Pro-R boasts of complex inner workings presented in a simple and easy to follow format. FabFilter allows users to dial in a wide variety of reverb sounds from clean and transparent to lively and dense. There is also the added possibility to venture into wacky modulated ambiances for those who wish to do so. Furthermore, a 6-band post EQ helps tailor the reverb to your precise needs. It is as easy to use as they get.
It can be molded to fit pretty much any vocal or instrument in various styles and genres. Well, having excellent emulations of them all in one package. VerbSuite Classics is a convolution reverb plugin that includes highly accurate models of some of the most famous reverbs in history.
An expansion pack extends the collection to include models of the Lexicon and XL. While the plugin packs so many goodies underneath, the interface remains quite simple and sleek. It features controls for the usual parameters like decay, attack, and width as well as a chorus control for the characteristic modulation of each of the units. A simple 3 band EQ, gain, and mix knobs complete the design.
An LED-style display shows the currently selected model and settings. This simplicity makes the plugin an absolute joy to play around and experiment with. Each model sounds rich and brings its unique flavor. It requires some effort to go through all the models and learn their sound, but the results make it worthwhile. This is the sound of hardware worth tens of thousands of dollars in one sleek, simple software package. The L, QRS, and M7 models sound especially good on vocals, but all the models are worth exploring.
Today, we have software plugins that can easily add the sonic characteristics of a massive concert hall or church to our mixes. These reverb plugins tend to fall into two major categories: convolution reverb plugins and algorithmic reverb plugins.
A plugin may contain several impulse responses of various physical locations. The plugin uses a mathematical function called convolution to alter the audio source i. This gives you a realistic rendering of what the sound source would sound like in that actual physical space. Since convolution plugins contain libraries of actual recordings and must perform mathematical functions in real-time, they can be quite large and relatively heavier on computer resources.
The upside is that they produce highly realistic and natural-sounding reverberations. Algorithmic reverbs do not use impulse responses. They simulate the reverb response of a particular space by representing the sonic characteristics as algorithms using parameters like room size, material, reflectivity, etc. Since algorithmic plugins only simulate spaces mathematically and do not store any actual recordings, they are significantly smaller in size than convolution reverb plugins and hence much lighter on your resources.
To some, they sound clean and perfect and to others, they sound a bit too sterile or artificial. Just about every modern recording utilizes reverb on nearly every element from the drums to the vocals. All of the plugins listed here are stellar products that can make your vocals sit smoothly in a mix. But in the end, it is up to your ear and personal judgment to decide what style of reverb to use for a given situation. Time and practice are key, of course, but I hope this article helps you find the requisite tools to dial in a killer vocal sound.
Interviews See All. If you screw this up, it's not the end of the world but your'e limiting yourself. The tips and tricks we're going to introduce later can't hide bad decisions. When choosing a reverb, there's a series of questions that are helpful in guiding your choices What size and kind of room?
Or do I want to use reverb more as a noticeable effect and ear candy for the listener? If you want to emulate a specific type of space, such as a smoky bar or concert hall, then obviously you want to choose a room, hall, or chamber based on size first.
Then you want to consider the material of the walls, which is how a lot of plugins will label their presets. For instance, you might decide to mix a five-piece bluegrass band's song using a "Small Room - Wooden Verb" preset. That might sound like your listeners are gathered around the front porch of a log cabin as the band plays from their rocking chairs. If you're going for more of an effect then a spring or plate reverb is going to supply you with what you want better than the more natural room-based reverbs.
Now that you know which reverb you're going to use, it's time to slap that sucker on the tracks and start tweaking! Generally, you're going to want to place your reverb on individual instruments versus the master output. This is how it works in reality. Each individual sound being created in a room generates its own reverb. Typically, the louder a reverb is the further back in the soundscape an instrument sounds like it is.
This is how you create a sensation of depth. Mentally visualize how you're designing the stereo field and where you want each specific instrument to sit, not only with left-to-right panning but front-to-back depth as designed by volume and reverb.
The first mistake of amateur mixers is to increase the volume of the reverb itself far too high. You must remember that all of your reverbs are going to combine into a louder overall reverb effect. Always set your reverb volumes with the full song playing, not with each instrument in solo. The golden rule of almost every signal processing effect is to increase the volume to where you want it, and then turn it back down some. Less is more.
Dropping the volume of the reverb back by about 2 dB to 4 dB under where you like it is a nice safe spot. Subtlety is the name of the game. Here are some general tips for each type of instrument based on their frequency response and importance to a mix:.
If you visualize your soundscape as if you're standing in front of a band set up like it would be on stage, this can help guide you to making decisions about how much volume your reverb should have on each instrument and it helps with panning! Remember the discussion about early reflections, body, and decay? This is how you can change the perception of how large the space is that your music is emanating from. Early reflections, the first audible part of the reverb, are going to hit your ear faster if it's a small room or slower if you're designing a larger room.
The body of your reverb is the main time variable. The longer it lasts, the larger the room will feel and the more distant the instrument will seem from the listener. The decay can occur fast, making the reverb stop more suddenly, or can trail off with a long tail. A lot of times you can't simply choose based on the size of the room you want. If your arrangement is very complex with many instruments then a large room is going to become a washed out mess.
If your arrangement is sparse, you can get away with longer reverbs. Take care to consider your arrangement as well as your desire for room size. Because we are artificially and electronically altering each of these, we can end up creating virtual spaces that simply couldn't occur in reality. You'll know if something is absolutely whacky in your reverb or not. Experiment with these variables to produce a pleasing and realistic sound. Getting this wrong can be worse than a completely dry mix, so take your time!
This is an easy place to create disaster for your mix. Stereo reverbs can sound so lush and full that it's tempting to use them every time on every instrument. Once you're done setting your levels and balance, you play the full mix ready to sit in amazement at your work and realize you have a washed out, mushy mess on your hands. So maybe you try to turn down the volumes and all you do is turn down the mush, and it's still mushy. What went wrong?
Most of the time not all of the time you're going to want your reverb to emanate from the same center of gravity that your instrument is coming from. We're keeping things reality based here. If you're using your DAW's mixer like most of us are, this will happen for you because the reverb insert is coming in after the track's panning. Or you're sending the signal post-pan to a bus that has the reverb on it.
A mono reverb will sound like it's right behind the instrument creating it. A panned stereo reverb will have it's center of mass panned, but the echoes will fan out across the entire stereo field. And that's your mush problem. The question needs to be "Should I use mono or stereo reverbs? I'd pan the guitar all the way left, the synthesizer all the way right, and leave the drums, bass, and vocals up the center. And then I'd slap a stereo reverb on all of them and let that wash through the empty space in the stereo field.
This would sound lush and still have tons of separation. If you have tons of instruments panned all throughout the stereo field, you can't get away with a ton of stereo reverb and should use mono reverbs to help maintain isolation and clarity. There are three boo-boo's all of us make when we first start mixing, and when it comes to reverb they can be very problematic. They are:. Most of us don't start with mixing rooms chock full of a primary set of monitors, a secondary set, and acoustic treatment on the walls.
We typically start with our basic computer speakers, a set of normal headphones, and a room that produces reverb on its own. We tend to mix in headphones because our rooms are harming our ability to hear clearly more than helping. Regardless, mix your reverbs with your monitors or speakers so you're setting realistic levels. With headphones, the clarity provided by the best studio headphones can cause you to use far too little. At the same time, using monitors in a poor acoustic environment can cause you to use too much.
Start with your best monitors and double check in your headphones until you find the right balance. They don't want to learn how the software works and most have never worked on a real hardware mixing board.
This results in not even knowing about auxiliary sends and buses, let alone actually using them. So we end up copy and pasting our reverb plugin settings onto each track. Reverb is a very demanding process to calculate for your computer.
With too many instances of the plugin running, you risk your software freezing and losing all of your work. Plus it's a very inefficient way of working with reverb, which leads us to the next point. A bus is an extra track in your multitrack that takes an input from other tracks. It can take as many signals as you'd like to throw at it at any volume you choose.
This is the best way to manage your main reverb. You won't always use only one, but there will almost always be a main and it should be controlled from a master reverb bus. There's a lot of reasons why, that we'll cover in the advanced tips and tricks coming up next.
Here's the goal. We're going to take your reverb from the left-side amateur style to the right-side professional style as visualized below:. Notice that on the pro's side, the reverb never gets in the way of any of the instruments. Pop an EQ after the reverb on the return track and start listening to how it's blending with the vocals and mix. Hint: It's easier to hear these buildups when the send is set very high to hear the reverb more.
Then, seeing how you have the reverb on a separate channel, why stop with EQ? The combinations are endless. When asked once what his favorite reverb was, well-known engineer Andrew Shepps said, "Delay. A combination of delay and a lesser amount of reverb is a great way to really wet up those vocals without it seeming like too much. Delay, however, has similar issues with reverb. It's very important to set the timing correctly. I would start by syncing the plugin with the track's tempo.
Luckily, nine out of 10 delay plugins in have this ability. Then, set the note division according to taste. But there are times where you may want to go higher for a desired "flutter" effect, or even do more interesting time divisions, like triplets or dotted note repeats, but that's another topic in itself, as it can get quite experimental.
For a lead vocal, I would stick with simple time divisions for maximum clarity that pulses with the beat. On ad-libs or background vocals, feel free to switch those up, as those occur less frequently and can be a little weirder and more drastic.
More on that later. Most delays have a feedback knob or setting, and this is where most people go wrong. Having too much feedback can step all over the next words in a song and actually decrease the clarity. Or, maybe there is one spot in the song, like at the end of the last chorus, that sounds cool with a longer feedback, but then when you go back to the middle, where other words crowd the chorus, problems will arise. Feedback is something I would use your ears for. Generally speaking, unless you want large spaces between the words for some creative purpose , you're going to want a shorter feedback.
After setting the feedback to taste, there is the issue—similar to the tonality of the reverb stepping on other parts of the mix—of the overall frequency curve of the actual echo itself. Some plugins will have built-in low-pass and high-pass filters, like my all time favorite: Waves H-Delay. But others may not have that option, in which case you'll have to do the same thing as the reverb and set up a separate auxiliary send and return.
If so, just follow the same steps we outlined above for reverb. Doing this is pretty effective, as when the vocals are "active" or heard, the delays are being squashed and lowered; then, when the vocalist stops—even momentarily—the natural decay of the vocal's envelope will let the delay creep back in during those quieter moments between words.
So far, these techniques have been concerned with adding a "static" delay, or, in other words, a delay that remains the same across the whole vocal to create a sense of space and overall bounce. But there are also times where you just want a longer or different delay on one word. The traditional way to do this is to set up another auxiliary track with your desired delay settings, then automate a separate send on and off for those specific words.
The benefit to doing this, of course, is that you can set different amounts of delay you want on specific words—maybe a subtle delay on one and then a drastic delay on the next. It's a great way to quickly add different delays without going through the time to automate sends.
Up until now, all of these techniques have been catered toward lead vocals, but what about background vocals like stacks or ad-libs?
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