Mixing with REVERB
R
EVERB’s are the effect which creates an ambience in your tracks. In a treated room or at a home studio, the source
would sound dry, sometimes its call this a dead sound or Broadcast quality sound if the acoustics are done well. Many
a time, we overdub vocals, guitars etc on our DAW and then apply reverb on the Vocals and others tracks as per our
need. To enhance our dry tracks, we need to create space or Ambience in our mix.
As we all record our tracks using closed microphone technique, everything in our whole mix will not sound like a reverb
added even though the microphone is picking up the room tone. Sometimes, placing a mic far away from the source can
create room ambience to use in our mix creating a natural room tone reverb. Mostly this is used in the Drum recording
session. Just because you have a reverb plug-in in your DAW, it is not mandatory to use reverb on every track. It completely
depends on the song’s context.
Here are some of my Tips on using REVERB
1. To start fast, choose any preset which you like from the
Stock Plug-in or third party plug-in. I generally prefer the
PLATE setting for my Vocals. But you can use anything as
you wish and as long as it sounds good for your song you
produce.
2. Try to set the levels with a medium blend and try not
to over push the decay time as it can muddy your mix. A
medium reverb or a short reverb is a good start
3. Try to use a separate AUX buss named “REVERB BUSS”
in your DAW and send the dry signal to the Reverb buss
as it can save your CPU load. 90% of the professional mix
engineers follow like this only. But as i say there are no rules
for this, you can also insert it directly on the INSERT of your
Audio Track as long as you don’t face any Latency issue in
your Session.
4. If you have recorded a room reverb track by placing
a microphone far from the source, then try to use a HPF
(High Pass Filter) and roll off around 80Hz to 100Hz to cut
the rumble in your mix and then blend this natural Reverb
sound in your Mix. This gives an overall blend and a good
great sounding tone in your mix.
of production. Don’t just copy the same settings and blindly
apply on all your projects! Just be creative in your usage.
Try to hear the tail end of the reverb nicely and not to get
washed out in your mix.
6. To get a good reverb sound, use a HPF before your Reverb
plug-in and then insert a Reverb plug-in so that they don’t
get washed away in your mix.
7. Always find a patch or a pre-set which suits your mix
and feel of the Song. There should not be too much blend
of the Reverb in your mix. This can spoil your tone and it
will spill over all the tracks and making it muddy and float
everywhere.
8. Near field monitors help in finding your best tone for
reverb. But this is not fixed, it depends on your need of your
song and how well it sits in your mix.
9. Best tip to use reverb is to use a MONO REVERB Buss and
send the dry signal to that, this way we can get a good reverb
even in your Television MIX!
Hope you have got some tips on using REVERB in your mix.
Happy Mixing!
5. Try to use the pre-sets and then always tweak more to find
the sweet sounding reverb which suites more for your kind
Author: Baba.L.Prasad. He is the owner and chief Sound/Mix and Mastering Engineer at Digi Sound Studio. He also teaches Sound
Engineering and Music Production courses. For more details, visit www.digisoundacademy.com
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