Reverb is an unbelievably effective tool when it comes to producing great music. Not only can it help you localise sound and add distinctive effects to your mixes, but it can even create or enhance a particular type of mood within your productions.
There are many more ways in which the creative use of reverb can do amazing things for your mixes, but today I’m going to be talking about some problems that can occur when we use reverb plugins or hardware units as part of the mixing and production process.
So, as I’ve mentioned, reverb is an incredibly powerful tool. But as we know from Uncle Ben (not the rice guy), “with great power comes great responsibility”. Yes, I went there.
There are a number of problems that arise if you overuse or ineffectively use reverb in your mixes.
Here are 5 ways reverb can damage your mixes and what you can do to avoid them:
- Masking
If you overdo it with the level of your reverb, you can very easily mask other sounds in the same frequency range. If you think of an electric guitar part that has had some dense reverb added as an effect, it will dominate both the midrange and the stereo field if its level is too high. That means that any other midrange instruments and/or your vocals are going to be drastically affected and most likely masked by the reverb of the guitar. No bueno.
If you feel you’ve overcooked your reverb, you can always A/B it (mute/unmute). That will usually let you know straight away if you’ve masked other elements in the mix and you can dial back the reverb with your send level fader.
Remember that the effective use of reverb can actually fix masking issues by adding depth and space. It shouldn’t create them.
- Clarity
Dial in your reverb the wrong way and the first thing you’ll notice is that things start to sound a bit messy and disorganised. The balance of your mix starts to go askew and frustration starts to creep in.
“Why does my snare sound like it’s 100 miles away and being played by a two year old?”
Clarity related reverb problems are usually down to the mix level and the decay time, so make sure you don’t overdo it!
If you think of an artist adding colour to an outline, they won’t start smearing paint all over the canvas and hope it gets between the lines. So, you shouldn’t take that approach to reverb either. That is, unless you’ve got some sort of outlandish style and then my hat’s off to you!
- Clutter
Clutter and its red-headed stepchild, mud, can create big problems for your mixes. A reverb that is too long and too loud will create a very rubbery, soft and potentially muddy sound in your mixes. The mud will increase if there’s a lot of low end or low mid frequency build up. This is usually only worsened by the over zealous use of reverb.
Another simple fix here – don’t let your reverb tail go on too long and don’t have the level of your reverb too loud in your mix.
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Timbre alterations
No, this isn’t a particular type of tailoring. Let’s revisit this question:“Why does my snare sound like it’s 100 miles away and being played by a two year old?”
Timbre refers to the tonal quality or character of a sound.
A loud reverb will affect the attack of a snare drum and smooth it out. Now, sometimes you’ll be looking to smooth out the attack and that’s perfectly fine. The same can be said for the decay. Sometimes you’ll want a really long decay, sometimes a short decay or sometimes a gated reverb sound (Phil Collins anyone?).
The most important thing is that you’re mindful of how reverb can affect timbre and dial in your settings to affect the sound based on your needs.
- Timing
This one is often overlooked. It’s really valuable for us to remember that reverb is a time-based effect. Yes, that means it can affect the timing of the overall piece of music. Too much reverb on your drums can mean your vocals and guitars go out of time or your bass has fallen out of time and then you’re chasing your tail. Leave that to your dog.This one is more specific to the decay time. If you have it dialled in correctly, you won’t experience those issues.
So, you might have noticed a common trend. If your reverb level is too loud and your decay time is too long, you’ll run into problems. There are lots of buttons, knobs and faders on most reverb units and plugins, but if you get the mix level and decay time right, the rest is easy.
I guarantee you that keeping these five potential issues in mind the next time you’re choosing your reverb and dialling it in will not only help you be more mindful of why you’re using the effect in the first place, but you’ll also produce more clear, balanced, distinctive mixes than ever before.
Now, I’d love to know…
What’s your system for dialling in your reverbs?
Leave a comment below!
professional sounding mix every time...
personally i only use reverb for creating the environment as appose to the effect , well mostly anyway, just enough to take the dryness out of the mix, so i like to be very subtle , i usually set the tail to drop when the next beat hits at a volume were i can actually hear it doing so, then i turn it down to where it suits the track, i find if i close my eyes while turning down and imagine im in a certain space, it helps to know when it sounds right , maybe weird but it seems to work for that way, good article man , reverb can really cheapen a mix if ya not careful, its actually one of the first things i learnt , the hard way 🙂
That’s really cool Pete. I like your idea of closing your eyes to feel like you’re in that space. Great advice from you here. Good to hear you enjoyed the article 🙂
Another very useful technique, and very rarely taught, is when working with reverb is to filter out the highs and lows. There’s a way of doing this referred to as the “Abbey Roads” technique. After setting up the reverb send on a separate track, on that same track place an EQ before the reverb that allows a highpass and a lowpass filter. Set the highpass filter at 600Hz and the lowpass to 10kHz. This prevents the reverb from smearing all over the subsonics and creating unnatural highs. Give it a try – it works great!
Absolutely, this is a very useful technique. I almost always EQ my reverb effects and delays too. I generally don’t high pass as high as 600Hz and tend to set my low pass a little lower, but it all depends upon the mix and personal taste. Great tip, thanks!
Hello Mr. Pat. Your tip might look intuitive but the truth is I wasn`t aware of the existence of this Abbey Roads technique… and didn`t use is. So thank`s for the advice!
Hey Stephen, do you have a preference of when to use reverb and when to use delay on a vocal – do you like to combine them?
Great question Pat. I can’t remember the last time that I didn’t combine a delay and a reverb on a vocal in a music mix. I almost always use both together.
The crazyest thing I´ve done untill now with reverb was to aply it to an entire song (and I mean all the instruments and voices) as if it was being played on a large empyt hall.
Why? Because after recording all the individual tracks and making a raw (should say bad) and rushed mix, my current DAW cracked-down and all I could save of that work was a bad balanced recording in wich the voice sometimes was very loud and with no effects at all. When I finnaly got a new DAW, tried to recover that song by using compression and reverb on the entire mix and, guess what? I was very happy with the result! Maybe this “little accident” has helped me walking through some of the useful aspects of reverb…
PS: great article!
Wow – that sounds pretty intense! A good way to save a mix for you 🙂 Glad you liked the article 🙂
Not only I`ve recovered that song without recording all it`s tracks again from scratch but also made a, let`s say video, based on it`s lyrics and using this “space” to create the right ambience!! If you ever feel curiouse about the result one uf this days, just let me know! 😉 I think it would give a nice 8 minutes movie session for you and your fammily… (and you could always anounce: “Look what some crasy Portuguese sent me”) 😀
Stay well.
I use separate Aux buses for Drum, Vocal, and Main reverbs, and also one for vocal delay, because I’ve found that different instruments need different reverb settings. And I always start with EQ High and Low pass filters in the chain before the reverb plug-ins. For example, I use a HPF between 150-300Hz on my Drum Reverb aux bus. My favorite Reverb plug-in is the Waves H-Reverb Stereo which was very affordable, or sometimes I use the Manny Marroquin Reverb ($29). For drums, I usually start with a default set at 100% wet, no pre-delay, about 30% build-up (against maximum), and a 2 second reverb time with a 40% Tail. For drums, I don’t use any input/output echoing, dynamics, or modulation and then apply it to my kick or snare track – bringing the volume up to where it’s obviously too much and then backing off until it’s just right. My favorite is to try and find that small to medium drum room sound. For vocals, I work the delay first and then cut in just enough Hall reverb (3 to 4 sec reverb time with some minor build-up) to get the desired placement in the mix. For other non-lead instruments, I try and keep the reverb time between 2-4 seconds, and just enough volume to escape the “dry” sound. Hope this helps
That’s really helpful John. You know your system well and I really appreciate you sharing your advice. Really valuable stuff. Thanks so much!
Thanks for another good article, Stephen. Above all these practical tips that really work, we should definitely use and trust our ears, our taste respectively – plus putting some good sense when it comes to verbing.
Thanks Ivan. You’re completely right! Love your use of “verbing”.
I often try to use reverb to smudge a sound, a pad that kind of thing, and that works sometime. Always try to time the pre-delay with the speed of the song, but interested in the idea of delay taking things out of time. I have had mixes where it feels like things have changed speed when something comes in, snare maybe, so will watch out for that. Only other think I have observed, in my not very well treated room, is what sounds good on the monitors sounds rubbish on the headphones, so I always use the bins for trying to tame any too wild reverbs. Great article Stephen, thanks for putting it out there.
Thanks Scobi. I like the way you describe “smudging” a sound. It’s really accurate way of looking at the technique. Yes, headphones can be invaluable when it comes to dialling in reverbs and delays. Great comment! Glad you liked the article.