Reverb

Niall - Dahlia

Choosing a reverb can really, really (really, really, really) annoy the audioballs off me.

I find that I can stick a preset on a sound, spend hours tweaking, then when I A/B against the original sound I'm still not sure which is actually better. It's just such a subjective thing. While one person might love that dark thrashy garage verb on the drums, another person might hate it. :mad: Where do you stop? Just go with your instincts or keep adjusting hundreds of parameters mm by mm?

So how do you eat yours?

Do you shuffle through the presets, find that's roughly what you want and tweak it?

Do you have personal presets you've created in the past that you always use on different instruments?

Do you start from absolute scratch?

Do you bother delving into the deeper options like diffusion and density etc?

Discuss...discuss...discuss!

Savman

Niall - Dahlia wrote:

Do you bother delving into the deeper options like diffusion and density etc?

Eh? I'm a live man meself, I just turn the feckin thing on and simmer lightly to taste

11811

i would always ask the band or person who you're recording on how much verb they want on tracks,esp drums, can change the whole feeling of a song if you have big echoey drums, that said i,ve got a few presets that i use and tweak them as required,handiest way really and saves time i reckon, mind you i could be complety wrong!

TelePaul

Google glaceverb it's a free verb plug with alot of cool presets.

frobisher

I usually have a fairly strong idea of what I want by the time I'm in mix mode. Dark hall, ringy plate, short pre-delay, clear, cloudy etc. They all have their place. I actually EQ reverbs alot, it's personal preference but I like my reverbs often to be longer than they actually sound and EQ helps that happen.

I think reverbs and delays are like the salt and pepper of mixing. Even when you don't want them as a predominant flavour they can add alot without having to be clearly audible and fill up a mix by creating a great sense of space. I also think reverb can offer brilliant glue to a finished stereo mix.

Check out the fourth song (Canary In A Coalmine) on my myspace page in my link. It's very rough live take with just me and an acoustic guitar but with couple of different heavily EQ'ed reverbs that I subtly automated and it came to life. For the backing vocals I did a pre-fader send on an aux to a reverb and took down the original signal so all you're hearing is the reverb effect and none of the actual B-vocals. Ah good old reverb, sure isn't it only mighty.

sei046

Lol im not sure Diffusion And Density are "options that you shouldnt bother with". Its very important to understand what is really going on. Find out what all the paremeters do and think about it logically. And when your in a hall or a room clap or something and listen to real reverb. Really think about whats going on. That will allow to you tweak intelligently

teamdresch

Try starting out with just using delays.
I'm mostly using them rather than reverbs at the minute, always EQing them. Always.
I'll chop out some low end, up to 2-300hz sometimes.
I'll almost always roll off at about 5khz too.

Start off with getting the tempo locked in with the song and then screw around with that and the feedback until you like it.

The Agogo

It really depends on the song, some songs sound like they should be on a stage.

i myself always use alot of reverb as it generally just sounds better (tweak before master-mix).

Plus, john Lennon insisted his voice/piano recordings have compulsory reverb

Neurojazz

I found that light use of reverb becomes useless if your music gets played out loud live... nuances become useless... i had to make things really wet (something i used to avoid so that mixes stayed clean and crisp)

I'd always eq reverbs to get the zing i'd need (and keep some clarity) and now always try to use an aux send off the reverb so i can solo it and see what is happening...

I also time the reverb so that it's "in-between" the notes etc.... I'm currently saving for the IDR waves stuff and use a cheap thing called Ambience and donates a few euro to get the nag screen unlocked... it can be fizzy / grainy / pure and has in built seed randomization and eq.... cheapo and perfect until something bigger takes its place

Niall - Dahlia

sei046 wrote:

Lol im not sure Diffusion And Density are "options that you shouldnt bother with". Its very important to understand what is really going on.

I understand what's going on, what I'm trying to say is that out of all the changes you can make to a mix, reverb is the one that has so many permutations and options, and so much down to personal taste, that I find myself spending hours tweaking only to listen back and wonder was it really worth all that effort! Guess I was just getting a bit frustrated with a mix.

But yeah I second EQ'ing the reverb, can clear things up alot, aswell as a slight delay before the reverb.

Neurojazz

Have you ever been able to try very expensive reverbs? sony/lexicon etc... i find that it's much easyier to find something that fits when the reverb device isnt a heap of crap...

Even zoom stuff used to give a nice result quickly and because they used to have like 2 knobs for parameters it made life so much easyier

teamdresch

Just limit yourself to one delay and one reverb, learn them, then move on.
Too many options can be a bad thing.

Anima

Try Wizooverb, it's all I use now and its very configurable. Rapes the balls off your CPU but you know its good then