# Reverb vs room mics



## Mrmonkey (May 27, 2021)

I was thinking about this the other day and don’t have a good answer.
Most of the libraries I have are pretty wet, all of them have more ambient mic positions.

If combining different libraries (say, spitfire strings, CS brass etc) is it better to not use the room mics like outriggers/gallery and then apply reverb to closer mic positions or the tree or should you try to get the best room sound in the instruments using the available room mics and use no/little reverb? Conversely if you do push reverb onto everything is it ok to match far microphone positing and your typical hall reverb setting or is that generally a bad thing to do?

This gets more complicated in my head when you layer same instrument libraries for depth. For example say I have Hans Zimmer strings to provide the lush, deep undercurrent and then use spitfire chamber strings to add some clarity and join them both together. I would likely use closer mics on the chamber strings and the further mics on the Zimmer strings. So should you in that case ignore any reverb on top and just use the mics in the instruments? Or is it good practice to add the reverb on top to keep everything together even if you only use a small amount in the mix, and then use less of the room mics in the instruments.

Sorry if this sounds like a very dumb question 😅


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