Reverb order

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

Moderators: drumsound, tomb

Post Reply
aeijtzsche
gettin' sounds
Posts: 137
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2005 12:16 pm
Location: You don't want to experience that much pain
Contact:

Reverb order

Post by aeijtzsche » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:31 pm

This is mainly to confirm some idle speculation on my part:

Does it make a quantitative or qualitative difference to the end sound when two different reverbs are applied in different orders?

For instance, let's say I have a snare drum track.

For A, I first put a "room ambiance" 'verb on it because it was recorded very dry...and then I realize it needs a little plate sound.

For B, I put the plate sound on first, and then think the snare was recorded in a dead space, so maybe a little fake room on it would have helped also, and so I do that.

How close will A and B, uh, be?

I contend it all evens itself out in the end.

User avatar
syrupcore
deaf.
Posts: 1793
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:40 am
Location: Portland, Oregon
Contact:

Post by syrupcore » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:50 pm

nothing to do but try it.

aeijtzsche
gettin' sounds
Posts: 137
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2005 12:16 pm
Location: You don't want to experience that much pain
Contact:

Post by aeijtzsche » Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:19 pm

Well, I have and it sounds the same to me. I want to know if it all works out "mathematically." This is a theoretical issue, not really a practical one.

User avatar
vvv
zen recordist
Posts: 10139
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 8:08 am
Location: Chi
Contact:

Post by vvv » Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:44 am

It seems to me that, theoretically, the second reverb should be effecting the first reverb signal, ex., the room reverb should, in the real world, effect a dry snare differently than a snare with a plate reverb on it. In the first instance, you would have the room-reverbed sound of an otherwise dry snare; in the second you would have the room-reverbed sound of a plate-reverbed snare. Do that in reverse order, you would have the plate-reverbed sound of a room-reverbed snare. :twisted:

Also, to the extent that you use a global reverb on a buss, it might make a practical difference in the box when you are combining, say, your drum submix consisting of a plated snare and dry kick to run them through the buss reverb, especially if compression, EQ, etc., is involved.
bandcamp;
blog.
I mix with olive juice.

cgarges
zen recordist
Posts: 10890
Joined: Mon Jun 16, 2003 1:26 am
Location: Charlotte, NC
Contact:

Post by cgarges » Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:53 am

It won't matter if you're setting up two sends and bringing them back on two sets of faders. It will totally matter if you're sending one reverb into another. For example, Aux One of the snare drum channel goes to a Lexicon PMC60, which comes back on channels 25 and 26. Aux Two of channels 25 and 26 goes to and Eventide H3000 and comes back to channels 27 and 28. That would be different from Auxes One and Two of the snare drum channels going to the same reverbs and coming back onto channels 25-28. In either case, there's no right or wrong, just what you prefer for a given situation.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

JdJ
pushin' record
Posts: 217
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:11 am
Location: nh

Post by JdJ » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:07 am

vvv wrote:It seems to me that, theoretically, the second reverb should be effecting the first reverb signal, ex., the room reverb should, in the real world, effect a dry snare differently than a snare with a plate reverb on it. In the first instance, you would have the room-reverbed sound of an otherwise dry snare; in the second you would have the room-reverbed sound of a plate-reverbed snare. Do that in reverse order, you would have the plate-reverbed sound of a room-reverbed snare. :twisted:
Exactly- if you are putting both verbs as plugs on a snare channel, it is the same as if you are plugging in guitar effects. For instance, for the sake of illustration, you have a delay and a compressor. If the delay is in front of the comp, the delay's repeats will be effected by the compressor's attack/release & ratio. The other way around, and just the initial guitar note is affected by the compression. The way the compressor and delay "see" these signals are different. The same applies for the 2 reverbs. Now that I read this, I'm not sure that helps clairify, but I'm sticking to it!

-J

User avatar
seaneldon
pushin' record
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 11:55 pm
Location: Boston
Contact:

Post by seaneldon » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:53 am

A lot can be done with delays on a snare drum, in addition to or instead of reverb. A subtle, song-timed delay can add a depth to the drum more invisibly than reverb. In other words...without taking up extra space in the mix.

When using delay and reverb together on a snare (plates are your friend here, they provide a nice "hair" to give the longer decay somewhere to sit in context), try delaying the reverb return and experiment with panning. Gives the effect of the drum slapping off the walls on either side of the room.

Professor
ghost haunting audio students
Posts: 3307
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 2:11 pm
Location: I have arrived... but where the hell am I?

Post by Professor » Sat Mar 29, 2008 5:38 pm

It's a funny sort of question because logic would say that obviously the order should matter, but then sometimes that logic isn't so obvious... or logical.
You could think of it like the order of operations in mathematics, it matters a lot when the operations are different, but not at all when they are similar.
Consider something like 10 x 10 + 10 - 10. Just take it in order, 10 x 10 = 100, add 10 to get 110, and subtract 10 to get 100.
I could group them as (10 x 10) + (10 - 10), and get 100.
But I could group them as 10 x (10 + 10) - 10, and get 190.
If I rearrange them to be 10 x 10 - 10 + 10, then just taken in order it's the same... but group them as (10 x 10) - (10 + 10) and I get 80.

When the operations are of different classes then the results of the grouping will be different. Mix multiplication/division with addition/subtraction, and order is important. Work only with one family, and things are more interchangeable.
Just working in order, 2 x 4 x 6 / 3 x 2 = 32, and I could take each term, 2 as our start, then (x 4), (x 6), (/ 3), (x 2) and rearrange at will... as long as I don't group them. 2 (x 6) (/ 3) (x 2) (x 4) = 32.

Alright, so with audio we have different classes too. Mixing something that is spectral like EQ with a dynamics process like compression, and order becomes a bit more important and indeed it should be audible. If I boost a frequency before compressing, then the boosted frequency will trigger the compressor differently. If I reverse the process and compress first the result will sound different - maybe a little, maybe a lot, depending on what I've dialed in.
On the other hand, if I stack equalizers, they should really just be the sum of their individual parts. But if I use one EQ to boost +3dB at 1kHz and another to dip -3dB at 100Hz, then it should be all but impossible to tell the difference. (Ideally - we'll ignore noise, distortion and coloration. But it's true that if the EQ circuit is introducing harmonic distortions, then there could be some slight difference in order, but they would be very, very hard to hear for most of us.)

Where does the reverb stand?
Well, one reverb feeding into another isn't too unrealistic, especially if you are using one reverb to act as the 'early reflections' and the other to act as the 'ambience' or something like that. If the settings were kind of extreme and we were judging against a "real" space, then maybe we would say it makes sense for early reflections to trigger the ambience although it doesn't make sense for the ambience to have early reflections, but I'd guess that the two variations would be so close mathematically and sonically that you really wouldn't be able to tell.


So that was the technical part of the answer - but I have a conceptual comment here too that relates to another thread I just read asking about 'In the box' mixing...
Folks who mix in the box, and most expecially those who have only ever mixed inside the box, tend to approach reverb in a very different way than those of us who have mixed across consoles, whether live or in the studio. It's really evident in Chris's response. And I've found that it's really evident in the mixes I hear.
See, when we mix across a console, we very rarely have 24, 32, or more individual reverb processors for our system. We might have only one, or maybe a couple of different processors, but rarely more than just a handful. As a result, we don't individually patch a reverb into every single channel... but we certainly want a little reverb on everything in the mix. What we do is to patch an auxiliary send out to a reverb processor (or two, or three) and bring the output of those devices back into the mix on another set of channels. Then we run along the Aux sends for each channel dialing a little or a lot of each instrument into this single, unifying, "room" or "space" we have created. Not much kick or bass, but more snare, overheads, guitar, etc. Maybe we'll put a single reverb on for a special effect, like a floor tom hit ringing for 6 seconds or something. But in general, there is a primary sound for the room so the resulting mix sounds more like a group of instruments performing in the same acoustical space.
In the box, things end up a little different.
Most people seem to decide that an instrument needs reverb and so they click on a plug for that individual channel. Maybe they will use similar presets which at least gets closer to a 'single room' sound. But often enough they will use a reverb on snare that they think sounds good for the snare, and then a single reverb for guitar, for vocals, for keys, for whatever might be in the mix. The result that I hear all the time is a mix that sounds more like a "tossed salad" of acoustic spaces, rather than a smooth, blended, "fondue" of a single space where all of our instruments were played.
We hear endlessly about how ITB mixes don't sound the same, don't "feel" right, are too clinical, cold, inhuman, etc. you can pick your favorite adjective. Well maybe the result isn't to mix across an analog desk or summing network, or to mix to tape, or any of the other attempts to add a unifying single color to a mix. Maybe it's as simple as opening an "Aux Track" on your DAW, assigning an internal aux buss to get there, and putting a single reverb on that bus to which each individual track will submit a little piece of its sound. I would even say that the more close mic sounds, the more direct inputs, the more synth & VST sounds, and the more mono tracks you have, the more critically important this concept is to unifying your mix. In those cases you are trying to combine sounds that never existed in the same acoustic space (or indeed in any acoustic space) and so creating a single space for all the "preformers" to "play in" together is an enormous step in turning that fruit salad into a smoothie.

Just a thought that I hope will help someone out.

-Jeremy
(who often enough signs " -J " but doesn't wish to confuse the post.)

kayagum
ghost haunting audio students
Posts: 3490
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 11:11 pm
Location: Saint Paul, MN

Post by kayagum » Sun Mar 30, 2008 5:56 am

Professor wrote:So that was the technical part of the answer - but I have a conceptual comment here too that relates to another thread I just read asking about 'In the box' mixing...
Folks who mix in the box, and most expecially those who have only ever mixed inside the box, tend to approach reverb in a very different way than those of us who have mixed across consoles, whether live or in the studio. It's really evident in Chris's response. And I've found that it's really evident in the mixes I hear.
See, when we mix across a console, we very rarely have 24, 32, or more individual reverb processors for our system. We might have only one, or maybe a couple of different processors, but rarely more than just a handful. As a result, we don't individually patch a reverb into every single channel... but we certainly want a little reverb on everything in the mix. What we do is to patch an auxiliary send out to a reverb processor (or two, or three) and bring the output of those devices back into the mix on another set of channels. Then we run along the Aux sends for each channel dialing a little or a lot of each instrument into this single, unifying, "room" or "space" we have created. Not much kick or bass, but more snare, overheads, guitar, etc. Maybe we'll put a single reverb on for a special effect, like a floor tom hit ringing for 6 seconds or something. But in general, there is a primary sound for the room so the resulting mix sounds more like a group of instruments performing in the same acoustical space.
In the box, things end up a little different.
Most people seem to decide that an instrument needs reverb and so they click on a plug for that individual channel. Maybe they will use similar presets which at least gets closer to a 'single room' sound. But often enough they will use a reverb on snare that they think sounds good for the snare, and then a single reverb for guitar, for vocals, for keys, for whatever might be in the mix. The result that I hear all the time is a mix that sounds more like a "tossed salad" of acoustic spaces, rather than a smooth, blended, "fondue" of a single space where all of our instruments were played.
We hear endlessly about how ITB mixes don't sound the same, don't "feel" right, are too clinical, cold, inhuman, etc. you can pick your favorite adjective. Well maybe the result isn't to mix across an analog desk or summing network, or to mix to tape, or any of the other attempts to add a unifying single color to a mix. Maybe it's as simple as opening an "Aux Track" on your DAW, assigning an internal aux buss to get there, and putting a single reverb on that bus to which each individual track will submit a little piece of its sound. I would even say that the more close mic sounds, the more direct inputs, the more synth & VST sounds, and the more mono tracks you have, the more critically important this concept is to unifying your mix. In those cases you are trying to combine sounds that never existed in the same acoustic space (or indeed in any acoustic space) and so creating a single space for all the "preformers" to "play in" together is an enormous step in turning that fruit salad into a smoothie.
That is the best (and simplest) theory I've read about ITB/OTB differences. Period.

User avatar
vvv
zen recordist
Posts: 10139
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 8:08 am
Location: Chi
Contact:

Post by vvv » Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:40 am

Professor wrote:
On the other hand, if I stack equalizers, they should really just be the sum of their individual parts. But if I use one EQ to boost +3dB at 1kHz and another to dip -3dB at 100Hz, then it should be all but impossible to tell the difference.
Although, as I understand some usage of the Pultec...

Nice post!

That is exactly what my bedio-recording self refers to as "global reverb", a reverb I put in parallel to everything else, just before the master buss. (CEP has some rather unique routing.) And as you say, bass might get just 5%, and guitars 10% and keys 15%, but it can nicely seem to put everything into the same space...

Further, I want to note that while I had some limited experience using an old Alesis 1644 board for a couple of years, with the ubiquitous Midiverb, etc., I really picked up on this concept from here!
bandcamp;
blog.
I mix with olive juice.

User avatar
msmith
pushin' record
Posts: 201
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2007 10:53 am
Location: Austin, TX

Post by msmith » Sun Mar 30, 2008 12:35 pm

I use a console to mix with 4 of my sends going to spatial reference. In this instance as noted earlier, the send number is arbitray, as theycome back seperate on different channels. However, I sometimes send those returns to other sends, and further cross pollenate through the subgroups as well. Just think about your routing flow, and use it to your advantage. As far as in the box vs out of the box, this can be one factor that contributes, but its only one. I do know that I prefer OTB, and that argument was settled for me personally a long long time ago. No reason to try to reinvent my wheel.

Professor
ghost haunting audio students
Posts: 3307
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 2:11 pm
Location: I have arrived... but where the hell am I?

Post by Professor » Sun Mar 30, 2008 3:39 pm

Oh yeah, I should mention a few things here. I record direct to PT, edit & clean up a lot in there, use various plugs for colors and such, but then I do mix OTB through a console, but the console is a Yamaha digital board. Most guys would think of the digital board as the equivalent of mixing ITB, but there is certainly a difference and of course it's conceptually different especially where the reverb is concerned.
I happen to use a TC Elec. System 6000 reverb with 8 inputs tied to 8 of the board's 12 aux sends, and the 8 outputs coming back on regular console channels (although I rarely need to EQ or commpress the effects returns.) That gives me four available stereo effects patches from that machine, and I do happen to use multiple reverbs. Actually what I've done for the last year or so is set up two separate reverbs as my early reflections and long reverb. Usually FX-1 is my early stuff with a short, maybe .75-1.0 sec. decay, while FX-2 has almost no early reflections and is just the long decay that might be 2.0 to maybe 3.0 sec. depending on the tune. Then I can actually dial in how each instrument in the mix hits each portion of those two components, and I've really liked that level of adjustment. In a typical rock/pop session, FX-3 will often hold a nice chorus effect, and FX-4 will be maybe a special effect 'verb if I need it, like maybe a big, boomy, 6-sec. decay for a certain hit or to really over do the tom sounds.

That's just how I approach things lately.

-Jeremy

aeijtzsche
gettin' sounds
Posts: 137
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2005 12:16 pm
Location: You don't want to experience that much pain
Contact:

Post by aeijtzsche » Sun Mar 30, 2008 6:38 pm

Jeremy, that was my thinking as well, about reverb order, in fact I approached as you did with the math equations. Thanks for weighing in.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 26 guests