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Basically, something that I've been doing for a bit is a reverb on my drum bus (to add some life to it). It helps with my kicks, because I like the sound of lower kicks and it puts more life back into a kick that's just 0 - 200hz. I got the idea to do it from the idea of mastering reverb to glue a mix together (even though its a little more pronounced than a mastering reverb).
I don't really find that it muddies it up too much, and I make sure that the stereo is set to zero, aswell.

This is what I throw onto it, and just dial back the decay time and dry/wet a little bit.


What's everyone's thoughts on doing this? Anyone else do it at all?
And are there any settings that I should reconsider?

I prefer using it as a send effect, allowing me to add processing after reverb (for example, you could widden the reverb on the upper frequencies and mono it on the lower ones).

I find that reverb in almost any form on almost any kick almost always muddied up the mix

Sonika wrote:I find that reverb in almost any form on almost any kick almost always muddied up the mix

Simply put that's a load of rubbish. You can obviously EQ it so it doesn't mud up the mix. there are many songs out there perfectly mixed with verb on the kick.

e-motion wrote:I prefer using it as a send effect, allowing me to add processing after reverb (for example, you could widden the reverb on the upper frequencies and mono it on the lower ones).

This.

What sonika said is rubbish, you can eq the reverb so it does not muddy up the mix.

dublerium wrote:

Sonika wrote:I find that reverb in almost any form on almost any kick almost always muddied up the mix

Simply put that's a load of rubbish. You can obviously EQ it so it doesn't mud up the mix. there are many songs out there perfectly mixed with verb on the kick.

Yeah but if you're EQing out the mud, you could lose some of the good parts of the kick's tone

I like plate verbs for my drum buss.

Sonika wrote:

dublerium wrote:

Sonika wrote:I find that reverb in almost any form on almost any kick almost always muddied up the mix

Simply put that's a load of rubbish. You can obviously EQ it so it doesn't mud up the mix. there are many songs out there perfectly mixed with verb on the kick.

Yeah but if you're EQing out the mud, you could lose some of the good parts of the kick's tone

Sure, but point being, reverb is not bad for a mix, especially if you have the finesse to properly wield it. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that most people's sound design and mixdown suffers, because they don't know how to use reverb properly. It's always been one of those extremely important mixdown tools that most people completely misunderstand from day one.

atticuh wrote:

Sonika wrote:

dublerium wrote:

Sonika wrote:I find that reverb in almost any form on almost any kick almost always muddied up the mix

Simply put that's a load of rubbish. You can obviously EQ it so it doesn't mud up the mix. there are many songs out there perfectly mixed with verb on the kick.

Yeah but if you're EQing out the mud, you could lose some of the good parts of the kick's tone

Sure, but point being, reverb is not bad for a mix, especially if you have the finesse to properly wield it. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that most people's sound design and mixdown suffers, because they don't know how to use reverb properly. It's always been one of those extremely important mixdown tools that most people completely misunderstand from day one.

This, and what i was saying sonika is eq the lows out the reverb itself not the kick, use a brighter verb, or split the kicks frequencies and just ad reverb to the higher frequencies. Many ways of adding reverb to a kick without messing up a mix.

The extent of my eqing is pretty much high/low cuts at certain frequencies.. What frequencies are bad ones for mud? >.>

And by keeping the verb fairly short, I (in my own mind) avoid muddiness a lot.

Sonika wrote:

dublerium wrote:

Sonika wrote:I find that reverb in almost any form on almost any kick almost always muddied up the mix

Simply put that's a load of rubbish. You can obviously EQ it so it doesn't mud up the mix. there are many songs out there perfectly mixed with verb on the kick.

Yeah but if you're EQing out the mud, you could lose some of the good parts of the kick's tone

Not if you're only EQing the reverb. Think you might get a little confused here

I personally don't like reverb on kicks, period - unless it's for some kind of epic kick explosion, which can work well in breakdowns, intros.etc.

Those particular reverb settings assuming you are using it as a send and not an insert look ok. I would turn off Chorus. Turn on Input processing and use the Lo Cut button, turn up the stereo knob to 100, and turn up pre delay slightly, and diffusion slightly. I actually prefer the sound of economy mode to high quality. Some reverb on the kick is natural. Rock guys have been doing it for years out of necessity. When they mix it is with a room mic/overheads/and snare mic to contend with. Everything has to be gated and it can leave the kick sounding unnatural so they add back in some of the room mic (which is essentially like doing a room reverb send) to the kick. Sometimes its barely noticeable other times its hugely noticeable but in the end its all in the name of getting a nice kick drum sound. As long as your kick drum has a short reverb tail you should be ok.