exactly the opposite. I want the reverb to sound as good as possible, and I prefer to use only one or two. I like to have the instruments sound as though they are in the same space together. I do not, however, want the different instruments to sound like they are in the exact same position in that space. If they each have exactly the same predelay, they are at the same depth from the listener. To avoid this, I will set up several sends to one reverb unit, and I will send all but one of the sends through short delays. This creates the effect of different predelays, giving each instrument a different depth. I will generally give the lead vocal the longest predelay (making it sound closest to the listener). One of my favorite things to do is to use a real plate (I really like the EMTs). I will send the background vocals directly to the plate, and I will send the lead vocals through a delay of about 30-50 ms. You get an absolutely beautiful sonic vision of all of the singers being in the same space, but with the background vocals a little behind the lead singer. This works particularly well when one person has done all of the vocals. It really adds a nice separation of the parts, while maintaining a cohesive sound.

-If you like a drier sound, don't use reverb. Use delay. Set the time of the delay to the tempo of the song, with only one or at most two repeats of the signal. It gives your sound a very nice space without washing it out. Here is a quick way to approximate the delay time. Get a stop watch. Start tapping your foot to the beat of the song. Turn on the stop watch at on the beat. Count 11 beats. Stop the watch on the eleventh beat. Move the decimal one place to the left. That is the length of a quarter note, in milliseconds. Half that time is an eighth note, double that time is a half note, etc. This will not be perfect, but it will be close, and it is then an easy job to move the time up and down until it is perfect. Of course if your delay has a tap tempo, then you do not need to do this, but my PCM-41s and -42s did not have tap tempo.

So there you go. Reverb according to Light. The only other suggestion I have about reverb is to try EVERYTHING. You never know what might work for a particular piece. On most pop music productions, I will use two reverbs. One for the instruments and one for the vocals. I lean heavily towards plate reverbs, myself, that's just me. Hell, one of my favorite production teams is Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, and they claim to have used reverb on only one record in the last ten years (I don't buy it, but whatever). They certainly do not use much reverb.

Try EVERYTHING.

Sorry if I ramble on, but it runs in the family.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
chessrock said:


I didn't exactly say that you should ditch the monitors. :D Use both, silly. :D

sillydog reporting back in:

I use headphones quite a bit in mixing. I use them to check mixes for pops, clicks, and extraneous noises. I also use them for cleaning up beginnings and endings and checking the integrity of the fades. Headphones excel in tasks like these because you eliminate the ambient noise of the studio room and can totally focus on details of the recording. It's often only with headphones that you notice that a phone was ringing or a dog barking way in the background.

I find no use for headphones in evaluating the application of reverb. While it may work for you, I think a survey of pro engineers would find you in the minority on this issue.
 
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