differences between reverb and knowing which to use?

With all the different types of reverbs, (halls, plates, chambers, spaces)... how do you know which to go for when making a beat? I can't tell the difference between any of them to be honest, except for small room vs big chamber verbs.

Whenever i get ready for reverb in my music, i just choose presets and alter settings...but I'm thinking if I knew the real difference and could be able to pinpoint the type of reverb I'm looking for, that I could get WAY MORE out of it and my tracks would have more cohesiveness amongst them.

Also, do some of find yourself going back to the same reverb (ie on an album would you pretty much use the same reverb, just applying different amounts from song to song and track by track, to keep the same "vibe" throughout the record?)

I've been listening to a lot of Shlohmo lately and has really got me thinking about the reverb aspect of music and how it can affect a song

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar06/a ... reverb.htm

Older article, but explains at an introductory level what each type sort of is. A plate reverb is generally good on drums and vocals, the high end of the reverb helps set them out in the mix and give them some space. Halls and chambers emulate exactly what their names say....halls and chambers. Reverb pre-delay is as important as decay times. This can help seperate the dry and wet signal and make your reverbs sound more realistic. For example, if you hit a snare drum in a large hall, it isn't just going to reverberate immediately, it is going to take a second for the sound to reflect back to you. This also keeps the mix less muddy. Filtering reverbs keep the low mids and low range in check and less muddy, and also compression on reverb channels for vocals keep the reverb levels in check instead of sending a lot of reverb for vocal spikes, etc (vocal automation of smoothing out the track also helps with this for your signal going in). Playing with decay times to match the tempo of your tracks also makes your track gel better, etc. You can learn as much as you want to, the info is all out there, just have to experiment!!!

My favorite reverbs right now and have been for some time are:

UAD EMT 140 plate
UAD Lexicon reverb

There are plenty brands of peanut butter on the market with different types of processing like creamy, chunky, nut-crunchy and regular. Which ones you prefer and how much you use, is totally up to your taste.

Same with reverb, its totally up to you how you want your track to sound. If you just randomly using reverb because you think it'll make the track big, then you haven't practice long enough.

I use any reverb I can get because I only use a lot of it or less of it. There are many processes of peanut butter but its still peanut butter.

a nice trick to do is time the pre delay to the tempo of your beat using the delay time calculation.

you will get more musical sounding reverbs this way.

as far as reverbs themselves go, its pretty much up to how big you want your room to sound.

in essence thats all that reverb is, a room/ or space that your instruments are in.

some cool things to do are use different reverbs for vereses and different ones for choruses.

i usually use the same reverb for all my drums in one track, then a differnet one for vocals, and other instruments.

just play around with it.

also, kick drums and basses usually get muddy if you put too much reverb on them, sometimes these dont even need any.
but i usually put a tiny bit on my kicks and basses. its up to you really.

thanks for all the replies. I've just listening to a lot of music lately and started thinking... "This track has the perfect reverb in it."

like some classic tracks, what if they would have used different reverb and the track came out way different? and some (or a lot i suppose) tracks, the reverb plays a HUGE role in the outcome of the song and vibe the artist wants to portray and getting it "just right" is important.

guess I'll just keep messing around with it lol

c.parks droppin knowledge as usually. always learnin somethin from this mofo

I often solo the sound in question that needs reverb... then add it... often I will turn off the dry signal so you only hear what is coming out of the reverb... that way it's easier to tune it, or adjust it's properties. It's similar to layering samples... the reverb is like another sample being added to the song. You might want to tune it, and adjust the ADSR just like a sample... so in the case of reverb it's decay time and all that stuff.


Sometimes it may help to add just a very little bit on several things in a song over a ton on one thing... also I don't but sub basses through reverbs if I can help it.

I read that if you have reverb on one particular sound you might not need to put any on another sound playing at the same time because the reverb is there already. adding more might just muddy things.

blackeye wrote:I read that if you have reverb on one particular sound you might not need to put any on another sound playing at the same time because the reverb is there already. adding more might just muddy things.

that can be the case... obviously this type of thing is tough to say until you hear the exact song...

but for example... sometimes I will have a second snare layered with the main snare.. but the second one alone goes through reverb with a good sized tail... but the dry signal may even be turned off.... this can not only allow me to not run the bass drums through reverb but it can also make the rest of the kit sound like it's in the room too almost... but that doesn't mean a strings or orchestral sample can't be going through reverb... don't put too much or it might sound muddy.

^^^Exactly, then you would have to handle different reverbs like handling bass drums and bass so they don't cancel out.

Lets not forget our pal "Delay". Initially this was developed to mimic the "slap back", meaning the natural reverb that sounds like the original sound. This is caused by sound hitting hard objects and bouncing back.

Delay (and it should be quick settings, meaning time between delays is short) with or with out some reverb can produce some natural sounding verb, especially when combined and dialed in just right.

A lot of good stuff in this thread so far. I want to add that reverb is a big part of what defines the character of a recorded sound. Why? Because reverb is a naturally occurring phenomenon. In fact, unless you build a very special non-reflective room to prevent reverb, it happens in every space.

This is why we have presets like Chamber, Big Hall, Small Room, Canyon, etc. The room size is pretty important since that determines how long the sound must travel before it reflects back to the mic but there is also the reflective nature of the surface. The more absorbing a surface is, the higher the chance it will not reflect certain frequencies. Using those two properties you can choose reverb that mimics a variety of spaces.

Many of the suggestions above have to do with timing and frequency because of the two properties I've just mentioned. It's even more important with sample based music to consider where the samples were recorded originally and what type of real or artificial reverbs are affecting those sounds. When you start adding sounds from various sources, recorded under different conditions and in wildly different spaces, they can sound totally 'wrong' until you start to use something like reverb to make the sounds gel together (not always though - sometimes the unnaturalness in the juxtaposition is what makes a song groove).

The key to figuring out which reverbs to pick is to use your ears: listen to the sources and think about how they were recorded. Then think about how you can add (or not) reverb to each sample to make it sound like they are sharing the same space.

Everything you will ever need to know about reverbs (plus delay, phaser, flange, vocoders etc), IRs, M/S etc are found here:

Creative Effects

Hey yall!

Ok Reverb chatter

2 dimensional reverbs are typically used on a 1 dimensional instrument.
(IE: Plate Reverb for Snare track)

3 Dimensional reverbs are typically used on multiple instruments summed
(IE: Hall Reverb on Kit)

Bussing tracks post or pre fader to channels with reverb effects allows you to add reverberation in parallel to your primary mix. Easily allowing you to add depth to your mixes

I'll typically send all my channels to to a "Verb Bus"
If you send more audio to the bus, the deeper that instrument will be in the mix (spatially that is)
Remember to set these parallel Reverbs to only output WET signal, unless you want to thicken up your mix (then add a bit of dry signal to taste).

Here's a fun trick
Try setting up 2 reverb busses or summing 2(or more!) reverbs on one bus.

IE
Bus 1 > Reverb (.5 seconds) > Output
Bus 2 > Reverb (1 Second) > Output
---

I like using two verbs as I feel it gives mixes more dimension, although with beat music I typically set the bus like this (Which is the same principal as above but with the reverb effects summed to 1 bus)

IE:
Bus 1> Reverb (.5 Seconds) > Reverb (1 Second) > Another Larger Verb/Effect > Output

With a reverb bus you can rebuild your mix as you see fit by soloing the reverb bus and listening to the wet return of the reverb. When the components in your mix sound the way you want them to spacially you can unsolo the reverb bus and then reduce the fader gain until the reverb is appropriate.

Here's a tip a wise engineer taught me..
Whenever you find the "perfect" reverb, lower it -6dB

Side note!!

Rudy Van Gelder was notorious for using reverb units in his mix. When Blue Note Producer Alfred Lion felt that Mr. Gelder had used to much reverb on the mix he would write "Rudy Special" on the tape reel box.

Sorry if this doesn't make perfect sense. I'm drunk at the moment.

Peace