Which & how do you use reverb?

The Lounge General Discussion
41

It’s a poetic that came up for me again when I watches this video and remembered that I struggle to use reverb on more then a send FX.

Oh, and the stereo darkstar launch.

Sure, short reverb on a single line works great.
But the moment I do it slightly longer it starts to muddy the mix a ton.

And then you have artists drenching their sound in reverb… And still keeping some clarity.

Especially with all the expensive fancy reverbs it feels like they are made as an instrument more then an effect, feed it sporadic signals to excite it and they work as a resonator and take over.

People where raving about the reverbs on the nts-1 (cathedral…) but I never reasonably managed to tame them to sound musically.

Microcosm seems like the biggest offender in that, every time I see it, all I hear is the default microcosm beauty, nothing left of the artist or initial instrument.

I like the elektron ones, but they definitely have a “vibe”. I don’t know what Roland is doing, but the reverb has a “great on first glance” feel… But then when looking for details everything’s gone. Feels like a sheen over the signal.

I love me some Valhalla reverb and convolution reverbs are God Tier, but both are in the VST world.

My comfort space is a midiverb 3 with the preset 29 (ex large warm plate)

It kinda glues the sound together in a way I like.
It’s a send FX, and usually my only one.
Ironic that so many say it’s cheap and bad sounding. Would love to find something like it with hands on controls that’s not in a rack unit. (People already mentioned the to machines bam, but 450€ is quite steep, maybe some day)

So…how do you handle your reverbs? Stacking? End of chain?
Multiple? Bright? Dark?
No reverb at all?

1 Like
42

The most standard layout for me is two buses: glue reverb (lively room to make a feel of a common space), and long ambient reverb.
All tracks go to glue bus, even drums. And I use long reverb bus for leads and pads mostly.

Often I add additional reverb to snare-like sounds (sidesticks, claps and so on), depends on track.

But sometimes I use reverb as a part of sound design. Reverb before overdrive sounds great. Gated or side-chained reverb? Of course. Shimmer? Give me two.

I even created a whole track once using 0-coast and a reverb pedal only.
Link to playlist:

43

Mostly used on Sends/Aux, usually one smaller algo (room, etc.) and a larger one (hall, etc.). Any specialty reverb for a specific instrument usually goes on its insert (tweaking Mix to taste).
I have a soft spot for spring reverb as well.
In general, almost aways with some EQ/low/high filtering afterwards, to avoid mudding the mix.
Sometimes heavy, pumping compression as last step in the chain, to bring up the tails in an almost unnatural way.

44

I use reverbs as sends on my daw, then eq and compress it with a side chain so it is mostly heard when the sound source dies, thus keeping the mix clean.

45

…i run the classic lexicon algorithmic reverbs via classic send busses…

a small room…
a mid plate…
a narrow ambience…
a wide hall…

small spaces are most essential for final overall impressions in stereostages, while big tail caves and stuff stay rare and a reserved for speacial appearance of dedicated elements…usually shaped as insert fx, with it’s own wet/dry mix settings on the channel itself…

convolution reverbs do most work for artifical small spaces…bitwigs space station cockpit impulses do great here…

while valhalla is always in insert use for shaping explicit colours and obvious longer tails…

the send busses always run through some eq that cuts lows and low mids and tames or excites hi’s to taste…then glued a little via a compressor…all send chain with 100% wet…
and this timeless everlasting lexicon flavours do always the overall first trick…
no one has not heard endless productions that made use of these all time classics…
everbody feels at “home” once they chime in to put all things in place together…
which elements get a little bit of small room refelctions, which also exist with a pinch of wider ambience, which one or two elements also happen within a wide impression and what needs a little wash up via a plate…

for the xtra shiny elements i add a little send fraction through eventides h3000, where slightly timeshifted delay sides culminate into chorouslike vibes…that’s THE vocal pop out trick for me…

in the end, u don’t need any obvious great sounding reverbs…sure, the everlasting tails of something like eventides blackhole algo are kinda an instrument on their own…
but don’t waste too much money on the next hot reverb plugin…most of it is nonsense…

the real thing happens via classic sends and having a small room, having some ambience and having some larger impressions…reelabs limited version of lexicons classix can cover all there is to cover and close in for real, on any final mix…

all the rest, ur daw, which one it ever might be, can cover for sure, get’s the job done, if set up the right way…any reverb can be tweaked to taste via standard eq’s before or/and after a reverb and any compressor can tickle the edges of that…also before or/and after…

there’s no set and forget, when it comes to reverbs…but preloaded sends for room, ambience and hall, always ready to get tweaked is a sure thing to bring all ur mixes home…

basic rule remains…the more elements u place in same “locations” to share, to make them happen in the same places, the more “natural” the overall impression gets…and at least very small reflections should happen almost everywhere, even when u wanna go for total artificial impressions…since nothing audible can take place in a space with no air…
that’s why, all sorts of gated reverbs work so great, since the resulting harsh contrast gets so obvious…

46

I use Fabfilter R2 (As Send), Octatrack Dark Reverb (Drums) and Valhalla Room. (Drums)

I generally split my drums in “Drumkit” and extra kit with One shots, that get delay /reverb as singular FX already baked in.

There is the Delay /Reverb time calculator, i use for every reverb /delay , to fit it to my tempo.

Other than that, i process them also if possible with a compressor /ducker. The R2 already has EQ build in, reverberation time control per band.

Sometimes i send a signal to the left, and the FX to the right to split the FX (mostly on one shots, or atmospheric stuff, where i have multiple elements, so right and left can have an echo of the panned signal.)

There is the concept of room shaping - and the further away it is - less of the high frequencys are heard. I try to improve on panning settings first, and then do room fx if necessary. (EQ and pan, already sets a dry signal into a “place”.)

With this method shown in the video, you can substract signals, or mix signals to certain frequency bands.