Reverb?

[Bruce Swedien]

ryst....

 

That's my pal David Hasselhoff on your thing.... I did an album with him a few years back. He's a great guy. We had a very good time. You should see the "making of" video that was shot in my studio. You would be very proud of me being kind and polite with David trying to get him to sing in tune!

 

A few short words about reverberation in our daily life! I would like to see you get a good basic understanding of the subject. Then as you develop your skills you will be able to make very meaningful recordings that sound like YOU! Not like all the other doo-doo recordings that are out there!

 

Most of the time we are unaware of how much of the sound that we hear comes from reflections from environmental surfaces. Even when we are out of doors, a significant amount of sonic energy is reflected back to the ears by the ground and nearby structures. Even by surrounding vegetation. We only begin to notice these reflections when the time delay is more than about 30- to 50-ms, in which case we become consciously aware of them as individual sounds and call them echos.

 

Special rooms called anechoic chambers are built as research rooms to absorb reflected sound energy. In an anechoic chamber, in a test situation, only the directly radiated sound energy reaches the ears.

 

Upon entering an anechoic chamber for the first time, most people are astonished by how much softer and duller any sound source sounds.If reflected sound is so common in an ordinary acoustic environment, Ive always wondered why these reflections dont interfere with our ability to localize sound sources.

 

I guess its because our binaural hearing sense can quickly adapt to a new acoustic environment.

 

I do know that our hearing system uses only partially understood mechanisms to suppress the effects of reflections and reverberation. The fact that we localize sound sources on the basis of which signals reach our ears first, is known as the precedence effect. This is not to say that we are unaware of the reflections that follow. Actually, we subconsciously use the subsequent reflections to estimate range, or the distance we are from the sound source. In my opinion, a music producer/engineer is no better than his tools. Our main tools are, of course, a good pair of ears and the wonderful brain to which the ears are connected. If the hearing is faulty, only faulty judgements can result. Please try and remember that good hearing is a rare and wonderful gift.

 

I am frequently asked about listening to music in the studio, day after day, and what monitor volume levels I use, and the effect, if any, it has had on my hearing. All through my career I have been extremely careful about high volume levels.

 

I carry ear protectors in my brief case and when someone wants to hear something louder than I think is safe for my hearing I use my hearing protectors.

 

I do love to hear something loud from time to time, but I have been very careful not to exceed the OSHA reccomendations.

 

Bruce Swedien

 

[ryst]

Lee and Bruce: Thanks so much. And to everyone else here too. i am slowly "getting it" The key word there is "slowly". Now Bruce, can you please continue talking about binaural recording on this thread?

 

http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/1/t/024737.html

 

I am really interested in recording binaurally and your input and stories would be fabulous!

[aeon]

I think what Bruce said is so valuable...that for a beginning understanding, you need to study and listen to the world around you. Clap your hands in public spaces to generate an "impulse" if you can, and listen to the way the early reflections and any reverb body sound.

 

That said, I tend to like reverb in situations and music styles where its use is usually not to recreate an acoustic place, but give an impressionistic aural painting of a place.

 

When it comes to how I might tweak a digital reverb for a part in a mix, all I can say is that only the most general things apply to all of them, and really, when it comes to making those reverbs work, you have to become intimate with each manufacturer's algorithms, because they are so different among one another, and what one might do well, another may do very poorly, and vice versa.

 

I agree with what Lee said about post-EQ, but in general, I tend to keep my HF rolloffs in the range of 3-4KHz for the reverb's cutoff and for the filters inside the recirculant delay network (tail), if that control is available, and I tend to like making use of the reverb's internal crossovers and multipliers, so my reverb output is fairly well-shaped anyway. Perhaps more important is the send-EQ; being able to control what enters the reverb can be invaluable in terms of reducing resonances and making the aux return "fit."

 

For that matter, I think it can be important to do more extensive processing before and after the reverb. For example, using a colored delay unit that has some warm smear as your predelay control can be lovely. Also, experiment with post-processing tools...everything from a shimmering light chorus to a triggered phaser can work. Also do not neglect dynamics processing of the sends and returns.

 

I love how modern reverbs with dense ER patterns can be applied per mix element/submix, and because you can use it with no tail (and just use the localization of the ERs) you can be liberal with its use, and it never gets muddy or pushes mix elements to the back. This is perhaps more "ambience" than reverb, but regardless, I appreciate not being stuck with the diffuse metallic washes of the early 80s.

 

That said, Sigur Ros' use of the AMS RMX16 is a treat!

 

The controls that seem to get tweaked for just about every digital reverb I use are predelay, decay time, size (of space), HF rolloff, diffusion (thickness), imaging (some control for shape, bloom, stereo width, etc.).

 

I never try to use reverb as a substitute for an actual acoustic space, as I see them as very different things. I tend to think reverb is to real acoustic space as a MiniMoog is to a Precision Bass...both can be used to do some of the same things, but they would never be mistaken for one another, and ultimately, each will serve a different feel and style.

 

I'd love to own a higher-end Eventide and actually have a platform on which to design my own reverberant structures and algorithms!

 

 

cheers,

aeon

[KenElevenShadows]

Originally posted by aeon:

 

That said, Sigur Ros' use of the AMS RMX16 is a treat!

So is the ambience from the emptied-out swimming pool that they recorded "( )" in.

 

Absolutely beautiful use of reverb on an absolutely beautiful CD.

[KenElevenShadows]

Originally posted by Bruce Swedien:

Ive always wondered why these reflections dont interfere with our ability to localize sound sources.

 

I guess its because our binaural hearing sense can quickly adapt to a new acoustic environment.

It's largely about Darwinism!

[Bruce Swedien]

Ken/Eleven Shadows sez-------->Ah, but I was having you on! My "plug-ins" ARE my living room, bedroom, and kitchen!!!

 

Brucie sez-------> I should have known!!!

 

Brucie the Viking!!!

[alfonso]

I'm using mostly this one:

http://sonictimeworks.com/a_100.php

 

this one:

http://sonictimeworks.com/p_100.php

 

that are absolutely excellent, but I discovered a real treasure after replacing all the supply caps and dropping a small amount of nail laquer on the hooks of the springs of my 35 year old Davoli Krundaal Spring reverb, hooking it as external loop effect to my Scope mixer, controlled by a modular patch containing send and return EQ, 2 envelope followers driven by the sent signal to design anything from a short ambient to a long cave and even pseudo reverse, with the nice add-on that when the tail is off its vintage -72 db noise floor is off too.

 

My guitars never sounded better, but I can use it on a lot of stuff...and I do really!

[KenElevenShadows]

I just recorded a sort of jazzy pop band, and put one room mic up for the drums. When I brought that "fader" up, the guitarist went wild and said, "Oh, my gosh, that makes everything sound so good!!!"

 

Couldn't help but think of this thread after that comment.

 

Natural reverb, a wonderful thing.

[aeon]

Do you really get reverb at home, Ken?

 

I mean, even a good-size living room is still usually nothing more than early reflections once there is furniture and whatnot in it.

 

Usually, I find that a room has to:

 

1. have the right (hard) surfaces, and

2. has to be a certain size

 

before I can actually get reverb out of it.

 

And then, given the fact I usually can't move the walls in real-time or change their coverings, I can't control predelay, RT60, or rolloff! (hehe)

 

 

cheers,

aeon

[alfonso]

Having equipped rooms, corridors, caves...wow, that would be incredible, easy for a tycoon, but reverb has to be also a creative tool and offer something more than small conventional spaces and strict euclidean geometries...

 

Remaining in a stereo representation, reverb is also distance and movement, illusion and emotion.

 

I need artificial reverberation to have all that.

[KenElevenShadows]

Originally posted by aeon:

Do you really get reverb at home, Ken?

 

I mean, even a good-size living room is still usually nothing more than early reflections once there is furniture and whatnot in it.

I'm kinda goofing around by saying that, but at the same time, trying to make a point about depth and space. Sure, it's "reverb" in the sense that a living room is has a certain depth and dimension to that, and I am trying to take advantage of that by placing room mics to capture that. It's not reverb in the sense that it has a long decay or anything like that...

 

But the point is to use the space that you do have to create that sense.

 

And you'd be surprised at how large I can make a simple, decent-sized living room be by using a room mic or two and nuking the track with some serious compression. I always get people thinking that I've just added reverb to the drums when I do this. But no.....it's compression. Instant Bonham!

 

Today, I used a lot of the room sound for two people, one playing acoustic guitar, and the other across the room singing. It sounds gorgeous and spacious yet intimate. There's a real sense of the room, and I love it. The Lawson L251 for the vocals was in omni, and I used two AT4051s in X-Y on the Taylor acoustic guitar. Freakin' gorgeous. It really has a great deal of space while still hearing the brush of the shirt on the guitar and the width of the X-Y spacing on the guitar. And this isn't "reverb" as in "Wow, it sounds like it's in a cathedral!", but in yet, I think you can kinda picture the room, and that's a sort of reverb, isn't it?

[KenElevenShadows]

Originally posted by alfonso:

Having equipped rooms, corridors, caves...wow, that would be incredible, easy for a tycoon, but reverb has to be also a creative tool and offer something more than small conventional spaces and strict euclidean geometries...

 

Remaining in a stereo representation, reverb is also distance and movement, illusion and emotion.

 

I need artificial reverberation to have all that.

You can indeed do some amazing things with artificial reverb.