Tips on using reverb...

[Prime Mover]

I've been looking on tips for using reverb to enhance my productions. Classes and books I've learned from have tended to stay away from talking about reverb, because the technology is always changing. I never got a feel for how to set reverb correctly in order to get a good thick sound without muddying the parts. Because of that, I think I've probably tended to be fairly conservative about reverb, when a lot of times, I'm really itching for more.

Anyone have any good tutorials, or just simple tips about what kind of spaces to use for certain types of productions? I've been using concert halls mostly, because they feel the cleanest. But I know a lot of pop uses plates and rooms, but once again, I'm realizing that I really don't know jack about this, and just do what sounds right... just wish I had a few magic numbers to start from.

[Armageddon]

Bear in mind, this is just the way I do it:

1) It seems like a lot of people, especially on here, use inserts instead of sends. That's all fine and well, and I guess with today's technology, it's easy enough to give everything its own reverb sound. However, I submit that using too many different kinds of reverbs produces a lot of sonic mud, and, of course, the more reverbs you use, the more CPUs it eats. I'm very old school, so I prefer setting up a couple of auxiliary channels for reverb sends. In DP 7.x, this is almost ridiculously easy; you can set up an auxiliary channel right from the send controls in your Channel Strip. You'll want or need at least two auxiliary reverb channels, one for hall and one for room, and perhaps at least as many as four (hall with early reflections on and off, room with early reflections on and off) to get started with.

2) I personally like setting up my hall(s) with a three-second tail, and I try using a hall with a nice, neutral tone (a "Large Hall", as opposed to a "Large Bright Hall"). Same goes for my room reverb, which I set the tail to around 1.5 seconds, or 2 seconds, if I'm doing a ballad. The slower the material, the more reverb you'll get a chance to hear.

3) My sending rule of thumb is, I send drum kits and electric guitars to the room reverb. I find that a hall reverb unrealistically diffuses and adds too much space to these instruments, especially with modern music. A room reverb gives you a bit of space while keeping it present and uncloudy in the mix. Everything else, I send to the hall reverb, including guitar solos.

Sometimes, you may not like what the hall sound is doing to certain instruments, so you may want to also set up a bright plate (or a reverb you may have put aside because it sounds bright and cheap), which I typically use on brass, choirs and as a special effect on tambourines. The cheap, bright reverbs usually mesh well with a neutral hall and gives a bit of an EQ lift without using any actual EQ. I've also used a darker plate on pianos, just to capture the "woodeness" and space of the instrument. Experiment with this, since you may find you happen to like your hall reverb on all those instruments as is.

For vocals, I set up the same hall with a 2 second tail (for faster material) or the regular 3 seconds (for ballads, slower material or sparse material where the voice is exposed).

4) I set up a separate hall and room with the early reflections switched off. This is for anything that was sampled "wet" with room or hall mics. Early reflections on this material tend to muddy the mix if you leave them switched on in the reverb stage. Sending them to 'verbs with the early reflections off will still give you a tail that blends in with the stuff where the early reflections are on.

5) I try not to go overboard with my sends. Drums, I usually send -7 dB on the snare, -7 dB on the hats, -6 dB on the toms and "overheads" (or cymbals) and leave the kick completely dry. Electric rhythm guitar gets between -10 and -11 dB. The hall stuff, I usually try and keep around -5 dB or -4 dB for the orchestral instruments, -7 dB for pianos and acoustic guitars, -6 dB for guitar solos. The vocals, I usually send around -9 dB for the leads and -8 dB for backing.

Whatever you decide to do, a good rule of thumb is, listen to whatever you're putting reverb on dry, then, bring up the reverb just until you can barely hear it, and, that by switching it off, you can tell a slight difference in overall fullness. By the time your material has gone through the mastering stage and is further compressed by broadcast or iTunes enhancement, that reverb will be a lot more prominent than you thought it was.

6) A-B roll your material against a commercial mix you love that has similar instruments and feeling to your stuff. This is probably the best way to adjust your reverb settings until you get them where you want them. You can raise or lower your sends until they sound similar in distance and length to the stuff in the commercial mix.

Hope that helped!

[Prime Mover]

That's pretty good advise, I'll have to go through and try those things later. It works fairly well with my current setup since I always use aux sends for reverb. The only thing is, how do you work around convolution reverb, or do you? Obviously, with convolution reverb, you can't use the same early reflections, but extend the tail (maybe you can with Altiverb, I only have ProVerb and Reflektor).

I tried a plate (which I've never really used before) on female vocals last night, and it really sounded great... really brought out the sizzle in her voice. But I know plates are an arcane tool, and there's probably little use for them in the modern world.

[Siryne]

But I know plates are an arcane tool, and there's probably little use for them in the modern world.

UAD Plate simulations and the Altiverb Plate IR's are some of the best around and used all the time in the "Modern World"

Some large studios still have the EMT 250 and still use it. Great gear does not go out of style.
Peace!

[philbrown]

A lot of folks use either delay+reverb or just delay on guitars and vocals. I'm not sure why it works - maybe because they are predominately mid-range tracks. Using some delay instead of all reverb seems to not muddy up a mix quite as much to my ears. Also you can high-pass or EQ your reverb return to avoid low-mid buildup. If you have a nice warm acoustic guitar track for example, and a full range reverb you can get some mud build-up pretty quickly. BG vox come to mind as well. High-pass and EQ are your friends. Don't be afraid to try super-short verbs sometimes too.

Nothing wrong with Plates! UA's 140 is extremely useful and my newest infatuation is with UA's EMT250 as Siryne mentioned. It's killer! It's got some neat modulation mojo happening that can fatten up a track where I might have used a chorus+verb previously. MOTU's Plate is also quite useable as some folks here will attest. Seems to work on vocals for me.

Effects are extremely genre-dependent so it's hard to spit out any hard and fast rules. You have to study good commercial mixes in the appropriate genre to get familiar and then translate that to the tools you have. Big long verb tails might be completely appropriate in one genre and never ever used in another, for example. SOS runs some good in-depth articles (on modern mixes anyway) where you can see what the big dogs are doing, track by track.

The last thing I would mention is evaluating in context. Listening to some beautiful lush verb on a solo'd vocal is one thing, but these things are best decided in context of the whole mix. That's why I personally like to get my mix pretty far along with EQ and Compression, etc before adding a lot of effects unless the effects are crucial to the specific track (like guitar effects for example). Otherwise you're kind of flying blind by slapping verb on a track that needs a fairly radical EQ, for example.

[daniel.sneed]

[...]Whatever you decide to do, a good rule of thumb is, listen to whatever you're putting reverb on dry, then, bring up the reverb just until you can barely hear it, and, that by switching it off, you can tell a slight difference in overall fullness. By the time your material has gone through the mastering stage and is further compressed by broadcast or iTunes enhancement, that reverb will be a lot more prominent than you thought it was.

6) A-B roll your material against a commercial mix you love that has similar instruments and feeling to your stuff. This is probably the best way to adjust your reverb settings until you get them where you want them. You can raise or lower your sends until they sound similar in distance and length to the stuff in the commercial mix.[...]

Beware that commercial mixes have passed a mastering stage.

That's why I always use a pseudo-mastering insert to proceed to the last mix steps. Even if my final mix is to be professionally mastered outside.
Of course, in this case the pseudo-mastering insert is bypassed when I burn the CD for the mastering studio.

Some very important things, like reverb levels, or voice/instruments ratio, may be somewhat ruined thru the mastering session.

[Armageddon]

That's pretty good advise, I'll have to go through and try those things later. It works fairly well with my current setup since I always use aux sends for reverb. The only thing is, how do you work around convolution reverb, or do you? Obviously, with convolution reverb, you can't use the same early reflections, but extend the tail (maybe you can with Altiverb, I only have ProVerb and Reflektor).

I tried a plate (which I've never really used before) on female vocals last night, and it really sounded great... really brought out the sizzle in her voice. But I know plates are an arcane tool, and there's probably little use for them in the modern world.

Altiverb 6 has early reflections you can switch on and off for each impulse, and you can adjust the tail and EQ, as well. Unfortunately, ProVerb has controls to extend early reflections and tails, but since everything is initially set at "0" for its early reflections, you can't switch them off. You can also try Waves' IR, which has controls similar to a regular process reverb.

I generally tend to use a digital or analog processed 'verb for rock, pop, ballads or even non-orchestral instrumentals. I use the new Lexicon plug, Acoustic Arts's reverb, PSP's Easyverb or IKMultimedia's CSR. I like the "larger than life" sound of a decent analog or digital reverb, and even though Altiverb provides impulses for hardware units, it just doesn't feel the same to me. You'll have to experiment and find reverbs that work best for you and your material. I reserve Altiverb for orchestral or soundtrack music, where realism is much more critical.

Beware that commercial mixes have passed a mastering stage.

That's why I always use a pseudo-mastering insert to proceed to the last mix steps. Even if my final mix is to be professionally mastered outside.
Of course, in this case the pseudo-mastering insert is bypassed when I burn the CD for the mastering studio.

Some very important things, like reverb levels, or voice/instruments ratio, may be somewhat ruined thru the mastering session.

While mastering certainly makes the reverb a lot more present in the mix, you can tell the relationship between the reverb and the direct signal regardless. Mastering is a whole other step that might add EQ and levels to your reverb that you'll strive to adjust for and possibly make worse. Once you get your signals in the ballpark, you'll find yourself adjusting them to your personal tastes, anyway. Aside from that, a mastering plug with a generic setting is a great idea on your output channel, since it could save you from potential volume, EQ and mixing problems you may not be aware of otherwise.

[daniel.sneed]

Listening to a commercial mix may induce wrong decision though.

The unheard original commercial mix, before any mastering, may be much *drier* than supposed from listening to the final CD product. Cause, as Armageddon says, compression does emphasis reverb tail, and delays.

And I sure won't open the same can of worms about overall dynamic, eq and brightness.

[BKK-OZ]

Have a look @ this book 'Mixing Audio' by Ishaki.

[cbergm7210]

Have a look @ this book 'Mixing Audio' by Ishaki.

Great book. Highly recommended.

[Prime Mover]

In lieu of overstepping my bounds on THIS forum (but because it pertains to the topic), I'm going to post a sample of my work. This is only a draft, and some of the parts still need to be re-recorded, cleaned up. But I'm only interested in the reverb process.

http://music.ericbarker.com/Channelwood ... 093010.mp3

To give some specs. All instruments are VIs except bass and vocals (of course). I used sends to 4 dedicated reverb busses running ProVerb with different IRs.

Piano, keyboards, bass: Bricasti M7 Vienna Hall
Vocals: Factory Vox B Plate + Delay
Guitar: Factory Guitar Plate
Drums: Bricasti M7 Dark Plate
Master Track: Bricasti M7 Vienna Hall at 6% mix

I did throw a final limiter on the master as well, since it's unmastered. Probably a bad habit. It's progrock, so I'm going somewhere near a traditional rock mix, but with a bit more ambiance.

[Phil O]

I've always said, "If you want something, just ask for it."...and that includes criticism. Usually if you ask for criticism, you'll get it. So, in posts like this, I try not to look for things to pick apart and beat to death. With that said...

I think the reverb is quite convincing in this. I'm sure you'll get lots of suggestions on how to make it better, but I'll stick my neck out and say it sounds good. Leave it alone. Indeed, the mix needs some tweaking, but I think overall the reverb works. JMHO.

Phil

ps Sorry, I didn't have time to listen to it in its entirety. Only about the first third.

[Armageddon]

In lieu of overstepping my bounds on THIS forum (but because it pertains to the topic), I'm going to post a sample of my work. This is only a draft, and some of the parts still need to be re-recorded, cleaned up. But I'm only interested in the reverb process.

Also, bear in mind that the final critique is, as always, your own ears. People are more critical of "how much" reverb is the right amount with today's music, though a lot more reverb was acceptable a scant twenty years ago. I myself like an "Eighties'-style" reverb sound on my stuff, but you may require more, less or none at all. It's just like any other aspect of your song and your mix -- it all works towards the sound you're striving to achieve.

On the material you can link to from my signature, I used Arboretum Hyperverb VST plugs for my general purpose hall and room, Prosoniq's Roomulator for bright, overly-spacious metallic reverbs that needed to stand out above the mix, the "Warm Plate" and "Spring" reverb settings in Amplitude 1 for clean electrics and pianos, and Waves' TrueVerb for certain real-world spaces that my other reverbs weren't dense enough to emulate. Bear in mind, it was all done in Classic on an aged G3 laptop, so my reverb choices were limited. How limited? I actually had to mix most of those songs in three passes: my room instruments mixed down to two tracks and imported into a second mix for my hall instruments, then mixed down to two tracks and imported into a third mix for the vocals. Changing one mixer setting could take up to an hour to mix.

Bricasti is a great reverb (all former Lexicon employees!) and I think you're simply being overly paranoid about your mix choices, which, while sometimes a good thing, may ultimately lead you to try and find a general rule of thumb to follow rather than your own ears and gut instinct. Everyone here will have a different idea about reverb, but most of those ideas will have come from finding what works for them. If it sounds right, it's right.

[HCMarkus]

Sometimes the right reverb is no reverb.

[Prime Mover]

Armegeddon:

I listen to many recordings, and while I have developed a sense of what I like and disliked, it's a very different leap in understanding HOW to achieve these sounds. I hear a sonically rich but fully intelligible recordings, and I wonder how they are able to be the way they are, and how I can achieve similar results. Which is why I finally posted my work for critique in gaining some ideas of what I could try. I've actually listened to a lot of the ideas on this thread. Some of them I've tried, some of them I have not, some worked, some didn't. But this has been one of the more helpful threads for me.