Reverb flavors

[losthighway]

No not a shootout between plugins/hardware.

I realized reverb is like much of what we do: it's aesthetic and abstract, yet totally quantifiable. I go through phases and habits, and often do a correction when I realize that some of my impulses when mixing don't always match what I appreciate as a general listener of music.

So I thought a fun discussion would be not which device, but which type you like for what situation. Whether you often like a couple types of rooms for drums, or a classic TOMB "it depends" where your plate setting rescued the mix in a very specific situation.

Are there times where you're more psyched about:

Small/medium/ or large room (wood, tile, etc)
Plate emulations (or a real plate)
Spring emulations (or a real spring)
That crazy cathedral setting that's 4 seconds long

Also, what about predelay, when do you like to use none? How far out do you sometimes push it? How often is it in response to the tempo of the song?

[losthighway]

I'll go first since it's a broad question.

Recently I started coming back to just a pinch of smallish to medium rooms on a lot of my lead vocals. After falling in love with the EMT plate emulations on my TC 4000, I think I started to make some things to dense and foggy with it, and have been appreciating drier vocals as a listener. I have been trying to get just enough decay behind a pretty dry vocal to ironically help it sound more natural than what sometimes feels like a tacked on, ultra-dry voice.

It kind of makes me realize that I had a 'flavor of the month' thing going with plates, and that I needed to be more discerning about when they work, which was part of what made me curious to ask the gang here about their favorites on the palette.

[Scodiddly]

Back a few years when I got my hands on a TC M2000, I found that the halls sounded *too* good for acoustic club shows. Trying to fit the wrong space into the venue. So I started using plates.

Much more recently most of my mixing has ended up being for streaming church services, where there will be a wide variety (not in a good way) of playback systems. So reverb is pretty toned down, and I use slap echoes a lot more on the vocals. We don't have drums in that situation, though.

[Nick Sevilla]

I tend to start mixing completely DRY.

This is because more and more, people are sending me recordings that have either too much or enough of their own room ambience. Sometimes by accident, sometimes not.

Once I get the mix sitting well enough, I can hear if it needs more of whatever reverb is needed aesthetically.

If I am doing a mix on tracks that were done at the same time, I tend to add, if needed, some more room ambience that matches what is there, if it is too dry to begin with.

If I am doing my own music, which tends to be virtual instruments and not a lot of mics, then I have the freedom to do anything that makes the music interesting to me.

Particular reverbs like springs, I use if the style of music needs it and the guitarist did not provide...

[digitaldrummer]

many times I will use a pre-delay on drum reverbs, but usually in the sub 10ms kinda way. just enough to get the smack of the drums so they are not completely obscured by the reverb, but not slappy or phasey either. But for vocals, I will have a longer - 50-80ms pre-delay - on there and use a plate (UAD EMT or Soundtoys little plate, which incidentally does not have a pre-delay and they apparently don't seem to be developing anything new so I'm a bit disappointed we are still on "Little" plate...but I digress). To me that really helps with maintaining clarity in a vocal but still getting the ambience behind it

[drumsound]

I generally try to be sparing with reverb use. I do like actual room mics, and am lucky to have a good sounding room in which to use them. I still really love my TC M3000 for some fairly convincing air around something that sounds too dry. But many times I don't think to dry is a thing. If I want a vocal to sound really intimate and personal, I'm happy to keep it front and center with no reverb or delay.

When I'm dialing in reverb I often spend a lot of time on predelay setting. I find that it's often more important than the reverb time. I really want to make sure that the reverb doesn't clutter up the meaning or intelligibility of the vocal. I feel that it can also allow me to have the reverb be more felt than heard.

Actually, I almost always want it more felt than heard. I'm often a "question if the reverb is there," and then realize that if I mute it the mix sounds pretty different.

I did a record recently where I used more drum reverb than usual, but I tried to be creative with how I achieved that reverb. The snare on most songs was pretty cranked, and the record is very 'riff-y' with pretty heavy guitars. On some songs I used the tom mics as my sends to the drum reverb, sometimes with the room mics. On a few I used the room mics as my reverb send. And on some I inserted Echoboy JR on the room mics, either as the reverb or to send to one of the reverbs I was using. I even put a shortish delay with a bunch of feedback on the rooms for a couple things and it worked REALLY WELL.

I always pay attention to what reverb is doing to the high end or whatever is being sent to it. Usually, I'm taming the highs on reverbs, but there are times if something is kind of dark that, instead of EQing the source, I'm using a reverb that is that adds some sparkle.

I'm kind of all over the place, which I think has to do with not loving reverb, so I'm always trying to find ways to make it work when I think it needs to be there.

[drumsound]

many times I will use a pre-delay on drum reverbs, but usually in the sub 10ms kinda way. just enough to get the smack of the drums so they are not completely obscured by the reverb, but not slappy or phasey either. But for vocals, I will have a longer - 50-80ms pre-delay - on there and use a plate (UAD EMT or Soundtoys little plate, which incidentally does not have a pre-delay and they apparently don't seem to be developing anything new so I'm a bit disappointed we are still on "Little" plate...but I digress). To me that really helps with maintaining clarity in a vocal but still getting the ambience behind it

In a lot of my mix templates I have an aux with Echoboy Jr and Little Plate.

[The Scum]

A handful of thoughts:

The music often dictates what sort of reverb works. If its a dense arrangement with rich sounds, there might not be much room for reverb. A more sparse, staccato arrangement might lend itself to reverb. The tempo also plays a role. If it's really fast, then the reverb is usually tight to keep from clouding things up, if it's slower, then I can use longer verbs and more predelay.

I'm a big fan of the 3D effect that a very short plate can add to things like vocals or snare. It's not an obvious lasting, whooshing thing in time, but it can add some decorrelated L&R information. You notice it when it's not there.

That said, I'm not sure I typically think about things in terms of "type" of reverb (especially software emulations of actual physical phenomena). I think more in length and density. I've got a Zerotronics spring that acts more like a plate than a spring if it's driven gently...I've also had a series of actual plates hanging around (presently with a Brick and Ecoplate), and can rig the bathroom as a small chamber if needed. With the real stuff hanging around, I don't use much of the digital stuff, unless it's for unrealistic sounds, or control that the physical verbs don't have.

None of those have intrinsic predelay, either. So predelay means patching in a delay in series...of which i have one easily available...so if there's predelay, it's only on one send. That delay also has an LFO, so it can do a chours-y predelay, similar to some of the classic Lexicons.

Unless it's an extreme effect, I generally don't want the reverbs to call a lot of attention to themselves. It can be hard to get that just right - lots of switching between speakers and headphones, maybe soloing specific instruments, stopping playback and listening to the tails, moving the return level up & down to get them to sit correctly.

If I'm mixing analog on the console, I've also got some limitations there - I can easily do two aux sends...or I can steal subgroups as sends if I need a couple more, or take direct channels.

There are also some arrangement options in applying reverb. Sometimes it's cool when something stops (or the very end of the song) and there's a reverb tail on it. I might automate it such that only the end of the things is sent to the verb (or the dub mix style where like 1 snare in 10 has verb...).

[losthighway]

I feel that it can also allow me to have the reverb be more felt than heard.

That's a great way to articulate what I'm finding my reverb goals are more often these days.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I feel that it can also allow me to have the reverb be more felt than heard.

That's a great way to articulate what I'm finding my reverb goals are more often these days.

My move is often to keep pulling the reverb fader down until I don't think I can hear it anymore and then turn it up just a hair. I don't want to notice it but I want to notice when it's gone.

[I'm Painting Again]

i like a cheap digital reverb or slapback delay from a send to a good loudspeaker into a real chamber picked up by a pair of stereo mics for every track

then mechanical reverbs for certain things - real tube spring/plate - great if you want that retro sound they can do - bet there's some computer stuff that can sound as good these days but i have no experience with that - would be cool to not deal with the extra noise but sometimes thats pretty cool too

i know the sounds i'd choose but usually it's the artist or producer that makes the choice ultimately

[vernier]

I can hardly tell one verb from another . . kinda like using salt when cooking.

[vvv]

I hate reverb in many ways, even as I so almost never not use it, at least inna mix, if not all over it.

Ex., I find myself doing mixes dry (other than the verb on the drums I am using when they are recorded, as most I use are, by others).

Then I get a little short plate on the cool lead voc (I am forever varying mics; this week is the GT Convertible as a handheld (because I rawk, dammit) and it is definitely better, what leads to a longer plate on the BV's.

And so the drier in my room guitars don't quite integrate with the afore-mentioned drums, and so I use a reverb on both to smoove everything, what leads to using that globally like the Big Lewandowski rug - ties it all togevver, see.

I hate reverb in many ways, and salt is unhealthy, and I like it with lemon and/or garlic and/or pepper, etc.

And a pinch for good luck, yeah.

[Recycled_Brains]

many times I will use a pre-delay on drum reverbs, but usually in the sub 10ms kinda way. just enough to get the smack of the drums so they are not completely obscured by the reverb, but not slappy or phasey either. But for vocals, I will have a longer - 50-80ms pre-delay - on there and use a plate (UAD EMT or Soundtoys little plate, which incidentally does not have a pre-delay and they apparently don't seem to be developing anything new so I'm a bit disappointed we are still on "Little" plate...but I digress). To me that really helps with maintaining clarity in a vocal but still getting the ambience behind it

In a lot of my mix templates I have an aux with Echoboy Jr and Little Plate.

I do this too sometimes, but Little Plate does seem to have a pre-delay built into it. The more I use that one, the more I love it.

My reverb chain is usually EQIII for H/LP and ducking out some gunk in the mids, then reverb, then Decapitator. I made a preset for the latter that I default to. When I turn it off, it gets really boring. I think I still don't really do a good job achieving the reverb sounds I hear on other records or in my head though. I like my PCM60 a lot because it's so minimal and it usually works one way or another if used modestly.

One recent success story was actually sampling a reverb and using that instead of having a send. I only wanted it for the snare, so I just recorded some different hit velocities, reverb times/pre-delays.... Gave me a consistent sound. If the part was fast I used the shorter/brighter sample, slow got the 4 second huge boys. Will likely do more of that. Great for heavy stuff where there is no room for reverb among the wall of guitars and distortion.

[Scodiddly]

Not exactly in line with the original question, but a recent insight.

I've been playing electric guitar a lot more recently, got my Teisco fixed up with a real bridge and fell back in love. My amp is a ~1970's Princeton Reverb with an aftermarket 3-spring Accutronics tank. Not boingy but still kind of nasty sounding.

This is just playing by myself, so the amp is clean - but there's a fair amount of reverb, and the reverb is kind of my distortion. Clean chords but I can chunk and get a nasty tail.

Reminds me a bit of the really distorted reverb on the guitar solo on Tom Wait's "Black Wings".