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The A4 manual states supervoid reverb is “perfect for positioning sounds in a mix”. Great - this is what I want to do but I’m struggling to understand how the various parameters contribute and interact to form our perception of space. I’m thinking of a realistic sounding smallish room and in particular which parameters to adjust to vary the sense of distance.

In my cursory experiments I find that to increase “distance” in a credible way I need to increase DEC and PRE - the obvious ones - but also increase LPF so the sound is less present then decrease the dry level because it’s further away. So I’m thinking in the context of a bi-polar perf macro:

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Where the depths are:
REV DEC = 55
REV LPF = 47
REV VOL = 65
REV PRE = -15
T2 AMP = -46

The reverb settings (unaffected by macro) suggest a small room:

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PRE = 1
DEC = 16
FRQ = 47
GAI = 64
HPF = 0
LPF = 83
VOL = 100

The sound I’m using on T2 is a noise click and macro does indeed seem to alter the distance. I am interested in suggestions for improvements to my settings.

I think I understand what PRE is supposed to mean in physical terms but some say increasing PRE can make sounds sound closer. This is counter intuitive so I’m curious on your thoughts here. For a while REV PRE = 68 sounded good but now negative values sound better.

Not even sure it’s possible to mix the way I want with a (p-locked) reverb send as opposed to inserts. I think I could accomplish what I want using OT + per track reverb but I’m trying to wrap my head around it before adding multiple reverbs.

Interested in any suggestions so the perf macro better conveys changes in distance of a sound.

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This is in fact expected behaviour. Pre-Delay sets how long the delay is between the source sound sounding and the reverb tail sounding. So at 0ms pre-delay, you‘ll here the reverb tail as soon as the source makes a sound. If you now set the reverb to 100% wet (all reverb tail, no source) then you‘ll only here the tail which basically emulates what you would hear if you were to pick up a sound that is coming from a far distance. IRL the closer you are to the source, the more pronounced the source sound will be over the reverb tail (because the sound waves from the instrument will hit your ears before the reverberations from the room will). So by setting a pre-delay of 30-50ms, you‘re basically programming the reverb to give you the source sound first and have the sound of the reverb follow with a 30-50ms delay…so that would give you a sound we would perceive as coming from closer to us than a source where its sound and its reverb tail blend faster, thereby placing it more prominently/in the foreground of a mix.

EDIT: so your two main variables for placement of sounds in the mix via reverb are

  • pre-delay (increase = closer to listener, decrease = farther away) and
  • reverb dry/wet - that‘s the reverb send level which you programme in your track/sound directly (wetter = more reverb less signal = farther away, drier = less reverb more signal = closer to listener).

Note that total volume of the track also affects placement (louder = closer, quieter = farther away). And panning can also create a certain feel.

Frequency filtering/boosting also has an affect on placement. Low frequencies travel slower but farther than high frequencies…so if you want something to be perceived as farther away, you‘d cut the higher frequencies to effect. With the reverb, you gotta be careful here though, if you boost low frequency reverberations you could quickly end up with a muddy mix. So you might be well advised to cut higher frequencies at your source sound to place it farther in the back.

Note - this is just my understanding, I might be wrong / missing something.

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LPF and hpf do more to shape the contents of the room — what’s inside it? What are the walls made of? — then the position. Lots of people/carpet/furniture are going to make for a darker-sounding room. Empty concrete walls? Brighter. Air also counts in the contents of a room, so it’s it’s a very large it will sound darker (timing of early/late reflections matter here, but that’s not a thing on the A4).
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Predelay can be confusing, because the more you have, the further it pushes back the wall but the closer it brings the subject. Think of it when standing right next to a sound. You hear the primary sound immediately, then it travels out, hits some walls and things, bounces back, and then you hear it as reverberation. A large predelay would mean the reverberation had to travel quite some distance to complete this round-trip.

If the subject were some distance from you, though, and you were next to the wall, you’d hear the primary sounds and the reflections at practically the same time.

So filters, type or furnishing of room. Decay, size of room. Predelay, distance from source relative to wall.

Edit: I forgot mix! Mix, IMHO, moves from how “present” the “room” is (0-20%) into “how does this sit in my mix” (20-50%) through “how much do I want this to sound like an effect?” (50-100%). There’s no real mix in nature, so when we mess with it, we’re messing more with how the scene was mic’d than any of the characteristics of the room. So this setting, more than any other (again, IMHO) can be set to taste / what sits well.

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Thanks guys sorry for the delayed response I’d been thinking about what you said and experimenting quite a bit.

I now understand how pre-delay affects the distance to the far wall, basically. I have become more sensitive to pre-delay and now don’t think it’s as important as I thought. It’s fine-tuning imo and you get more mileage from dry & wet levels and brightness. Maybe that’s why pre-delay is only p-lockable from the fx track. Clearly Elektron didn’t consider multiple precisely moving sound sources to be a common use case…

Also another approach I read about is to tempo-sync pre-delay which seems to mean it’s no longer related to the geometry of the room. Worth considering. Whatever sounds best.

I did experiment with reverb per track on the OT that’s too advanced for now. I’m gonna see how far I can get with reverb send effect.

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Thanks for this by the way. I was playing with this on the Syntakt last night but I couldn’t really understand what was going on. Your explanation helps a lot.

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Oldie but goldie video about mixing.
@ 1h9m30s he starts explaining time based fx, like delays, flanger and chorus. @ 1h19m30s about reverbs with great visual examples. Gave me some new insights.

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In terms of “positioning sounds in a mix”, I’ve heard reverb explained as “moving a sound farther away / to the back of a mix” which is an evocative description to my ears. Without getting into specifics of predelay, LPF/HPF, shelving frequencies etc, I find that more and longer reverbs often make an instrument sound farther away. That’s part of why everything drenched in reverb can cause such an “ambient” sound, because everything is kind of smudged together in the background / midground.

I always thought of pre-delay as a way to prevent reverb from stepping on transients… or in the case of boxes like Syntakt, with some modulation it can make a pseudo-chorus effect. But any amount of reverb can change a sound in a “spatial” way, IMHO.

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