"Get your reverb to 'stick' to audio!"

[loopdon]

"I don't know about you guys but I've always wanted to reverb to sound more like the original signal of what it's processing. This way it sounds more natural and leaves space in the mix for you work with. Again IMO I feel that reverb should basically sound like, well, a natural space where the instrument/audio is being played.

This is pretty much inspired by my love of natural sounding IR verbs.

I was analyzing some reverbs for the 'roomiest' or most natural sounding ones and comparing to how they would sound to ones (mostly analog) you hear on commercial recordings (a lot of oldschool). I was surprised to hear that the reverbs were not really of the highest quality (not on all recordings). This got me thinking, 'well if they're not using the highest quality then I don't have to either'.. So I started experimenting with some cheaper reverbs and found this little trick.

It's quite simple really try running your reverb through the highest quality vocoder and listen to how it picks up the dynamics of the original recording and basically 'mixes' the reverb onto the original audio!

Note: this is just for experimenting..

So what you do is have your audio (lets say drums) run out to the Master bus then route it to a separate stereo channel. Make that channel have a silent output and monoize it. Pan it to left and route it out to a Vocoder of your choice. Next, put any cheap reverb on a separate channel and pan it to the right and monoize it. Send it out to the vocoder channel. You should now here the reverb meld into the mix rather than 'over top' of the audio. The only downside is that your obviously going to loose some quality and a stereo channel of the reverb. You can do this in stereo if you just do a left right routing scheme. If you own Elevayta's CloneBoy you can do this without having to do any special routing. This is an amazing technique to dirty your reverb! Also if you have hi end reverbs try them. It really makes a big difference and is a great way to print reverb directly to audio and keep its characteristics in tact!

Hope someone finds use for this.

L"

From this thread over at k-v-r:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewto...asc&highlight=

[bmovie]

Nice one, thanks don ;)

[dirty_bass]

Sounds very complicated, I just use some compression to blend the reverb in with the source.

[Nomak]

So do you send the reverb off to another channel and compress just the reverb or compress the orginal signal with reverb on it?

[dirty_bass]

IF I really want to blend a verb, I sue it on a insert with compression afterwards.
You do have to be very careful with your settings though.

[Nomak]

Ok cheers, at the moment I run everything on the channel inserts in cubase as I dont really know what I am doing and this is easiest, I was running the compressor after reverb only because I didnt know what compressing the signal + reverb would do.

[loopdon]

You are right, Steve, it sounds a little complicated and i haven't tried it yet. But without having tried it i can't really judge it. It might be an interesting thing to try to some.

[dirty_bass]

You are right, Steve, it sounds a little complicated and i haven't tried it yet. But without having tried it i can't really judge it. It might be an interesting thing to try to some.

Yeah it sounds interesting, but I think more as a creative interest than for pure, common verb usage.

I`ll give it a try myself just to see what interesting things I can do with it.
Never though of doing this with reverb, so it is certainly interesting.
Cheers.

[dirty_bass]

Ok cheers, at the moment I run everything on the channel inserts in cubase as I dont really know what I am doing and this is easiest, I was running the compressor after reverb only because I didnt know what compressing the signal + reverb would do.

I wouldn`t, as a rule, use compression on your reverb, as it can wreak merry havock with it.
But it can also do nice things to it.

[bmovie]

It's much easier on modular hosts like Audiomulch etc.
and instead of a vocoder you can try a morphing plugin like morf1 from this page:
http://www.martin-brinkmann.de/plugs.html