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Originally posted by eee.ddd.y I'm at a reasonably advanced level of production now but one thing that is really holding me back is the reverb on my drums. if you listen to example tracks below you can here at the very start that the reverb fills up the area when only the kick and maybe a hihat are playing. but how do you get the reverb to just sit atmospherically without jumping up and down and being very noticeable? I use arts acoustic reverb and wizoo verb5 and they seem to be giving me a thin sort of sound for drum reverbs. i usually eq the low end but it still does not give me that same transparent reverb the the top tracks have. another thing i tried was to apply a SEND from the drum to a totally wet group track of reverb. then sidechain this verb so it doesnt clash eith the kick. although it fills up the intro a bit, it still doesnt give it a thick reverb sound. maybe its my VSTs? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_2fFwbfkSY Pryda in particular has lovely almost unoticeable reverb on his drums too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxsGBcs5ocs

Sounds like you need some compression on the low end and possibly a harmonic exciter. I'd be careful boosting EQ's especially at the low end. If you know the fundamental frequency of the sound you are wanting to boost (Ableton's drum tracks is great for this) then boost at the fundamental frequency. Using the highest quality EQ is also great.

As for reverb, I am not familiar with the reverb you are using, but it doesn't sound like your reverb program is the problem. Could you explain in detail how your drums are set up? And what DAW are you using?

may I add something to the original question?
I use a send with PSP easyverb on it for drums.
Actually I'm sending different amounts to the reverb for each drum track, is it the right way? i.e. I send snare in full, percussion a little less, etc. Is this ok? or I need to send the same amount for all the drum tracks to the reverb?

another question is, what kind of reverb do you recommend for drums? I'm using a spring preset a little tweaked.

Thanks and regards

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ok this is one the latest setups i did for drums,,

all initially are seperate tracks so every loop, hihat, snare has its own track.

then these are routed to group track where i add small compression.

then this group track will be merged with the kick where all are processed together. small bit of eq and compression. i then might parallel compress the whole drums before finally routing to a final drum channel consisting of all drum parts.

i have no problem with getting the kick and snare etc being punchy and distinct, but it still has a dry and empty sound to it in comparison to the professional tracks. it must be reverb thats added but any reverb i add always has an obvious sound to it in that you can always hear the attack and decays of it, instead of creating a transparent warm atmosphere..does this help??

I'd say the loops are your problem. I'm not that advanced in terms of production, but I only just started to get hang of drums this year and I've found that its all just about levels. You can't adjust the levels in loops well enough, nor the reverb sends, and I always get clashes, so I just never use them.

I use ableton's drum racks and use almost no reverb for the kick and a light diffuse sort of room verb for the hats, sent at about -14 dB. For the snare, I like a bit more, maybe around 9 dB. You don't really want to reverb the kick at all if you can avoid it, and you should keep it to a short snappy verb on the rest of the percs.

Having a listen to that babicz track, I'm pretty sure its just a really light small room verb being used and mixed really low.

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but how do you get the small room verb so that you cannot hear when the decay cuts off? i can never get the settings so that the verb just sits over the elements instead of hearing the verb being activated for each individual element of the drums?

what does this ableton plugin do? is it a drum machine and is there an equivelent of it for cubase?

Try sending some of your drums to a return track that has a nice Room reverb on it, your AAR has some room algorithms in the presets. Room verbs give that feeling of space but not so your drums are too far away.

Speaking of Dark Flower i dont really hear all that much reverb on the drums, that bit at the start is just automating a send to a reverb track, that particular reverb sounds like its got a good bit of pre-delay on it also.

In Waves, it sounds like a room reverb on the snare also, could be wrong tho.

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Taking the pryda track, all I can hear is a sublte slapback type room verb. Then I can hear the kick repeats like an offsett bass very quietly. I think that particular verb is only on the kick.

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Reverbs generally have a lot of differences in character compared to other plugin types. Where differences in character among compression plugins is often very subtle, differences between reverb plugins often have widely varying characteristics, making their preference among different producers very subjective and a matter of personal preference.

While it is worth trying many of the suggestions here to try to reproduce that particular reverb sound, it is also just as possible that the particular reverb you are hearing just naturally works with the element on which it is placed.

Personally, I almost always use reverb on a Aux channel and use my Bus sends to apply reverb to any tracks. This also gives me the option of applying any post processing effects to just the reverb channel. I always high-pass the reverb channel(s) and in some cases I'll boost the highs with a shelf to give the reverb a bit more "sparkle".

I think it is worth investing a little money in more than one high quality reverb plugins such as AltiVerb or UAD Plate 140 (there are lots of others).

Frankly, I have never encountered a situation where I thought I needed to add reverb to a kick or a low bass. If you are going to add reverb to a kick drum be sure that you really high pass the verb so that you are not muddying up your bottom end. If you place reverb on a "boomy" kick, its just going to make things more "boomy" which may not be what you want, so be careful with that.

got a good idea reading your post eric j, im gonna fill all my auxiliaries with different reverb types. i do feel i lack in the verb department.

Eric - do you rmemebr that thread from a while bck - we were both discussing how to set up reverbs for use group tracks and how to route?

I remember there were some really good explanations of how to set up reverb aux's and combinations of settings etc..


I can't find it now - it might have actually been a thread created by Chronodevir(!) asking about how to use reverbs.

No, its not ringing a bell. A search did not turn anything up?