|
Reverb decay time and early reflections
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Lindo |
I've been reading a lot of articles on reverb and learning to create your own acoustic environments. I'm still trying to get sounds to sit in their own dimension. I read that reverb should be timed with your track to allow it to "breathe" and was wondering if there was a quick formula to find out the decay time for your bpm.
Also, how would you go about using a delay unit to synthesize natural ambience and early reflections, and then feed it to your reverb chamber?
Just to give you guys an idea of what I'm talking about because I may not be explaining too well, here is the article that I was just reading as well as The Mixing Engineers Handbook.
http://members.aol.com/uniquenyc/key7.htm |
|
|
| Derivative |
Syncing reverb decay time to bpm doesn't make sense. When you record in a live environment, the room has its own natural reverberation and this most definitely is not synced to the drummer or the guitarist performing in that environment. Long reverb decays are supposed to emulate long reflections in wide open spaces - so if you want to reproduce the echo of a large vaulted chamber, you would do so with a long reverb decay. Beyond that it depends on the wall construction, the number of objects (and their construction) plus their arrangement and finally the instrument or sound that is playing back in that room and its position within it that determines what an echo sounds like in a room.
I wouldn't sync anything and go on the feel of it and the type of echo you are trying to emulate. |
|
|
| SMC |
| And what is there to sync anyway? Reverb is not a rythmic effect. |
|
|
| mysticalninja |
you can often sync reverb dampening.
btw that mixing guide is from 1985. lol. |
|
|
| DigiNut |
Actually, there is merit in that idea, but it's not in the decay, it's in the pre-delay. It's not really detectable by a listener, but it does have a subtle effect on perception if you set the pre-delay to some even factor of the beat. The idea is to create a stereo space with the reverb by making the tight, up-front instruments sound "closer" (lower PD) and pushing the other ones "back" (higher PD).
For example, a 120 bpm track has a beat every 500 ms, so you might try a pre-delay of 62.5 ms for the pads, 31.3 ms for the leads, and 15.6 ms for the percussion.
As a disclaimer though, the actual effectiveness of this is debatable and subtle at best. I used to do this in some older tracks but I don't bother anymore... it's really hard for me to tell the difference. |
|
|
| Derivative |
Actually you are right. I should probably have thought of that...
:clown: |
|
|
| Lindo |
Thanks for the input guys.
I didn't know if I was understanding that all that well, but you guys definitely cleared it up for me. So really I should just focus on the mixing (panning, volume, eq) to set the x and y characters. Then with my reverb, based on how things were set up, apply the appropriate amount of eq and forget about syncing the pre-delay? I just thought this would help a bit better in placing sounds in a dimension, but I guess it isn't noticeable enough to be used.
Thanks again Derivative and Digi-nut.
P.S. LOL I didn't know that it was from 1985. hahaha |
|
|
| DigiNut |
You can sync the pre-delay if you want, it's just punching a few numbers into a calculator really. I just said I don't bother because I, personally, can't seem to tell the difference. Different reverb units/plugins have different characteristics and it could be more noticeable on some. Or maybe I've just gotten lazy and convinced myself that it's unnecessary. Who knows...
I will stand by what I said about it being subtle, even if it is there. Definitely work on the basic mixing elements before you even think about this stuff. |
|
|
|
|
