Reverb usage (Room size)

[BaseBass]

"Dubstep loves reverb" is what Im constantly hearing. Usually I just improvise with reverb to make some pads or lead's etc sound further aways. I have learned some nice techniques to use reverb in a smart way, but I also remember someone telling me that reverb also needs to be used consistanly throughout the mix. Is it adviced to keep the roomsize the same for all your effects? The reason I ask is because, if thought out visually... a mix has to sound like it is taking place in the same room, or else certain synths, vocals or stabs sound out of place. I tried looking it up in the production bible, but the link to the reverb section seems to be broken (the item does not exist anymore).

Does anyone care to explain to me how this works?

FYI, I'm using the basic Fruity Reeverb filter in FL:

[drooka]

yeah for the most part, you'd want to keep you room size the same except for creative reasons. this is parituclarly important for drums id say, which is why it is a fairly common practice to employ a drum reverb send (cuts down on the number of fx units you've got and ensures the same settings for each effected channel)

[BaseBass]

Can you name any creative reason to increase or decrease the roomsize? Is this rare? And is the same roomsize also , mostly used for the main bass, leads and pads etc?

I gotta have a clear vision of what to do, and what not to do. 'Cause right now I'm just using all kinds of room sizes for each sound whenever I feel like it sounds cool that way (on it's own), not thinking about the bigger picture.

[-[2]DAY_-]

Is it adviced to keep the roomsize the same for all your effects?

Using several reverbs as inserts isn't a bad idea, per se, but for the effect you're talking about here you'd be better off with a send, i believe.

That way, you can forget about matching the room size or any other parameter for several verbs, and instead send the different instruments all to one verb via an aux track. Then you can freely manipulate the reverb's settings to create a nice space, but all those instruments will still be heard in that same space. varying slightly among different daw's, the routing should be very easy.

[-[2]DAY_-]

Can you name any creative reason to increase or decrease the roomsize? Is this rare? And is the same roomsize also , mostly used for the main bass, leads and pads etc?

creative reasons.... err, i don't get that term cuz every decision in a creative process such as mixing, is made for a creative reason. I choose a small size in order to "create" a subtle, dry-ish space that all the different elements of a track can mix and gel together in. I choose a large size, dark hall to create washing drones of reverberation for vocals or effects... I choose a long icy plate for just snare or rimshots. generally what you want is one all-purpose, subtle verb and a couple for "creative uses" on a track.

[BaseBass]

Yeah tend to use sends too little so far. I did not even know that it is possible to use the same send with a reverb but with lets say a diffrent amount of reverb for each channel. How exactly is this done?

Thanks for the feedback so far guys... I really wanna know what I'm doing. Reverb is a common effect, but only has value when used right.

[nashley]

Yeah tend to use sends too little so far. I did not even know that it is possible to use the same send with a reverb but with lets say a diffrent amount of reverb for each channel. How exactly is this done?

Thanks for the feedback so far guys... I really wanna know what I'm doing. Reverb is a common effect, but only has value when used right.

I might be wrong but are you talking about adjusting the dry/wet for each channel? Im not sure of a way that would allow different information from the same reverb to be sent to different channels.

[-[2]DAY_-]

Yes... first, set the input of an aux channel to (just for example) stereo bus 1&2. Then instantiate your reverb plugin of choice on that aux.
Then on each audio channel with a part that you want to get reverb, set one of its sends to "bus 1&2" (or whatever bus you use as the aux channel's input). The knob (or fader, if you're on protools) on that send, will tell it how much of that sound to send to the reverb. So crank it up for a really wet sound, or just use a little bit.
You can now send any combination of sounds to that reverb, each with as little or as much as you want.

For even more flexibility, you can make the sends "pre-fader" on whichever channels you want. Should be a button or switch near the send that says "pre" or something like that. If you turn that on, the amount you're sending to the reverb will be INDEPENDENT of how loud the channel originally is. So you could have it turned all the way down, but the pre-fader send still sending whatever amount of that signal to the verb, so you can hear it coming out of the reverb, but you won't hear the dry signal.... of course then you can raise or lower the original track's fader to mix in the dry signal.

There's a lot of different ways to set this up. Also, automating both the send level and the fader on a channel can make for cool effects, especially if it's a pre-fader send, so that you can basically automate the volume of the channel and how much of it is coming out the reverb, independently of one another.

[-[2]DAY_-]

I might be wrong but are you talking about adjusting the dry/wet for each channel? Im not sure of a way that would allow different information from the same reverb to be sent to different channels.

No, see the signal path goes the other way around --- each channel sends different amounts of their signal to the same reverb, whose output goes straight out the mains (a "return" path). That way, all the channels will hit the same reverb, but in varying amounts depending on how much you SEND from each channel.
Thats why they are "send" / "return" auxiliary channels.

So the information doesn't come from the reverb and go to the channels. It goes from the channels to the reverb unit, from which the effected sound then comes back into the mix.

[drooka]

by creative reasons i meant, for example, if you were trying to create movement of an instrument throughout the track or maybe if you wanted to create the feeling that the drums were in the same room as you but for example your lead was in your closet or something. obviously thered be other effects to use in conjunction with reverb to get this effect, but in that case youd want the room size of the lead verb to be smaller than that of your drum verb (unless of course you had a monster closet...)
anyways you see where i'm going with this. if you want all the elements to be cohesive then similar/same reverb settings are ideal, but there are definitely uses for varying your reverb settings.

[Insahn]

I'm new to this, but I use a couple of different reverbs. A short airy reverb that is barely audible for most of my drums. I will use a large hall/long tail reverb for certain sounds like the odd open hi-hat or one shot. One of my favorite artists, Murcof, is very good with reverb and creating a sense of space and atmosphere in his very minimal compositions. Check him out for alternate uses of reverb outside of just the short tail/medium/small room sound.

[-[2]DAY_-]

if you want [several] elements to be cohesive then similar/same reverb settings are ideal

Disagree... this is the fundamentals... Ideal would not just be same or similar settings, but to actually send to the very same reverb. Even identical settings on multiple instances inserted in channels.... will not sound the same as one reverb unit on a track, with elements sent to it. Because the verb's output will consist of a mixture of different elements gelling together in that verb send. Much different than mixing the outputs of several identical reverbs.

Which, i guess, if you want that, it's fine. But it will sound much different than the elements actually sharing a space. Thats part of why it's called "mixing". You aren't just mixing sounds on the master bus.... effects sends let you mix elements together within one effected signal path.... so things liek master reverbs/delays, and other shit like parallel compression, distortion, etc as sends... lets you bring portions of all those elements into a signal path where they can mix together... so, not only do you get the benefit of however the plugin affects your sound(s), but you also can take advantage of the benefit of multiple channels partially blending inside that plugin..
non-reverb example: even if it's a compressor with mild settings, you can send a small amount of several signals to that compressor via aux sends, and the individual signals will retain their individuality whilst also mixing together inside the compressor, giving them a more "glued" or "together" feel

[drooka]

if you want [several] elements to be cohesive then similar/same reverb settings are ideal

Disagree... this is the fundamentals... Ideal would not just be same or similar settings, but to actually send to the very same reverb. Even identical settings on multiple instances inserted in channels.... will not sound the same as one reverb unit on a track, with elements sent to it. Because the verb's output will consist of a mixture of different elements gelling together in that verb send. Much different than mixing the outputs of several identical reverbs.

Which, i guess, if you want that, it's fine. But it will sound much different than the elements actually sharing a space. Thats part of why it's called "mixing". You aren't just mixing sounds on the master bus.... effects sends let you mix elements together within one effected signal path.... so things liek master reverbs/delays, and other shit like parallel compression, distortion, etc as sends... lets you bring portions of all those elements into a signal path where they can mix together... so, not only do you get the benefit of however the plugin affects your sound(s), but you also can take advantage of the benefit of multiple channels partially blending inside that plugin..
non-reverb example: even if it's a compressor with mild settings, you can send a small amount of several signals to that compressor via aux sends, and the individual signals will retain their individuality whilst also mixing together inside the compressor, giving them a more "glued" or "together" feel

i suggested using sends in my first post, guess i should have been more clear in trying to differentiate the different uses for reverb. quality explanation though i'll have to keep all of that in mind
but yeah, exactly why youd want to use sends op^

[-[2]DAY_-]

yeah, i was getting overzealous

[marktplatz]

So, -2DAY_-, when you have a reverb as a send effect and are sending multiple instruments to it, it's mixing all those signals together as they go into the reverb and returning that coagulated reverberation all at once to the mixer, that's reiterating what you said in your first post, right? So it's not like sending each instrument to its own individual instance of that reverb, so that the individual reverberations are mixing together only once returned to the mixer, along with the dry instruments (as would happen if you had copies of the reverb as inserts on each of the instruments)? I would appreciate verification of this because I've never fully gotten my mind around how the signal chains in send effects work, and because I don't think I'd ever considered the issue of mixing instruments into a common reverb vs. reverbing them equally individually, which I'm grateful to you for bringing up (though I was definitely aware of that together-vs.-separate difference under distortion, for instance, where if say you mix a high and low tone together and then distort their sum it's intuitively going to sound different from distorting them individually and then adding those distorted signals). Now that I think of it the first case (the send unit mixes all of its received signals together and returns its effected mixture) makes much more sense, since it is after all a single audio signal returning from the fx unit to the mixer. I think I just talked myself through it. Thanks again for the insight.

[BaseBass]

Interesting... this is actually a pretty complicated thing hehe. I don't get how a channel that uses a send can have a diffrent reverb time than the other channel wich uses the same send. or maybe I'm just not gettin' it =P

when you use a send on... let's say a bus channel, does'nt that send 2 signals to the master. Wouldnt that make the output a lot louder btw?

[marktplatz]

Interesting... this is actually a pretty complicated thing hehe. I don't get how a channel that uses a send can have a diffrent reverb time than the other channel wich uses the same send. or maybe I'm just not gettin' it =P

They should indeed have the same reverb times, just the loudness of the reverb for each channel can vary according to where you set the dry-to-wet send control thingy. Why can't I think of the real terms for things this morning.

when you use a send on... let's say a bus channel, does'nt that send 2 signals to the master. Wouldnt that make the output a lot louder btw?

Two signals are sent to the master, yes, but the aforementioned dry-wet send control reduces the levels of the dry and/or wet signals proportionally so that their total output is a mix, of similar level to the dry or wet signal alone; the wet signal is not simply added on top of the full-volume dry signal. Same idea as a pan control in terms of balancing level. I hope that gets at the gist of your question; I am not familiar with bus channels (I use Reason and what is this).

[-[2]DAY_-]

the individual reverberations are mixing together only once returned to the mixer, along with the dry instruments [. . .]. [F]or instance, where if say you mix a high and low tone together and then distort their sum it's intuitively going to sound different from distorting them individually and then adding those distorted signals [. . .] (the send unit mixes all of its received signals together and returns its effected mixture

[marktplatz]

Ariiiiiiiiiiight. Now to figure out creative, oblique ways to use this new knowledge of sends and returns...

[Heartless]

If you were doing sound design for a movie, yeah you'd want the reverb to convince the audience that what they are hearing is happening in the space that's on-screen. But this is music. Do it by ear. Back in the day, before tape and digital delays and reverb units, instruments would have to be recorded in certain rooms to give 'em the desired atmosphere and it was usually different for each instrument.