Why reverb and other soothing effects?

[Grandflash13]

Maybe this is a stupid question and I probably won't ask it like I want to but what the hell.

Why does adding reverb to vocals help smooth them out sometimes? Why does singing in the bathroom sometimes sound the best? I think I'm maybe asking for a technical reason and maybe there isn't one. I suppose it could be just, it sounds best that way, end of story. What I'm wondering though is, why or what makes it sound best?

Just a question I was pondering one day. Maybe it makes no sense or is stupid and if it is, I'm sure this thread will disappear and no harm done.

 

[boingoman]

The basic purpose of reverb is to make a source sound natural, as if it is in a real place. We are everyday and in every place surrounded by reverb. Sometimes it is more noticable than others, like in a big warehouse or parking garage. But reverb is part of pretty much every sound we hear. In recording we can use different reverbs to simulate different spaces. Reverb can help place things in a mix, even. It can make things sound closer or farther away, for instance, or can make things recorded in different places sound like they were recorded in the same room or hall.

As far as smoothing things out, I think it has to do with the effect covering up some of the things you don't like!

 

[Layla Nahar]

As far as smoothing things out, I think it has to do with the effect covering up some of the things you don't like!

I'm not sure if I'll be saying the same thing as you, but I *think* reverb literally smooths out waves, as well as just covering things up. When you comibine two sine waves you get a new more complex wave - but if you have a complex wave, another complex wave on top of that can smooth out the peaks and boost the valleys. Reverb adds copies of the original wave form. I think there is some technical thing that explains why it smooths stuff out ...

(erm ... what about convolution reverb... that's not a copy of the original sound at all ---
sorry that's my troublesome alter-ego, Helena Troy, throwing in the yang ...)

 

[cracked lid]

It smooths things out because it lengthens the decay time of an individual sound, allowing the next sound to overlap with it before it decays away. Thus impulse sounds, like a drum hit, get lengthened. If you were to look at the waveform it would be broader. Put a bunch of these together and it will look "smoother" than the spikes you would see without reverb.