Get That Pro Sound -

The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

First Edition

Publication date: August 2012

Published by George Robinson
Getthatprosound.com

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Contents
1. Introduction........................................................................................ 4
What Is Reverb, & Why Is It Useful?
2. Types of Reverb.................................................................................. 6
Algorithmic
Convolution
Modelled
3. Anatomy of a Reverb Plugin............................................................. 7
Key Reverb Parameters
Other Common Parameters
Plugin Preset Categories
4. Selecting, Setting Up & Tweaking A Reverb Plugin...................... 11
Nine Steps
5.Reverb Strategies: Assigning Reverbs to Instruments................ 15
No Reverb!
The Two-Reverb Approach
Three-Reverb Approach #1: Vocals, Drums & Instruments
Three-Reverb Approach #2: Fore/Mid/Background..................... 17
Foreground
Middleground
Background ‘Cathedral’ Reverb
6. 25 Reverb Pro Tips............................................................................19
7. Conclusion......................................................................................... 26

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Introduction
What Is Reverb, & Why Is It Useful?
Reverberation occurs naturally, and is the effect of sound waves reflecting off the surfaces
they come into contact with – the walls and ceiling in a typical room, for example – and mix-
ing or overlapping to varying degrees with the original sound. If you were in that room and
clapped your hands, you would hear a combination of the original, direct sound, very closely
followed by the reflected sound bouncing back off the walls around you.

Different surfaces reflect the sound in different ways – bouncing some frequencies back and
absorbing others, for example. What’s more, the further away the surfaces are from each other
and the listener, the longer it will take for the reflections to be heard after the initial sound.
Our brains use this information – how long it takes for reflections to reach us after the original
sound, the frequency content of those reflections, and how many of them there are – to deter-
mine what sort of space we are in. This is why a huge stone cathedral sounds, and significantly
for us, feels, completely different to standing in the middle of a quiet forest. Even if you were
blindfolded, you could tell where you are just by clapping your hands and listening to the reflec-
tions (or lack thereof).

As music producers, this psycho-acoustic

effect of reverb is one of our most pow- Speaker
erful allies in creating the most emotive
and effective sense of space and place
in the mind of the listener. Manipulating
the spatial information that is part of
each sound is a fundamental component
of any track, enabling us to ‘glue’, blend
or separate individual parts from each Direct sound
other, and adding a particular vibe to
the track as a whole.
Early reflection

Figure 1: Room reflections. Because

room surfaces reflect sound, we
hear not only the direct sound from
the speaker but also the indirect, Listener
reflected sound, slightly later. This
happens both as discrete, ‘early’ Early reflection
Reverb waves
reflections, and also as ‘washes’ of
smoother reverb.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Now reverb is not the most obvious effect – most typical listeners are not going to be con-
sciously aware of the effects of reverb and what it is contributing to your mixes, or how they
are unconsciously drawing spatial information from how you’ve treated your sounds. But far
from being less exciting than compression or some of the more obvious in-your-face effects and
processes, the way that reverb works mostly on a subtle, psycho-acoustic level makes it some-
thing of a secret weapon. When you’ve mastered the key tricks and techniques, you’ll be able
to manipulate the apparent size, tone and overall atmosphere of your tracks like a magician
playing with his audience: You can convince your listeners that the music you make, on even
the most basic setup, in the smallest rooms, comes across like a huge, stadium-filling jugger-
naut. Or just as easily, you can simply create a flattering, cohesive ‘environment’ in which to
plant your track, bringing a sense of it being rooted in a tangible space.

As we use panning to position individual parts left or right, we can use reverb to locate ele-
ments of the music on the front to back axis.
Generally, the more reverb you add to an instrument, the further away it will sound, which can
really help to place it in context with other sounds in the track. Your mixes can take on a hyper-
real depth with good use of reverb – especially when used in conjunction with EQ and com-
pression, which we’ll cover in the tips section later in the book.

Photo: Pat Ong

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Types of Reverb
Algorithmic, Convolution, & Modelling
There are different types of reverb units and plugins to choose from because of the different
approaches that have been created to artificially simulate natural reverb. Before electronic units
and computer plugins, electro-mechanical spring and plate reverbs and echo chambers were
the only ways to introduce reverb to recordings. Fortunately things have moved on considerably
since then, but these older mechanical reverbs had a charm and sound of their own that is still
sought after in the digital domain. This is where emulations and vintage modelling plugins come
in.

Algorithmic reverbs use calculations based on hypothetical rooms and other spaces to
generate their reverb sounds. Generally this gives a sharper, more artificial sound, typified by
most hardware digital reverbs of the last 30 years. This is not necessarily a bad thing though –
musically we’re not always after the most ‘natural’ sound, but the one that has the right ‘char-
acter’ for the track. In fact, algorithmic reverb can be easier to place in a mix because it isn’t as
realistic as convolution reverb! Algorithmic reverbs also tend to be the lightest on the compu-
ter’s CPU, a significant consideration when you’re using several instances in a busy mix.

Convolution reverbs use pre-recorded samples of real rooms and spaces to build Impulse
Response (IR) files of those spaces. The impulse response is then ‘convolved’ with the incoming
audio signal you want to process, hence the name.
Convolution reverbs then, are generally far better at simulating real spaces than algorithmic
reverbs – the only major downside is that they also require significantly more CPU processing
power.
Generally then you’ll want to use convolution reverb where a lifelike quality is important – for
example, you can simulate the effect of a set of ambient room mics (more on how to this on the
following pages). Convolution reverb can take a bit more work to sit in the mix than a good algo-
rithmic reverb – it can easily be a bit heavy in the low mids and lack high-end sparkle, as this is
how real reverb tends to sound.

Modelling reverbs are designed to replicate the characteristics of particular vintage hard-
ware reverb units, such as the Universal Audio EMT 140 modelled on a real mechanical EMT
plate reverb, or the spring reverb emulations found in many guitar amp plugins. These vintage
reverbs can provide a fantastic contrast to the relatively soulless digital perfection of algorithmic
or convolution reverbs, bringing additional character and nice tonal shaping to whatever you
run through them.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Anatomy Of A Reverb Plugin

Main Controls, Terminology & Programs
Even if you understand the principles of reverb, it can be a bit intimidating when you’re first
confronted with so many individual knobs and controls on a plugin interface in your DAW.
Where do you start, and how can you use each control to give you just the right sound for your
parts and mixes? Let’s start by dissecting a typical plugin and demystify all the controls and
parameters – once you get your head around these essential components of every reverb, you’ll
be able to quickly get to grips with any reverb plugin you like:

Key Reverb Parameters

The important reverb parameters generally placed under user control are: early reflection pat-
tern, pre-delay time, overall decay time and high-frequency damping.

Pre-delay refers to the time between when the original sound starts and when you hear the
first of the reverbs ‘early reflections’. The greater the pre-delay time, the larger the perceived
room size: imagine how in a large space such as a hall or a cathedral it will take longer for the
sound to reflect back as it has more distance to travel.
Increase the pre-delay time to put a bit of separation between the original sound and the
reverb – this way you get the spatial benefits of reverb without it cluttering or masking the mix
(particularly useful for vocals and lead lines).

Early reflections are the first distinct echoes heard at the onset of the reverb.
No early reflections are heard until the sound has reached the nearest wall or obstacle and
reflected back to the listener. This initial delay between the direct sound and the first reflected
sound provides what is perhaps the strongest clue as to the room size: if the reflection returns
as a distinct echo, it suggests that the reflective surface is both solid and flat. A more diffuse
echo (one with less pronounced individual reflections) suggests irregular surfaces.
The greater the spacing of the early reflections, the larger the ‘space’ sounds.

Reverb time or decay time refers to the time it takes for the reverb tail to dissipate into
silence. It’s not actually very easy to say when a reverberant signal finally disappears, so there’s
a standard measurement of reverb decay known as RT60: this sounds like a component of some
complex equation, but it simply means the time taken for the level of the reverb to decay by
60dB. Simple!
Long decay times work well on sustained sounds but. When you first start playing with reverb it
seems obvious that a long overall reverb decay time is the best way to create the impression of

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

a large environment – but this is also the quickest way of filling up all the gaps in your track and
creating a big mush. In fact, as already mentioned above, as much depends here on the early
reflections to tell us how big a space seems to be. For example, a small tiled bathroom will be
very reflective and so may have almost as long a decay time as a large hall – but the nature of
the early reflections and the brightness of the following reverb tail are what give us the clues as
to the room’s actual size. Speaking of brightness…

High-frequency damping allows the high frequency decay time of the reverb tail to be
made shorter than the overall decay time. This emulates the way the surfaces and materials in
real rooms absorb certain frequencies. Adjust this parameter for more or less realism, and also
to colour the reverb as ‘bright’ or ‘dark’ to fit it into the mix (more on this shortly). It is basically
a high-shelf EQ built into the reverb, but you could certainly use a separate EQ plugin for this
after the reverb for greater control if needed.

Low-frequency damping often appears next to the high-frequency damping control.

This can be very useful for shelving off some muddying lows and mids and help you shape the
reverb to fit the part and the track overall.

Mix or Wet/Dry controls are simply where you choose the proportions of the original
sound and the reverbed sound. If you have your reverb plugin set up as a send effect, the Mix
knob should be set to 100% / Wet, as you’ll be controlling the proportions based on how much
level you send from each individual track.

Other Common Parameters

The Size control actually changes a few parameters simulataneously behind the scenes, but
it’s most audible effect can be the way it spaces out the early reflections: as we already men-
tioned, the greater the spacing of these discrete echoes, the larger the room will sound.

Related to the above Size control, Reverb Density refers to the density of the reflections
making up the reverb component of the sound. The more tightly packed the individual reflec-
tions, the higher the reverb density. Lower densities can produce coarse-sounding reverbs on
percussive sounds but are often flattering to vocals and other non-percussive sounds. High-den-
sity reverbs tend to sound more natural on drums and percussion.

Related to Density is Diffusion, which determines the rate at which the reflections increase in
density after the original sound. A large, square room with flat surfaces might have a relatively
low diffusion rate compared to a room of similar size covered in irregularly shaped surfaces –

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

this is why concert halls typically feature lots of pillars and intricate alcoves, and also highlights
why acoustic foam in irregular shapes is used so much in studios (including yours, hopefully!).

On some reverb plugins you might have the option of controlling the Shape of the reverb
decay curve. This is getting into the realms of details that might not be that useful for musicians,
but acousticians would argue that decay shapes are significant to great, natural-sounding reverb
(apparently many of the best-sounding spaces exhibit a double decay characteristic separated
by a short plateaux). If you have the option, play around with this control and see what it can do
for you.

Plugin Preset Categories

Now that we’ve introduced the main parameters used to create and control reverb, it will make
far more sense to look at each of the typical preset categories and begin to understand precisely
how and why a Hall sounds different to a small room or a vintage plate reverb unit.

Room / Hall / Chamber: The first reverb effects used for recorded music were created
with echo chambers - a loudspeaker would play the sound back in the chamber, and a micro-
phone would pick it up again, including the echo of the room itself. The same principle still
applies for simulated ‘room’ and ‘hall’ reverbs -you’re capturing the ambience of a particularly
sized and shaped space.
For example, for a typical hall reverb that simulates the acoustics of large spaces such as concert
halls, the reverb density would tend to build up over time and there will be a long reverb tail.
A hall reverb can make sounds seem further away, so it’s of great use in putting some front-to-
back perspective into a mix. A room reverb, on the other hand, generally simulates a smaller
space than a hall and is a good all-round reverb for instruments. Chamber reverb can be good
for putting some ‘air’ around synths, sampled drums and DI’d instruments.
Plate: After echo chambers came plate reverb, used a lot in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Plate reverbs
use a transducer to create vibrations across a large ‘plate’ of sheet metal. A pickup captures
the vibrations as they bounce across the plate, and the result is output again as an audio signal.
Plate reverb tends to be bright and clean-sounding – good for vocals and drums – and is making
something of a revival recently.
Spring: Uses a similar principle to that of plate reverb, but with a metal spring instead of a
plate. A transducer at one end and a pickup at the other are used to create and then capture
vibrations within the spring. Being compact and relatively cheap to manufacture, many guitar
amp designs ended up incorporating a spring reverb unit. Spring reverb adds a distinctive metal-

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

lic colouration to the sound, and in the days of classic rock ‘n’ roll it was known that you could
shake the reverb cabinet while recording so that the springs clashed together for a properly
unhinged sound. I wouldn’t recommend attempting this with a plugin version though…
Gated reverb: This effect was originally created by taking the reverb in an actual room, heavily
compressing it, and using a noise gate to cut it abruptly rather than let the sound decay over
time. Now it can easily be created with a reverb plugin too, with precise control over the exact
length of the reverb. Gated reverb can be quite aggressive and sound very reminiscent of the
80’s if you’re not careful – but it can still work wonders powering up snare drums or for giving
guitars an extra edge.

Non-Linear and Reverse reverb: Refers to particularly unnatural but cool-sounding

reverb presets that can be used for unusual effects, such as reverse reverb that seems to build
up in level rather than decay after the original sound. Reverse reverb is actually a variation on
gated reverb, where a reverse-type envelope (slow attack, fast decay) is applied to the early re-
flections cluster. Like gated reverb, the main parameter is the time taken for the reverb to build
up and cut off. The effect gives the sound being processed a cool ‘backwards’ feel, even though
nothing is actually being reversed.
By the way, real reverse reverb (that actually starts before the dry sound) can easily be created
in your DAW by first reversing your source material; then applying the reverb and bouncing/
reimporting the file onto a new track; and then flipping this new file so its ‘facing’ the right way
again, and bringing it up underneath the original material to taste.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Selecting, Setting Up &

Tweaking A Reverb Plugin
OK, so now we know exactly what does what, and by looking at the presets we can see how
varying the combinations of settings gives us a whole range of spatial options. But what is the
process we should go through in order to construct the perfect reverb setting for our own
unique applications?

As you begin setting up a reverb, stop and think for a moment: what kind of space are you
imagining? What kind of characteristics would a real space like this have? Approaching reverb
in this way can save you a lot of time and safeguard against falling into unstructured preset-
surfing, hoping to stumble across the right sound by accident. Believe me, in the long run it’s a
lot quicker to spend some time learning the few essential steps and approaching your reverb
settings in a strategic way.

1. Choose the Reverb Type & Configure It In Your DAW

From the descriptions above and having even a very quick play with different reverb plugins,
you’ll soon get a feel for what type of reverb – algorithmic, convolution or modelled – will suit
your needs for particular sounds.
So, having asked yourself what you actually want the size and space to sound like, whether you
want it add brightness or body to the part being processed or to set it back in the mix a lit-
tle; whether you want it to sound very natural, sparkly or otherwise particularly characterful,
choose a plugin and set it up as a send or effect channel (the terms will be different depending
on your DAW). Reverb is almost always best applied via a send-return effect configuration like
this, so that a single plugin can be accessed from multiple channels in your mix. Also check two
important things before going on:
A) The reverb plug-in should be set to 100% Wet so it’s only outputting processed effect – oth-
erwise you’ll end up inadvertently boosting the channels overall level too. Turn all the way
down or switch off Dry signal in the reverb GUI (again, different plugins will have slightly differ-
ent controls and terminology).
B) Make sure the individual channels sending to the reverb are set to post-fader. This means
that the balance of wet and dry sound will remain constant if you adjust the send channel’s
main fader, and you won’t have any ghostly reverb shadows remaining in the mix if you fade out
the channel completely at any point. (Pre-fader can be good when turning the send channel all
the way down for disembodied pad effects).

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

2. Select A Preset To Start With

This is an optional step bepending on how confident and in-depth you want to go with your
own programming here. Don’t be afraid of using presets to get you in the ballpark of the sound
you’re aiming for quickly – just don’t use presets as an excuse not to tweak the reverb to make
it fit as well as it possibly can.
Also, don’t interpret preset names too rigidly: just because a setting is called Small Room or
Drum Plate doesn’t mean it can’t be almost exactly what you had in mind for your synth lead.

When selecting a starting sound, what’s most important is the overall acoustic signature and the
amount of reverb being applied. If the frequency balance seems a little off, you can correct and
tidy things up with EQ later. Keep things as large brushstrokes at this point, it’s all too easy to
get bogged down in minor parameter adjustments!

3. Set The Early Reflections

The part of a reverb that is primarily responsible for its blending effect is roughly its first half-
second. So whenever you try a new preset, reduce its length straight away to home in on the
blending characteristics. If you have independent level controls for Early Reflections and Reverb
Tail, pulling down the latter should help too. It doesn’t matter exactly how short you make the
reverb for the moment—just shorten it enough to make it into a brief, well-defined burst of
reflections rather than an echoey decay tail.

4. Set The Predelay And Early Reflections

Remember, if you want the impression of a longer/larger reverb, try playing with the pre-delay
before extending the reverb decay time. This slight seperation of the reverb tail from the direct
sound makes a huge difference in reducing mix clutter and improving clarity.
If you want the reverb to act more as a subtle blending/thickening agent, at this stage you might
also want to try boosting the early reflections and significantly reducing the tail to check it has
the necessary tonal character.

Another significant thing to be aware of is that you can link the pre-delay time to the track tem-
po – this can be particularly important for EDM productions, where everything possible should
enhance and work within the groove.
If your bpm is 120, you have one quarter note every 500ms. You have one eighth note every 250
ms. You have one sixteenth note every 125ms, you have one 32nd note every 63ms. 64th notes
at 32ms. In order to have the predelay trigger the reverb in a rhythmic fashion, it needs to be at
one of these measures. I’d go with 32 or 63ms, because we want the reverb to still feel attached

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb
to it’s source sound. Also, you notice how I
rounded up? That’s to put the reverb “behind
the beat.” This helps create a rhythmic pocket.
I might even suggest moving the predelay
higher a couple ms, just to make that pocket
a bit more open, and so that the reverb isn’t
sounding at exactly the same time as the next
beat in the music.
If you do actually want to push sounds back in
the mix, the less pre-delay the reverb has, the
more the it will appear to pull the sound back
in the mix. With no pre-delay at all, the sound
will appear to be right up against the rear wall
of your ‘room’
Try starting off with 10 to 20ms of prede-
lay, aiming on the shorter side for a more
intimate-sounding space and on the longer
side for a more spacious virtual acoustic, and
then to refine the setting up to a few millisec-
onds either side of that initial setting for tonal
reasons.
5. Set Reverb Decay Time
It’s quite normal to tweak this setting by ear
at this point – but you can also, again, apply
some mathematical logic as we did for the
pre-delay. If we want our reverb to rhythmical-
ly help pull us into the next beat, we want the
reverb decay / tail length to fit into the correct
amount of time between the notes. Going
back to our 120 bpm example, you know that
there will be a 250ms gap between each 1/8
note. So, taking 250ms and of course subtract-
ing the pre-delay (let’s say 34ms) gives us a
rhythmically-related decay time of 216ms. At
first the difference between this and another
less precise amount may sound negligable,
but once you’ve potentially compressed the
reverb, the send channel, the group it’s routed
to, and the master buss, you will notice the
difference! >>
>> In many other instances though you’ll want
to use a reverb with a longer decay than this -
less of a tight rhythmic room slap and more of
a bigger resonance. In our 120bpm example,
try dialling in a 2-second decay – that is, four
500ms quarter notes, or one beat of a bar.
Remember that whether you use calculations
like this or just find the settings by ear is pure-
ly a matter of what works best for you. Either
way, once you’ve set a starting decay time, it’s
time to do some quick A/B comparisons with
the dry sound – mute and unmute the reverb,
fade it up and down, generally get a feel for
whether it’s contributing to the original sound.
Finally, if you feel it’s working, leave it faded
up at a comfortably level underneath the dry
sound.
6. Set The Size
The size control will affect the tightness and
tone of the reverb sound. It’s mostly a matter
of taste, but you can try dividing the reverb
time by ten, and using this as a ballpark size
in feet for your room. Then adjust the size up
for a more spacey sound; down for more of a
tighter echo.
7. Set Density & Diffusion
These parameters essentially control whether
the reverb is heard either as a series of dis-
crete echoes or a denser, smoother tail of
reverb – how scattered the sound waves are.
This is useful for further matching the reverb
‘presence’ and tone to the dry instrument,
and also again for helping push sounds fur-
ther back in the mix (greater diffusion) with-
out lengthening the reverb itself. Typically,
smooth, dense reverbs tend to suit percussive
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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

sounds, while grainier, less diffuse reverb settings will work better on less percussive instru-
ments like vocals and guitars. That said, the relatively dense sound of vintage plate reverb also
sounds great on vocals, so it’s worth experimenting to see which works best.

8. Stereo Width Adjustment

Remember that you have the option to pan the reverb seperately from the original dry sound,
which opens up quite a few possibilities. For example, if you want your reverb to help glue the
mix together, panning the reverb quite wide gives the impression of the whole mix being en-
compassed and surrounded by it, in the same acoustic space.
Or, you might want to keep the reverb relatively narrow and focused to stop things getting too
cluttered in a busier mix. Experiment with panning the reverb to the same stereo position as
the dry sound and then moving it away and around the stereo field: hear how, in the context of
the mix you can use the reverb element of a sound like a ‘highlighter’ or diffuser, depending on
what works best.

9. Set Damping And Insert An EQ

Generally you’ll want to remove any frequencies below about 300Hz from the reverb return –
these will just add mud to the mix and clutter the valuable lower region, which should be kept
clear for the bass and kick drum (that both work best with no reverb almost all the time).
You might also want to cut away some of the very highest frequencies, which will help sit the
reverb better in the mix and stop it drawing too much attention to itself.

Beyond these basic adjustments, consider how much of the frequency spectrum you want the
reverb to take up, and whether you want the reverb to be bright (synthetic, glittery, cool) or
dark (natural, rich, warm). As already mentioned, bright-sounding reverb will push its way to the
front of the mix and make its presence felt which can be good for EDM lead synths, for example.
But place a bright acoustic guitar through that same reverb and it just won’t sound right. Dark
reverb, on the other hand, tends to have a more natural, receding quality to it, sitting behind
the instrument and not cluttering the high end of the mix in the same way.

Of course there’s nothing to stop you using a reverb that’s both warm and bright. The only
problem is that if the reverb fills the whole frequency spectrum there will be less space left for
your actual instruments. You’ll generally get much more professional-sounding results by limit-
ing the reverb sound to a specific frequency region, as you would any other musical part, and
letting the complete mix work in combination to fill the spectral landscape. Remember that you
might also need to bring up the overall level of the reverb return once you’ve cut out some of
it’s frequency content like this.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Reverb Strategies
Assigning Reverbs to Instruments – How Many Reverbs?
So, I’m sure you know by now that reverb can be a powerful part of your mixing arsenal. But,
how do we best use it in the context of a complete mix?
It’s easy to find yourself applying a reverb to one part and it sounding great – but then, send-
ing another instrument to the same reverb sounds awful, and you end up wanting to change
the reverb settings, undoing the good sound you originally achieved.

How do we get enough ‘blend’ on some in-

struments while avoiding muddying the mix
overall, or increase the perceived sustain
of one part while not making the rest of
the track sound like boomy mush? Clearly,
a one-size-fits-all, single reverb approach
doesn’t work for long. At the same time,
you don’t want to have a separate reverb
for every single track in your mix: that
would just become unmanageable (and
extremely CPU-intensive!) very quickly.
It is for these reasons that the best ap-
proach is usually to set up several different
reverb effects on one song – this way, you
can have each of them doing subtley dif-
ferent jobs, and you won’t get stuck trying
to make a single reverb plugin achieve all
of the enhancements you want. Once you
have some reverbs set up for specialized
tasks, it’s more straightforward to apply
them in just the right combinations to
achieve the best overall reverb sound for
your mixes.
As ever, there are no rules: use reverb
across your mix however you feel sounds
best. But probably the most common over-
all approach to reverb for a typical track (or
as a starting point) is to set up two, three or
four different reverbs on different sends/ef-
fect channels, thinking of them in tiers that
graduate from short/dry to wet/long.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Use Your Reference Tracks!

When deciding which configuration of reverbs will suit your music best, try going back to your
reference tracks and listen carefully, making a note of which type of reverb you think is used on
which instruments or sections, and how many there might be overall. Learn by example. See my
post on How To Effectively Analyze Your Reference Tracks In 6 Steps for more tips on this.

Reverb Strategy #1: No Reverb!

Your first question should always be, Does it even need reverb? Don’t fire up your plugins with-
out thinking about it first. Lots of commercial tracks have next to no reverb at all, because they
already have enough blend, size and atmosphere as it is. If you’ve recorded parts live with fairly
loose, ambient miking (as opposed to close-miking which would minimise the natural sound
reflections of the recording space), you might not need reverb to achieve the desired effect.
Similarly, you might find the tighter, more distinct echoes of a delay effect work better in some
instances than reverb.

The Two-Reverb Approach

This setup is streamlined and relatively straightforward, but still flexible enough for many mixing
situations. One reverb would normally be set for a short, bright sound (probably a plate sound)
for drums and percussive sounds, whilst the other would be longer and warmer, providing a
nice rich quality for vocals and solo instruments. Plus there’s nothing stopping you sending
some instruments to both reverbs (percussive one first) for a bonus third spatial effect.

Three-Reverb Approach #1: Vocals, Drums & Instruments

Another popular strategy is to set up one reverb for vocals, another for drums and one more for
the rest of the instruments. Again, it can work to use more than one reverb on the same sound:
for instance a lead vocal might benefit from being treated with two reverbs layered up, one with
a short decay, one with a longer decay. The main thing to look out for as you do this is to make
sure the reverbs used don’t clash with each other and confuse the overall picture.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Three-Reverb Approach #2:

Fore/Mid/Background
This is my preferred approach in most cases – set up three reverbs, but rather than assigning
sounds to them based on instrument groupings, you essentially send sounds to them based on
where you want them to appear on the front-to-back, depth axis. Using a strategy like this can
really enhance the sense of space and depth in your tracks, whilst minimizing clutter and other
problems that can arise as you balance the mix. Let’s take a look at the uses of each of the three
reverbs in more detail:

Foreground Reverb
Our first, ‘foreground’ reverb will be ‘tight’, being made up of a short burst of early reflections
and a very short tail, to the point where it might be almost indistinguishable from the main
sound. This is fine though, as this reverb is for adding only a very discrete sense of space to
parts that otherwise we want to be quite upfront and uncluttered. In fact, short ‘ambience’
reverbs like this actually give sounds a sense of extra body and density, and are a favourite tool
of many pros for a pleasing ‘thickening’ effect of guitars, synths and drums.

Short reverbs have a number of distinct uses and musical advantages. Primarily, short reverbs
negate the clutter that longer reverb tails tend to bring. This is immediately noticeable on rhyth-
mic elements (like drums, for example, or rhythm guitar) when you need the reverb tail to fit
between the notes rather than smear itself across the entirety of the bar. Using a short reverb,
therefore, will retain all the punch of the rhythm section, but still provide some sense of acous-
tic space to sit your instruments in. It’s a bit like bringing up overhead mics on a live drum kit
recording: you get a subtle but important sense of the sounds being in a real acoustic environ-
ment.

Find some good ‘small room’ or ‘ambience’ presets on your chosen reverb plugin as a good
starting point. Tweak the wet/dry ratio and you’ll probably find that you only need relatively
small amounts of reverb to deliver the required ‘real space’ effect without it becoming too obvi-
ous. Also try tweaking the relative balance between the early reflections and the reverb tail,
so that you get more or less of the initial flutter of bright early reflections rather than the more
diffuse reverb tail.

We’ll also look at the ‘middle ground’, where reverb becomes a more noticeable effect, and how
finer details like the colour and type of reverb become so essential to the success of the results.
Finally, we’ll also explore some long cathedral-like reverbs and see how the extremities of the
effect can become a creative springboard for new sonic exploration.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Middleground Reverb
Middleground reverbs begin where the effect can be identified as a specific sound itself. A
good place to start is to select a preset with a distinct reverb tail of perhaps 1-2 seconds. With
this second of our three reverbs, the type and particular characteristics of the reverb become
far more audible, and therefore you’ll want to spend a little more time selecting just the right
sound to match your source material than you needed to for your shorter foreground effect.
This is where the character of your reverb strategy is expressed: try playing with the high and
low frequency damping controls to adjust how bright or dark the mid reverb will sound.

Background ‘Cathedral’ Reverb

The part we’ve all been waiting for: the sort of reverb that makes things sound truly huge. This
kind of reverb becomes a special effect, a feature of the mix in its own right. The thing to re-
member here is that used sparingly on a few select instruments or effect hits, massive reverb
will give a great sense of depth and contrast; but plaster it over too many elements in your mix
and we’re back to mush city.
Pushing reverb times beyond six seconds or more takes the effect into far more spacious and
dramatic territory, arguably making it perfect for sounds that need to sit at the rear of the mix
or for deliberate shock treatments (such as large ‘trailer’ hits, when reverb is used as a sound
effect in its own right).

Where your short reverb will be discrete and subtle, and your midground reverb quite disci-
plined as it needs to relate strongly to the source material, you can let your proverbial hair
down and be a bit more extreme with the wet return on your big background reverb.
In fact, one of my favourite ways for creating unique and atmospheric pads is to put sounds or
instrument notes through a massive reverb – 20-30 secs! – make the reverb send pre-fader and
turn the channel fader right down; now you have just the reverb return, creating an incredibly
ghostly and haunting wash that often sounds nothing like your original source sound. Listen to
Jon Hopkins album Insides or his soundtrack for the movie Monsters to hear masterful examples
of this effect in action. It also works really well on backing vocals and synth pads.

As with midground reverb, the timbral/textural qualities of your massive reverb will be even
more pronounced, so try a few different hall, cathedral and custom settings to start with.
A convolution reverb plugin such as Altiverb (a favourite of many pro studios) is the obvious
initial choice for long, natural reverb tails – there are many great IR files sourced from massive
cathedrals and suchlike. But don’t overlook trying an algorithmic or modelled reverb if you have
one, like the awesome Lexicon PCM plugin, whose super-long reverb seems to float with infinite
sustain.

Any super-long reverb will tend to work best if it’s relatively ‘dark’, with more pronounced high
and low frequency damping so that you don’t swamp the entire mix!

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb
25 Reverb
Pro Tips
1. When Is Reverb Not Reverb?
When It’s Ambience…
Modern music tends not to use a lot of very
obvious reverb but instead relies a lot on so-
called ambience algorithms. These recreate
the early reflections of a natural room but add
little or no reverb tail (certainly less than a sec-
ond), enabling them to create a sense of space
and solidarity without smothering the sound
in reverb. Ambience can be used to make
close-miked or synthesized sounds sit more
convincingly in a mix. Because the extra reflec-
tions add to the original sounds, percussive
parts treated with ambience often sound more
powerful. A dry sound, for example, will favour
short transients, but add in some reverb and
the kit will sound louder, with the reverb
adding body and sustain to each drum hit. It
can sound a bit like simulated overhead drum
mics. Vocals can also benefit from this form of
body-enhancing treatment, without the clutter
of a long reverb tail that also tends to push the
vocal to the back of the mix.Because most of
the work is done by the early reflections, there
may be fewer parameters to adjust than with
a normal reverb algorithm, pre-delay, duration
and brightness being the most important.
2. Compression & Reverb:
Provide Space Without Sacrificing
Upfrontness
Compression can be used to thicken, sustain
and otherwise make the reverb more punchy.
Compression can be a great solution to the
conundrum of wanting to push a sound fur-
ther back in the mix with a bit of reverb, but
without robbing it completely of its power and
presence in the mix (as reverb can also tend to
do). Compress the reverb tail and you get the
psycho-acoustic depth-creating effect of the
reverb while also keeping the sound present
and as upfront as you want.
3. Use Pre-delay To Keep
Sounds With Large Reverb
Upfront
This is worth repeating: In situations
where you want to use a large reverb
but keep the sound towards the front
of the mix, consider increasing the
reverb’s pre-delay time to around
70–150ms. Long pre-delay settings
will detach the reverb tail from its
source, allowing the original source to
sound up-front but still have a sense
of ambience floating behind it.
4. Worldising: Using Your
Own ‘Chamber’ Reverbs
Long before plugins and hardware
units, the only way to add reverb to
tracks was literally to play them back
in specially constructed ‘chambers’,
rooms lined with tiles or other re-
flective materials. The room would
contain a single speaker and and a
microphone: you’d play back your dry
sound on the speaker and record the
newly reverbed version to be rein-
serted back into the mix. The reverb
tone and time could be adjusted by
literally moving the speaker and/or
the microphone.
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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

In the 70’s, legendary film sound designer 5. Applying Other Effects To The
Walter Murch (THX 1138, American Graffiti,
The Conversation, Apocalypse Now) helped
Reverb Return
EQ isn’t the only effect to use in combination
develop the idea of reverb chambers further,
with your reverb – try setting up chains of
by going out into real-world spaces and re-
effects on your reverb send channels, such as
recording his sound designs in them. He didn’t
distortion, phasing, or any type of filter modu-
have the facilities or technology to make his
lation, and you can give stock sounds a charac-
work artificially match the atmosphere of a
ter all their own. To create a subtly shimmer-
futuristic underground highway, in the case of
ing reverb sound, try adding chorus, flanging
THX 1138 for example, so what did he do? He
or pitch shift to the reverb.
went to an actual subway terminal and re-
A great sound for synths and keys can be
recorded his designed tracks there.
achieved by treating the reverb with chorus
– this sounds completely different to simply
Worldizing is still used all the time by film
applying the chorus directly to the synth part,
sound designers and recordists. It’s a lot of
adding a nice subtle ‘swirling’ quality.
fun miking up speakers in all kinds of weird
You can also do the ‘reverse’ of this: adding
settings, from bathrooms to car interiors,
reverb to the return of other insert or send
stairwells, lift shafts and wheelie bins (just
effects. This works particularly well with delay
remember to take your gear out of the bin at
for a really classy and subtle overall effect.
the end!). You can learn a lot both about the
acoustics of different spaces in general, and
your own tracks in particular, and ultimately 6. Sometimes It’s Best To Get As
you’ll come up with 100% unique sounds and Far Away As Possible From Polite
instrument treatments. Try it with synth lines
and DI’d guitars: both of these usually start off
Blending
Listen to your reference tracks and you’ll no-
lacking any sense of ‘place’, so worldizing can
tice that many modern productions apply re-
work wonders for slipping them comfortably
verb only selectively – a lot of pop, urban, and
into a track.
electronic tracks benefit from some elements
being poorly blended, so that they’re right in
A related trick is to set up an ambient mic in
your face at the front of the mix.
the room where you’re making your original
recordings of live instruments. If you like the
sound of the room, you can use these ambient 7. How To Overcome The ‘Too
recordings of the same performance (as cap- Much Reverb’ Syndrome
tured by a cleaner, close mic) in the same way A classic mistake that inexperienced produc-
as you would for drum overheads: bring them ers make is to add too much reverb. When
up underneath the main tracks for instant, you first get into using reverb, you will make
natural room power. mistakes and add what seems like appropriate
amounts of reverb, only to listen back a couple
of days and wonder what you were thinking.
It’s easy to do. Sometimes, the more you listen

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

for it, the harder it is to hear it.

You get control of the reverb (and other effects) in your tracks only when you learn to listen con-
fidently. Relaxed, you’ll hear everything you need to hear, and, with experience you’ll know how
to adjust the controls accordingly. Give yourself the chance to learn by making some fat, juicy
mistakes first!

8. Find Your Favourite Reverb Sounds… And Stick With Them

All reverbs offer unique and subtle sonic contributions to your audio that defy measurement.
Take two different reverbs and set them to the same patch, dialling in the same values for all
their adjustable parameters, and they’ll still sound different. No symphony hall sounds exactly
the same as any other. No plate sounds exactly like any other. Always listen for what you like;
ultimately it’s just the end sound produced that matters, not the reverb time, not the algorithm,
and certainly not the reverb make and model number.
Then, add these reverb presets/sends to your DAW template, ready for your next track.

9. Gated Reverb: Chunk Up Limp Snares

Despite being associated forever with the 80’s and Phil Collins drum fills, gated reverb can be
just the thing for adding power to your EDM or rock snare drum. Send the snare drum to an ag-
gressively compressed, very long reverb patch (try a plate preset with a modified reverb time of
five seconds) to create a bed of noise that will take ages to decay. Then add a noise gate to get
rid of most of the crazy reverb tail. The result is a punchy gated reverb. It’s also common to set
the gated reverb to a musical note value so it works in sync with the overall groove – try giving
the decay on the snare a dotted eighth note feel, for example.

10. Using Reverb When Making & Slicing Samples

When taking samples, we often have to truncate the end to get rid of any unwanted sound, but
run the risk of abruptly cutting short any ambience in doing so. This ambience can be replaced
using a digital reverb. After shaping the envelope of the tail end of the sample run it through
the reverb unit and resample the whole sound with its new reverb tail.

11. Reverb: Mono Or Stereo?

A great benefit of reverb, apart from its ability to impart depth to your mixes, is the way it can
be used to spread your instruments further across the stereo field.
If you want to enhance the sense of spaciousness still further, set the reverb to a different
pan position than the original sound. Alternatively, pan the reverb to the same position as the
source part, and you’ll have a more tightly focused sound overall. Often the best strategy is to
use a combination of more targeted and focused mono reverb sends with more lush stereo

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb
reverbs for an impressively wide, deep and
focused mix.
Also remember that extreme panning has
significant effects on the compatibility be-
tween stereo and mono versions of your mix,
as the amount of reverb heard in mono may
be substantially less than that in the stereo
balance. If mono listeners are likely to be an
important part of your music audience, always
check for mono compatibility. One strategy
to improve mono compatibility is to simply
reduce the stereo width of the reverb; alterna-
tively, you can mix in a small amount of reverb
from another reverb plugin which you then
pan centrally.
12. Subtle Non-Linear Reverb
Effect on Sharp Percussion
Apart from special effects, you might be won-
dering when you’d ever use non-linear reverb
settings. One useful application is on short,
shapr percussion sounds such as congas,
triangles and claves, whose transients can last
mere milliseconds – and therefore disappear
easily into a busy mix. Try adding a subtle non-
linear reverb to lengthen the perceived dura-
tion of such percussion sounds slightly, making
them easier to hear and therefore easier to
slide into the mix.
13. Alternatives To Reverb:
Blending With Delay Or
Background Noise
Reverb isn’t the only tool for blending sounds,
adding depth to the mix or for bringing parts
together into a cohesive whole. Short delays
will also work very well, and some producers
always prefer delay over reverb for the fact
that it doesn’t threaten to muddy and clutter
the mix so easily.
Many modulation effects, such as chorus, will
also provide a ‘distancing’ effect on instru-
ments by making them more diffuse sounding.
Double-tracking can help blend an instru-
ment or voice better too, even if you keep the
double-track at such a low level that it’s not
really audible in its own right.
Adding very subtle, room-level background
noise to your mix may sound scary, but it will
often improve the overall sense of blend. It’s
something that’s always done in film sound
editing, as a soundtrack full of specific noises
without a unifying ambience behind them
feels very disconcerting: the same is true of
most electronic/sample-based music too. If
you don’t have the equipment for recording
your own noise recordings, then get hold of a
media sound-effects library and look for what
are usually called “room tone” or “room ambi-
ence” files. Room tone is the sound of nothing
happening in a room—not the most interest-
ing thing to listen to, but in a background role
it can really help make all the tracks in your
mix feel as if they belong together. Tape hiss
and vinyl noise have similar blending effects,
especially when they’re in stereo. Introducing
noise doesn’t mean your music will sound lo-fi
either: Listen to any of Jon Hopkins fantasti-
cally-produced albums for great uses of noise,
hiss and room tone, that add significantly to
the evocative atmospheres of the tracks.
14. Pre or Post Fader –
Reverb-Only Washy Pads
Normally, reverb sends are taken post-fader,
so that direct signal level adjustments are
reflected in their reverb returns. However, try
setting your reverb send channel to pre-fader
send, and then muting the original sound so
you’re left only with the reverb itself. This is
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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

a great source of pads and sound design atmosphere beds and effects, and the reverb can be
treated further with additional effects to make something really ghostly and unusual.

15. Use Automation To Modulate Reverb Times And Levels

You don’t have to set your effects and then leave them like that for the entire duration of your
track. Use automation to ride the different reverb parameters for different sections of the track,
or even set up one reverb for verses and another to add extra lift in the chorus. If you’re produc-
ing electronic/dance music of of any subgenre, it’s perfectly normal to be constantly shifting and
changing the effects throughout to bring life and movement to the repetitive groove.

16. When To Apply Reverb

Consider when in the extended process of recording, arranging, producing and mixing you plan
to treat each element in your mix with reverb. Generally it’s not a good idea to record with
reverb, as you can’t then adjust it later In the context of the full mix. On the other hand, giving
yourself the ultimate flexibility afforded by plugins and mixing completely ‘In The Box’ has it’s
own drawbacks: it’s just very hard to stop continually tweaking and actually commit to a partic-
ular sound or effect when you know you can change it any time you want. Again, this is why it’s
important to have a strategy: it can be a good idea to set up your reverb send channels before
you start, complete with specific predetermined settings, and not really tweak them unless you
really have to. If you’ve set up a good selection of reverbs, you’ll be covered, and you might
even finish the track!
Anyway, the point in the creative process at which you begin applying reverb to your sounds
might make a significant impact on your perception of that sound, and therefore on which
direction you take the track in. On a more technical level too, if you’re using reverb primarily as
mix glue or to give the impression of size, it might be best to get your mix balancing done first;
whereas reverb used for one-shot effects, for tonal colouration or to be the main component of
a sound (such as a washy pad) will clearly need to be effected earlier on.
Strategically, it can also help to decide if you want a particular reverb to be almost like an inde-
pendent instrument in its own right, as though the dry and wet signals were individual parts, or
if you want to treat it more as an integral part of the instruments final sound.

17. Combine Different Reverbs On The Same Sound

A simple but classy trick for introducing complexity and movement to sounds is to treat them
with two different reverb plugins simultaneously, panned left and right and balanced with the
original sound. Alternatively, you could pan them together, using the two different reverbs as a
subtle blend rather than keeping them separate.
This can be taken to a micro level: for example, to create the ultimate snare drum sound, chop

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb
the transient and the tail of the snare into two
separate events each on their own channels,
and apply a very short ambience reverb to the
transient, and a longer, bright plate reverb on
the snare tail. Bounce them down again into
one super-snare sample.
18. Don’t use reverb!
As ever, experiment with not using reverb at
all, or at least not on every sound. Always try
and make sure that you keep at least some-
thing in the mix completely dry – this will
maintain the front-to-back contrast that you
want in your mix.
19. Be Wary Of Reverb On Bass
Sounds
I wouldn’t say never use reverb on bass or kick
drums – its an integral part of booming bass
hits in electronic music and movie trailers –
but things will get very muddy very quickly
down there, so use caution. If you do want to
add reverb to lower frequency elements, in-
sert an EQ after it as usual but roll off just the
extreme lows from the reverb return.
20. Before Setting Up & Applying
Reverb, Ask yourself what role
you want it to fulfil
Are you aiming to enhance the character of
the sounds to be treated, or is it more a case
of helping the sounds sit better in the mix as
a whole? Of course, you may want to do both
(and the best solutions will probably do so),
but even considering the question as a starting
point can be very useful in getting on the right
track quickly.
21. Get That Dub Sound
If you chain together a spring reverb, a tape
echo-style delay and an analogue-style phaser,
you have all the components of a complete
Dub studio. Playing with the order of these
effects, and literally ‘playing’ the effects in real
time, is one of the best ways to get under the
skin of your reverb – or any effect for that mat-
ter – and understand how to manipulate your
sounds in time and space. Whoa…
22. Use Reverb As Part Of A
Signature Sound
Every track has one or two lead or signature
instruments that sum up the style and tone of
the whole piece, often playing the main hook
or melody. Reverb can be an integral part of
setting the best sound and tone of these parts
that makes them stand apart: think of using
a really characterful gated reverb on guitars,
a shiny and bright space-age reverb on lead
synths, or a vintage Space Echo treatment on
the snare, for example.
23. Reverb As A Tonal Effect
Applying reverb can alter the tonal quality of
an instrument dramatically, as the echoes that
make up the reverb body have the capacity
to phase-cancel with the original sound once
they are added into the mix ‘side-by-side’. This
is something to be careful of avoiding if you
want to keep the tone of the dry part as it is
– but it also means you can use reverb purely
for it’s tonal shaping capabilities alongside EQ,
applying enough reverb to ‘bed’ the sound
into the mix more smoothly.
24. Matching The Reverb To The
Source Sound
Certain sounds respond better or worse to
certain reverb types, so although there are ‘no
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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

rules’ and you should experiment a lot, try to match the nature of each different reverb ‘space’
to the sonic character and artistic intent of the target parts. For example, a smooth concert hall
setting would sound wrong on an aggressive Dubstep snare, whereas a rougher, ‘garage’ room
or vintage plate sound would probably work well. Similarly, a string section or a choir deserve a
cathedral sound to put them in their best light – a spring reverb here would sound ‘off’. Having
said this, if you’re after some more unusal treatments for certain sounds that don’t completely
mangle them, using an unusual reverb configuration could be just the thing.

25. Dynamics Processing The Reverb Return

Sometimes no matter how much EQ you apply or how many parameters you tweak, a reverb
just won’t do what you want it to. For example, it’s fairly common for the transients of a sound
to produce distracting flams or stereo ricochets when reverb is applied to them. In this case,
you can try inserting a transient processor on the return channel immediately before the reverb
itself, to tame the sound being treated with reverb but keeping the original intact.
It’s also quite usual to put a de-esser before the reverb on a vocal track (if the vocal hasn’t al-
ready been de-essed), so that you don’t emphasize any sibilance with a wash of bright reverb!
Finally, don’t forget you can side-chain compress reverb sends just as you would pads, synths
and bass in electronic and dance tracks. This can help both for tying smaller reverbs into the
main groove and avoiding clutter, but it can also be used on a much more obvious scale to cre-
ate a cool rhythmic sucking effect on your cavernous trance and techno reverbed hits.

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 Get That Pro Sound - The Ultimate Guide to Reverb

Conclusion

Now you should have all the skills and know-how to select the right
reverb plugins, set them up correctly for each given task, and plot an
overall reverb strategy for each of your mixes.
Of course there’s more to using reverb like a pro than could fit into this ebook - reading about
the parameters and techniques is valuable, but the only way to get really competent in anything
is to practice and gain as much experience mixing and applying the tools and techniques as you
possibly can.
So with that in mind, keep this ebook handy, print it out and have it with you as you practice -
then as tricky scenarios come up (as they always do) you’ll be able to quickly refer to the rel-
evant tip or parameter setting and move forward efficiently and with minimal wasted effort.

Take the next step... and of course decide whether the step is made of stone or wood, whether
it’s in a small dry room or an echoey church etc. etc... ;)

I hope this ebook will be helpful in your next sonic adventures - let me know how you get on at
george@getthatprosound.com, and don’t forget to check out the GetThatProSound blog
regularly for new posts, more tips and a couple more ebooks coming soon..

Best of luck, George Robinson

Get That Pro Sound

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