Hey guys,

I'm curious to know what kind of techniques some of you use for reverb. I'm not looking for plugins or anything (I use SIR and have a bunch of good impulses) - just different things to do with them. I've got a bunch of specific questions, but I'd appreciate any general advice as well.

- Do you use different/no reverb on drums? I don't use it on the kick, but sometimes it also seems to sound messy on the hats/cymbals/etc. But taking it off the drums and leaving it on the other instruments sounds inconsistent - anyone found a good compromise?

- Anybody use pre-filters (or SIR/IIR's internal frequency response curve)? Sometimes I've found that a high cutoff between 1-4 kHz removes a lot of the "mess", but it also obviously thins out the sound. Same question for lowpass, generally somewhere around 100-250 Hz. These are also just straight cutoffs - has anyone come up with an actual curve that sounds good?

- Any experiences with other plugins used in combination with reverb (noise gates, compressors, stereo expanders, time gates/envelopes, etc.)? I've heard these ideas from other people and tried various combinations but they all seem to make it sound worse instead of better.

- Can you use reverb to get that "big room bass" sound, or do you just need heavy-duty instruments for that stuff? Heavy reverb on the bass always just sounds messy as shit for me.

- In general, how the hell do the professionals get their tracks to sound "wide" but not "slurred"? In my experience, it seems to be a painful choice between neither or both.

Thanks for your ideas.

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quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Do you use different/no reverb on drums? I don't use it on the kick, but sometimes it also seems to sound messy on the hats/cymbals/etc. But taking it off the drums and leaving it on the other instruments sounds inconsistent - anyone found a good compromise?

Don't use reverb on the hihats. It's not useful at all. It only provides a messy sound. I use reverb on some hand drums like congas and sometimes on some crashes or other cymbales. The snare could be reverbed too but never the kick!!!! Some loops could be reverbed but only if it provides something (a bigger sound).

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Anybody use pre-filters (or SIR/IIR's internal frequency response curve)? Sometimes I've found that a high cutoff between 1-4 kHz removes a lot of the "mess", but it also obviously thins out the sound. Same question for lowpass, generally somewhere around 100-250 Hz. These are also just straight cutoffs - has anyone come up with an actual curve that sounds good?

Sometimes Reverbs are too bright. It's just a way to have s soft and sweet reverb with a warm sound. If you have too much high frequencies it could become ugly like a SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH in your reverb.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Can you use reverb to get that "big room bass" sound, or do you just need heavy-duty instruments for that stuff? Heavy reverb on the bass always just sounds messy as shit for me.

Benny Benassi use a reverb on his basses which is really very compressed. It's ugly but it works. But it wouldn't work this way if it wasn't compressed like this after. But most of the time don't use reverb on a bass.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - In general, how the hell do the professionals get their tracks to sound "wide" but not "slurred"? In my experience, it seems to be a painful choice between neither or both.

It's just... the experience... and you know, that's not because someone is a musician that he could be a good sound engineer.

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some oldschool trance has reverb on kicks but nowdays not..

theres late reflect reverb (gate) on some harder style kicks like hardstyle and freeform but it's quite messy stuff

i uste reverb on SOME hi hats but NOT all

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quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Do you use different/no reverb on drums? I don't use it on the kick, but sometimes it also seems to sound messy on the hats/cymbals/etc. But taking it off the drums and leaving it on the other instruments sounds inconsistent - anyone found a good compromise?

mostly, i use some small room or plate reverb on hihats, along with a pinch od delay. some more small room on snares, and long reverbs (5-10 secs) on crash cymbals. if reverb on your hats sounds messy, shorten it, eq the reverb, add some predelay. or do all of this.

quote:

- Anybody use pre-filters (or SIR/IIR's internal frequency response curve)? Sometimes I've found that a high cutoff between 1-4 kHz removes a lot of the "mess", but it also obviously thins out the sound. Same question for lowpass, generally somewhere around 100-250 Hz. These are also just straight cutoffs - has anyone come up with an actual curve that sounds good?

my guess is that it is supposed to thin out the sounds if you use reverb on your hats. what curve should you use really depends on the source material you are reverbing, and it is very hard to give a general good advice on that.

quote:

- Any experiences with other plugins used in combination with reverb (noise gates, compressors, stereo expanders, time gates/envelopes, etc.)? I've heard these ideas from other people and tried various combinations but they all seem to make it sound worse instead of better.

stereo expanders and noise gates should help a lot to set the reverb tail properly. in this area, just like in any other - what sounds good, is good. also, if you are reverbing a busy fat lead line, it will sound bad. but a single note from time to time put through reverb might be something you need. again - it depends on the source material.

quote:

- Can you use reverb to get that "big room bass" sound, or do you just need heavy-duty instruments for that stuff? Heavy reverb on the bass always just sounds messy as shit for me.

some reverb might do the trick, but it is very dependable on the synth you are using. i guess it is mostly up to the instrument.
i think this fx chain could be nice for bass processing: eq -> recerb with very short decay -> compressor.

quote:

- In general, how the hell do the professionals get their tracks to sound "wide" but not "slurred"? In my experience, it seems to be a painful choice between neither or both. Thanks for your ideas.

my guess is - detuned layered synths, and lots of eq work. if you want your leads wide, you could use a phaser fx.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut Hey guys, - Do you use different/no reverb on drums? I don't use it on the kick, but sometimes it also seems to sound messy on the hats/cymbals/etc. But taking it off the drums and leaving it on the other instruments sounds inconsistent - anyone found a good compromise?

I never use reverb on drums except on the clap and percussion drums. Using it on hihats just doesn't sound good...

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Any experiences with other plugins used in combination with reverb (noise gates, compressors, stereo expanders, time gates/envelopes, etc.)? I've heard these ideas from other people and tried various combinations but they all seem to make it sound worse instead of better.

I guess you don't need a stereo expander cause if you use a good Reverb plugin, u can ajust the reverb stereo with it.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Can you use reverb to get that "big room bass" sound, or do you just need heavy-duty instruments for that stuff? Heavy reverb on the bass always just sounds messy as shit for me.

I never use reverb on basslines except for reversed reverb (first reverse a bassline sample, than add reverb and than reverse it again)

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - In general, how the hell do the professionals get their tracks to sound "wide" but not "slurred"? In my experience, it seems to be a painful choice between neither or both.

"it seems to be a painful choice between neither or both."

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Interesting thoughts here, and thanks for the input... I've got a couple of follow-up questions:

- For those who use different reverb on all different drums, how exactly do you combine that with your compressors and other effects? I almost always group the drums together (except the kick), throw on the filters/compressors/levellers/whatever, then add reverb as a send fx. Obviously I can't send pre-routed drums because it'll be reverb'ing the wrong waveforms. So do you just put a bunch of different reverbs on the individual drum channels and inserts, then compress/level/filter them? Or do you take some other approach?

- I'm surprised to hear people say they never use reverb on basslines - why is that? It seems to improve the sound in my experience, it just still doesn't produce the big room sound.

That's it for now... might think of more later.

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quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - I'm surprised to hear people say they never use reverb on basslines - why is that? It seems to improve the sound in my experience, it just still doesn't produce the big room sound.

as said before, it can be used but you definitely need to compress. otherwise things will get all muddy down at the bottom of your track, which will cause a loss of punch. definitely do not use big reverbs or the bassline will get drowned completely..

you can always compose your bassline with two instruments. a dry sub bass (to guarantee a solid low end to your track) with an other bass on top (reverbed, delayed, whatever). make sure you EQ well then though, to prevent both sounds from clashing..

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quote:

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pretty good thread!

though it feels like i've tried all in here, and i still can't get that "fattened" sound you can find in some professional mastered songs.

sometimes i wonder if people really know what one is talking about, it takes a long time to just hear that difference, that some tracks are so Fudging damn good mastered and some tracks are just "good" mastered. And i guess it takes even longer to learn how to master the tracks that way.

But one of my guesses is that they probably got some good hardware tube tools on their hands, like EQ's and compressors.

Latest song i've found to be so madly impressed by it's mastering is: Kalafut and Fygle - Lullaby. Every frequency in that song is like perfect, and the stereo image is mad.

Closest i've come to that "professional" sound is probably with a careful tuned Izotope's Ozone. Use the multiband compressor with carefullness... not too much and not too little. And then you can use the multiband eq, but just expand it a bit in the high area, but be careful since you've probably already panned your instruments a bitm so, here it requires careful tuning

Try to tweak the reverb a bit... to make it warm and fat. That combined with a great work of carefull panning on the drums!

And the eq is ofcourse indevidual for the samples that you use!

The key is probably not to "over use" anything.

Last edited by expanded on May-26-2005 at 07:50

quote:

Originally posted by expanded The key is probably not to "over use" anything.

Exactly! Sometimes less is more...

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quote:

Originally posted by expanded pretty good thread! though it feels like i've tried all in here, and i still can't get that "fattened" sound you can find in some professional mastered songs. sometimes i wonder if people really know what one is talking about, it takes a long time to just hear that difference, that some tracks are so Fudging damn good mastered and some tracks are just "good" mastered. And i guess it takes even longer to learn how to master the tracks that way. But one of my guesses is that they probably got some good hardware tube tools on their hands, like EQ's and compressors. Latest song i've found to be so madly impressed by it's mastering is: Kalafut and Fygle - Lullaby. Every frequency in that song is like perfect, and the stereo image is mad. Closest i've come to that "professional" sound is probably with a careful tuned Izotope's Ozone. Use the multiband compressor with carefullness... not too much and not too little. And then you can use the multiband eq, but just expand it a bit in the high area, but be careful since you've probably already panned your instruments a bitm so, here it requires careful tuning Try to tweak the reverb a bit... to make it warm and fat. That combined with a great work of carefull panning on the drums! And the eq is ofcourse indevidual for the samples that you use! The key is probably not to "over use" anything.

Nice, finally someone's making sense in here! One of the reasons I don't ask questions or post tracks in here too often is because of all the showboating and one-upmanship (no fingers pointed at or offense intended to anyone who's posted in this thread - I appreciate all the advice).

I actually just got to work on using some multiband compressors a few days ago, and that exact plugin (Ozone) seems to have produced the best results. Its mastering reverb is also quite nice for adding just that subtle extra little bit of warmth, when used VERY sparingly. I also had a friend send some better impulses... I thought the ones I had were good but they actually kinda sucked.

The multiband stereo expansion is amazing at producing that warm sound, but it also gives the track a bit of a lopsided feel, which I don't hear in the pro productions. Used without the stereo delay it doesn't sound lopsided, but unfortunately, doesn't sound very warm either.

Good hardware is probably a big part of it. It's not just compressors - there are also hardware-based reverb modules, which is actually where a lot of the better impulses come from. Difference is, a hardware reverb module won't rape your CPU. Too bad I can't afford one of those just yet.

Back on the subject of filter frequency response, I realize that it depends on the source material, but that's kind of the point - I was hoping for some examples, like filter & delay settings that work well for, say, tribal drums, or a piano, or an electric guitar. Sure, maybe it's different from one piano to another, but I have a strong feeling that there's some "almost-but-not-quite" set of parameters that can be minimally tweaked to get the best out of a certain class of instruments. And I was hoping some people here had experimented and might share some of their results. If not, then that's cool, but you can see how "it depends" isn't exactly a helpful answer - I wouldn't have posted this thread if I wasn't fully aware of that.

Happy sequencing, kids... thanks for the tips.

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Just remember that everything sounds better in moderation.

Don't reverb your kick or bassy elements, but you can reverb anything else. Certain things are made wonderful with too much reverb, but many things you will want to just use a very, very subtle reverb to give them a recording studio type of warmth.

A neat trick is to get as many different reverb plugins as you can, and use a different reverb on each instrument you intend to reverb. Not necessarily add a lot, but just use a different reverb vst for each.

It can really make a track very lively, and though it will be nearly unnoticeable, when you're high or listen very, very carefully, it will make you go "wow, cool!"

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Do you use different/no reverb on drums? I don't use it on the kick, but sometimes it also seems to sound messy on the hats/cymbals/etc. But taking it off the drums and leaving it on the other instruments sounds inconsistent - anyone found a good compromise?

if i'm after a clean groove, i'll usually reverb the percs a bit with a short tail.
if i'm after a more abrasive sound i'll most often reverb them, but distort/bitcrush the tail

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Anybody use pre-filters (or SIR/IIR's internal frequency response curve)? Sometimes I've found that a high cutoff between 1-4 kHz removes a lot of the "mess", but it also obviously thins out the sound. Same question for lowpass, generally somewhere around 100-250 Hz. These are also just straight cutoffs - has anyone come up with an actual curve that sounds good?

how about modulating the curve as the track goes? (atleast when concerning lead instruments)

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Any experiences with other plugins used in combination with reverb (noise gates, compressors, stereo expanders, time gates/envelopes, etc.)? I've heard these ideas from other people and tried various combinations but they all seem to make it sound worse instead of better.

all sorts of stuff that change the tail by far, but only when the aim is to use the reverb more as an instrument then as an effect.
i dont use them to make the instrument sound more real though.

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut - Can you use reverb to get that "big room bass" sound, or do you just need heavy-duty instruments for that stuff? Heavy reverb on the bass always just sounds messy as shit for me.

ultimately it's both, but there's never a need to go heavy on the reverb.

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