# Reverb for Dummies: Spaces II in Cubase Pro



## Zamenhof (May 30, 2020)

Hi all! I like the concept of convolution reverb so I just purchased EW Spaces II. What is best practice in Cubase 10.5 Pro?

1. Do I just put the plugin in the Inserts slot on the Stereo Out track?
2. Do I switch off all built-in reverb in each VST instrument?
3. I do orchestral mock-ups with EW Hollywood Orchestra and BBC Orchestra Core. What is a good starting room? What settings?
4. Any other thoughts or references for getting started with reverb?

I also have a couple of solo instruments (Joshua Bell and Tina Guo) so my purpose is to put them all in the same space.

Kind regards
Peter


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## labornvain (May 30, 2020)

You need to setup your reverb on an effects send. If you don't know how to do that, there is a plethora of information from YouTube to the owners manual of Cubase.

Effects sends allow you to control the amount of reverb you apply to each individual track separately.

As for whether to turn off your library built-in reverbs, or room mics as it may be, that all depends on too many different variables to say.

I would like to get into the more Advanced Techniques of Reverb but without knowing what you know and what you don't know, it's hard to do. But when you get a good grasp on creating effects channels and using sends to feed those effects channels in Cubase, hit me back and we can go on from there.

cheers


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## Patryk Scelina (May 30, 2020)

Zamenhof said:


> Hi all! I like the concept of convolution reverb so I just purchased EW Spaces II. What is best practice in Cubase 10.5 Pro?
> 
> 1. Do I just put the plugin in the Inserts slot on the Stereo Out track?
> 2. Do I switch off all built-in reverb in each VST instrument?
> ...


Hi. There are various ways of doin it that I guess it's mostly a matter of what you want to achieve and is your system powerful enough to handle it.

Most basic concept I think is to make one Send Bus, put EW Spaces on it and send each instrument track signal to it. And tweak volume of send signal of course.

You may go further and create few Send busses with the same EW Spaces plugin but with different preset for each instance. Every reverb instance is setup to different distance / position. And then you send your instruments' signal to chosen bus: strings to close, woods to mid, brass to far etc.

You may go even further  and add more reverb sends which fit specific libraries. As You know, some are recorded dry some in big halls. So You may have different type of reverb for dry lirbaries and different for those recorded in more reverberant spaces.

Regarding libraries built in reverbs it's up to you. But many of them are very basic so they are in there so you can get quickly nice sound out of a box. However perhaps it is better to use a reverb of your choice in DAW rather than libraries own reverb. Unless it's not typical reverb but convolution which changes character of a sound like in Sample Modeling libraries for instance or Infinite Series from Aaron Venture.

As mentioned, there are many videos about using reverbs. You should check out one of @Cory Pelizzari videos on You Tube.


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## Rob (May 30, 2020)

I prefer using it as an insert, one for each orchestral section...


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## RyanBarryMusic (Jun 1, 2020)

Hey there.

As previously stated by a couple of folks above. Effects sends really are the way to go for this. It gives you greater control of the wet/dry mix as opposed to having an individual reverb inserts on your channel strips, as well as keeping the overall resource cost on your CPU down thus increasing performance in your DAW in general.

Spaces II is a convolution reverb and thus, naturally requires more bandwidth from your hardware as it calculates the mathematics of the room design to produce the sound, lots of operations per second so you will definitely want to use effects sends for this. Then you can route individual sections (strings, brass, winds and percussion) to each of the different effects sends and increase/decrease the wet/dry mix giving you control of the placement and depth of the sections in the stereo field.

Let me know if you are unfamiliar with setting up templates and effects sends in Cubase and if you like I can walk you through the rest to help optimize your workflow for this.

Best,
Ryan


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## Rob (Jun 1, 2020)

just can't stand the "this is the way to go" statements... it's always a personal preference


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## Cathbad (Jun 1, 2020)

RyanBarryMusic said:


> Effects sends really are the way to go for this. It gives you greater control of the wet/dry mix as opposed to having an individual reverb inserts on your channel strips



I've seen this advice often, but never understood what the advantage is over @Rob's approach of having insert reverbs on group channels. 

Group channels (strings, brass etc) can all have their own reverb settings and wet/dry mix on the insert. I don't see what the difference or disadvantage is compared to sends. Nor do I see how a send would provide greater control over the wet/dry mix. The advantage is that it's a bit easier and visually clearer in the mixer - to my mind, at least. That's assuming that there are no wildly different reverb amounts on tracks going into the group channel, of course. 

Am I missing something?


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## GNP (Jun 1, 2020)

With sends, you can print separate reverb tracks. This is useful when you have to send a dubbing mixer all your stems, and he/she requires the separate printed reverb tracks, and not your orchestra with reverb already stuck on them.

If you don't, then yeah I'd rather use inserts as well.


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## Cathbad (Jun 1, 2020)

GNP said:


> With sends, you can print separate reverb tracks. This is useful when you have to send a dubbing mixer all your stems, and he/she requires the separate printed reverb tracks, and not your orchestra with reverb already stuck on them.
> 
> If you don't, then yeah I'd rather use inserts as well.



Ah ha. 

But apart from that..?


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## RyanBarryMusic (Jun 1, 2020)

Rob said:


> just can't stand the "this is the way to go" statements... it's always a personal preference


Sure, personal preference is always important for this stuff. All we can do is share the experience so others can try it and see if it helps right


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## GNP (Jun 1, 2020)

Cathbad said:


> Ah ha.
> 
> But apart from that..?



Apart from that, like I said...I'd rather use inserts, coz they're just more convenient!


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## Zamenhof (Jun 1, 2020)

Thank you for your great answers. Very useful! I have plenty to get started now, and then I’ll return with a new barch of questions later.


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## Scoremixer (Jun 1, 2020)

GNP said:


> This is useful when you have to send a dubbing mixer all your stems, and he/she requires the separate printed reverb tracks, and not your orchestra with reverb already stuck on them.



FWIW, I've never had that request, or heard of any dubbing mixer requesting it (which is not to say it's never happened, but not something I'd be overly worried about).


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## GNP (Jun 1, 2020)

Scoremixer said:


> FWIW, I've never had that request, or heard of any dubbing mixer requesting it (which is not to say it's never happened, but not something I'd be overly worried about).



That's good to know. I've had it requested before, because the dubbing mixer wanted the pure reverbs to be put into the surrounds.


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## Akarin (Jun 1, 2020)

I made a video to show how I use Spaces 2:



This is not the only way to do it but it's easy and serves my purpose.


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## Akarin (Jun 1, 2020)

Cathbad said:


> Ah ha.
> 
> But apart from that..?



You can't EQ a reverb on an insert if it doesn't provide a built-in EQ.


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## Cathbad (Jun 2, 2020)

Akarin said:


> You can't EQ a reverb on an insert if it doesn't provide a built-in EQ.



True. I can't say I've run into that problem because the reverbs I usually use have a built in EQ. Even the stock Cubase reverbs have an EQ or low/high cut.


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## Akarin (Jun 2, 2020)

Cathbad said:


> True. I can't say I've run into that problem because the reverbs I usually use have a built in EQ. Even the stock Cubase reverbs have an EQ or low/high cut.



Yup. But more often than not, I use some kind of M shape cut on the tail to create depth. Reverbs like Spaces only have high/low cuts.


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## Rctec (Jun 2, 2020)

... I think my engineers - Alan Meyerson and Steve Lipson - would just send the tracks back for me to re-record if I didn’t give them a separate reverb send and reverb. They can’t mix the music properly without control, and I’m really tying their hands. 
but convolution isn’t just for reverb. It’s useful to put an instrument ‘inside’ a space - which is different than ‘adding‘ reverb, which really should be done with an Aux send. There are just too many reasons for me to go into, but using a ‘send’ it’s a good convention.


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## Akarin (Jun 2, 2020)

Rctec said:


> ... I think my engineers - Alan Meyerson and Steve Lipson - would just send the tracks back for me to re-record if I didn’t give them a separate reverb send and reverb. They can’t mix the music properly without control, and I’m really tying their hands.
> but convolution isn’t just for reverb. It’s useful to put an instrument ‘inside’ a space - which is different than ‘adding‘ reverb, which really should be done with an Aux send. There are just too many reasons for me to go into, but using a ‘send’ it’s a good convention.



This makes a ton of sense and there's no way around it if you work with mix engineers...

...but I'm still at the one-man show stage where I mix my own tracks 😬


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