verb

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paresh

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No matter what I do w verb & delay on the vocals, they never approach what I hear on top Cd's. is it their equipment that makes the difference? They sound so ethereal
 
Unfortunately- really good vocal sound is a result of every component of the signal chain. If you have a great singer, a badass mic, a lovely room, a kickass preamp, and accurate conversion, a $5000 FX box might actually complete the set. FX is a fairly small part of the whole equation.-Richie
 
go
do
run
stop
pause
compute
etc
etc
etc


enough verbs? :D
 
Well.....the difference is made up in small increments that all add up to that Pro Studio sound. It is NOT just equipment. It is the combination of a great singer, great gear, in a great environment, mixed by a great Engineer who has great ears as well as a great understanding of how to use all that great gear. If you replace any of those "greats" with anything you find in the average home studio, your end result be suffer......greatly. :p

Stick an average guy in a 10 million dollar sudio and the recordings will sound like an average guy in a 10 million dollar studio. Use your ears and find what sounds best to you. Fight the urge to rely on gear. It is your ears that hold you back.
 
I concur with all that has been said thus far (except I don't believe "etc" is a verb no matter how many times you try it ;) ). It can definitely be a case of garbage in/garbage out. But I'd also like to say that yes, often times there is a big difference in gear.

While this is not as common as it used to be, perhaps, many of the larger studios use(d) "real" reverb; e.g. they actually have/had full-sized plate rooms made of metal or marble or whatnot, the room itself is a tunable reverb that is live miked. Other studios have/had special (and sometimes quasi-secret) acoustical designs to parts of their sound rooms with their own custom angles and materials that they could mic for special live reverb sound. There used to be at least one studio in NY (was it the Record Plant? I don't remember) that discouraged photographs of their geo-domed ceiling miked and in use because they didn't want their "secret sauce" to get out.

But, as was said, the signal chain makes a huge difference. Regardless of the verb type, you want great sounding verb on vocals, it makes a *huge* difference if you track the vocals through a silky-smooth mic plugged into a top-shelf preamp and run through the best of A/D converters (or analog tapes). Throw a properly miked and set plate room in the middle of that chain and it can give you a sound that will make your knees buckle.

G.
 
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