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How do u decide what reverb you use

My ear isn't the best with reverb, but I do find that I only like bright reverbs on my music because I feel darker ones do make it feel muddy or too mushy. So I guess we share personal preferences ;D
 
I only have one third-party reverb plug-in so that’s all I use (FF Pro-R). I like having only one reverb though. Cuts decision fatigue and I know one it really well.
How do you decide whether you use a bright sounding one, warm sounding one etc tho?

I mean, also with pro-r (which i btw also use) you have thousands of possibilities how you set it up.

Theres no right or wrong, so i simply try to collect some different approaches here on applying reverb :P
 
I think about it more in terms of time. You can get a full sounding reverb that isn't muddy while others will have those frequencies hang and be muddy. You can also EQ the reverb. I tend to have the most success with Altiverb when looking for something clean.
 
Reverbs, to me, are like instruments themselves... you often have to use EQ to shape and seat them into a mix. A reverb that's too muddy or too bright can clutter up an otherwise good mix. On every instance of reverb, I tweak just about every parameter to taste, which includes high cut-off, low cut-off, high frequency attenuation, etc.
 
How do you decide whether you use a bright sounding one, warm sounding one etc tho?

I mean, also with pro-r (which i btw also use) you have thousands of possibilities how you set it up.

Theres no right or wrong, so i simply try to collect some different approaches here on applying reverb :P
I think it all just sort of matters on what your mixing. General principles like using reverb on higher and longer notes, not using a lot of reverb on short bassier notes. Timing the decay so the notes don't fall over each other. Adjusting the pre-delay so the track doesn't get lost in the mix. With Pro-R I focus on the decay time and pre-delay and once I have those right then I'll EQ. Then after that, I'll adjust the brightness and character knobs. I also like what Jake Jackson does with his reverbs, having two reverbs and a delay as stems for each stem. I'll also add that so many sample libraries have a good amount of room in them that short reverbs are really all you need to glue samples recorded in different spaces together. I'm not a pro mixer at all but this is what I do.
 
if it sounds good then its good, as vitocorleone said you create what YOU like sounding best, and as Polka says reverb can be an extension of an instrument which alter the sound source intro a new sounding instrument, so I guess aesthetics is the most crucial
 
There are a lot of reverbs that you can demo. Try some of them out and see how they react to the sounds going in them. Each reverb acts differently and it's really a feel thing. Some reverbs are really good for the tail and some are good for early reflections. For example, I love Audio Damage Eos for tails, as well as the Toneboosters reverb. I like the Relab LX480L and QL Spaces to help push dry sounds further back in the mix. Different tools do different things and how you decide is a matter of personal taste IMO. Really though, there is no right or wrong reverb. If you already have a decent reverb plugin, it could definitely do the job for pretty much anything, just slap it on and have fun turning the knobs.
 
Reverbs, to me, are like instruments themselves... you often have to use EQ to shape and seat them into a mix. A reverb that's too muddy or too bright can clutter up an otherwise good mix. On every instance of reverb, I tweak just about every parameter to taste, which includes high cut-off, low cut-off, high frequency attenuation, etc.
I like that approach. But do you set the reverb-EQ individually on each instrument? Most producers and composers seem to have 1-3 verbs in a track, used on a send, so that would be kinda impossible to do with that workflow
 
I look for a reverb that gives me enough control to shape its sound to suit what I'm working on. Believe it or not, I've found a free one that does that quite well and sounds great. Dragonfly Reverb. I also like using convolution reverbs. Convology XT is another free plugin that does a terrific job and offers a lot of control.
 
But do you set the reverb-EQ individually on each instrument?

Yes, but not all the time. Depending on the song itself, some tracks will get their own reverbs, but there will always be tracks that share reverbs. For example, I'll often have a main hall reverb shared by some of the lead instruments. What I do first is tweak the parameters of the reverbs themselves, getting them just right for the instruments being run through them. (So as this relates to the original post, depending on the mood and style of the music, I dial muddiness or brightness in or out as desired.) When I find the right sound for my reverbs, I'll then concentrate on each individual instrument on a shared reverb, and EQ the reverb only if it's necessary. If I need more control for one instrument's reverb, I remove it from the shared reverb and give it its own instance.
 
I have a weird difficult-to-explain but easy to use system I built in Reaper with with some simple JSFX plugins, but I think this applies to any DAW. The important thing to note is that there are four parallel (no reverb feeds into another reverb) lanes running from each group to the parent stem, which I refer to as Dry, Small, Large, and Tail. This has some advantages, such as setting pre-delay or EQ per send, but the principle can be replicated with normal sends.

DRY: The unaffected source signal.

SMALL: used for positioning things in a space. I like something that sits well with the source, and can be 100% wet and still sound convincing. Usually I make a smaller space, and balance the Dry/ER/Tail ratio to move things around. If I'm acting on something with room baked in to the recording, but that still needs to be pushed further back or extended to match the room of other instruments, I'll set the reverb to tail only and just balance that with the source - but only if it really needs it. I do this at the group level, and group similarly recorded and similarly distant instruments together.

LARGE: defines the size of a larger space. This is another reverb, tail only, longer decay, at the stem level. I keep it mostly consistent across stems. For tracks that are supposed to sound small and intimate, I'll just ignore this isn't entirely - it's there for bloom and depth - a hall or church sound.

TAIL: I should probably rename this, because it's basically just the Lexicon PCM Native RandomHall sitting on the stems. Tail only, set to an appropriate decay, and mixed in subtly on everything. It really just makes a pleasant reverb noise floor without getting in the way.


It sounds ridiculous, but it distills down to:

Reverb for positioning, per group
Reverb for setting scale, per stem
Lexicon for lexicon stuff, per stem

All parallel, with handy knobs on group tracks controlling the level of each.

The further details, unfortunately, I think are a matter of taste that only experience can answer. Knowing when to make a reverb bright or dark is much the same as knowing whether to make your orchestration bright or dark. Learning what a particular sound means to you (and your audience) is where the art comes in.
 
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