Reverb... It's All About Timing.

Hello, Hellooo, Hellooooooo

 When it comes to using reverb a lot of mix engineers will give it a wide birth claiming they just can't get it to work for them and for many that is indeed the case. But despite an ever growing repugnance of reverb in favour of delay it still has it's place in the mix.
 So I want to re-address this dislike for reverb and show how it can be a great tool for any mix there's just a few things to understand first as to how to get the best out of it.

What is Reverb?

Think of it this way, in it's basic form it's just and echo. Imagine standing in a cave and shouting "Hello!" You hear all the reflections of the cave walls making your voice sound bigger as it tails away to nothing. Or have you ever stripped a room out in your house for decorating and suddenly you hear the echo and space in the room? That essentially is reverb, it's the reflection of the sound in a room. The less in a room the more reflections, the more in a room (furniture, people) the less reflection as they dampen the sound. So now you have a real world example of what reverb is now you can utilise that knowledge when using reverb in a mix.

The difference between delay and reverb is that reverb is generally real world rooms and spaces.

Types of Reverb

HALL: A hall is a large space either in length or height that has a long decay time and lots of reflections. Classically used on John Bonham's drums where they used the height of the hall and staircase to create the massive drum reverb sound loved by many. 

ROOM: A room is a much smaller space that can be dead or reflective, depending upon the material

that the walls, floor, and ceiling are made of or the amount of items in the room. It usually has a short decay time of about 1.5 seconds or less. This is the most useful of all reverbs especially if the band didn't get tracked playing live in the studio all at the same time. It can be of great benefit to recreate that by using a room reverb and sending all the instruments and vocals into the FX channel, adjusting the volume of each send to mimic the live band feeling.

CHAMBER: An acoustic chamber is a dedicated tiled room that many large studios used to build to

create reverb. Famous examples are the ones created by Phil Spector 'Wall of sound' at Gold Star Studios, sadly now gone and others like the one at Capitol designed by Les Paul revered by many mix engineers. Extremely expensive to build hence their scarcity but the bedroom producer can mimic it somewhat on a lesser scale utilising a tiled bathroom for instance. Sound was usually passed through a loud speaker and then a microphone would pick it up again, including the effects of reverb. Although this is still common the cons with this technique is that varying the reverb time can be more difficult. A chamber is usually a smaller physical space than a hall that results in more clarity

PLATE: Introduced as a cheaper alternative to building a chamber and the first artificially created reverb, is literally a 250kg, 4x6ft, hanging plate of sheet metal with transducers attached to it.  Early units had one pickup for mono output, later models featured two pickups for stereo use. The reverb time can be adjusted by a damping pad, made from framed acoustic tiles. The closer the damping pad, the shorter the reverb time. However, the pad never touches the plate. Some units also featured a remote control. The most famous of these was the EMT140 made famous by Abbey Road studios.

NON-LINEAR: Again another artificially created reverb and solely available on digital reverb units. The pros of these reverbs, such as the infamous AMS RMX16, is that they could create reverbs that just were not possible in the real world. They also allow for special effects such as the reverb tail being reversed so it builds instead of decaying. This gives them an advantage over their real world counterparts in that they can really produce some otherwise unobtainable special FX's.

So hall, room and chamber are all real world rooms whilst plate and non-linear are, like delay, artificial. When it comes to choosing which reverb to use well there are no rules but in general, room or a chamber on drums, a plate on vocals or guitars, and a hall on strings or keyboards are the most common choices.

It's All About Timing

Slapping a reverb effect on anything without addressing the timing is pure folly. You need to specify the matching time of the reverb to correspond with the beats per minute of your track. This will help them blend in better in the mix and sound more natural.
 Working out the timing of a reverb or a delay for that matter can seem daunting but fear not there are lots of lovely people who have offered calculators online such as Nick Favour that take all the hardwork out for you.
 For the more inquisitive a manual way of setting up timing is to send the snare to a reverb Aux/Fx channel. Solo the Aux/Fx channel and adjust the decay/release time on the reverb plugin/hardware unit. What you are aiming for is after the initial first hit of the snare, listen for the reverb as it decays and drops in volume. Now lower/raise the decay or release time of your reverb until the tail decay just about stops before the second hit of the snare sounds. Now your good to go.

The Importance Of Pre-Delay

Another feature of reverbs not to be ignored is the Pre-Delay control. Pre-delay means delaying the sound of the reverb slightly after you hear the source signal. So the direct snare sounds first and then shortly after that the reverb. The reason it’s used is so the source signal doesn’t sound washed out in ambience. With a little bit of pre-delay, you’ll hear the source’s attack, then the reverb, so the source signal has more definition. A good starting point is around 20ms maybe up to 40ms somewhere in that region. When setting up, pre-delay, is more important to the overall effect of reverb as it is the one thing that will blend and create a natural effect in the overall mix.

Conclusion

So reverb can be of great benefit to your mix when you gain an understanding of what reverb is, how to crucially set it's timing and how using Eq can shape it to suit. Watch the video below as I endeavour to show some of these ideas and how to implement them.

News Alert: Console Shaper Gets Serious Update

CTC1 Pro Console Shaper for Studio One

When Console Shaper was introduced to version 3 no-one really knew how to use it properly and things were a little sketchy even from Presonus. I mean we all got the concept behind it but there seemed so much ambiguity on how to best implement it.

Things then got a little more interesting when we were promised third party manufacturers would be developing more console simulations for Console shaper. Well we waited, and we waited and well nothing appeared. That is until now. Details are still a little sketchy at best but Presonus have wheeled out a serious update and here's their video showing some of the features that will be introduced.

This is what Presonus have to say about it:

The CTC-1 Pro Console Shaper by Presonus is the second plug-in developed for the new Mix Engine FX interface in Studio One and the next evolution of plug-ins from the included Console Shaper. CTC-1 brings analogue console modelling to Studio One with three great-sounding console models and several major enhancements to the Mix Engine FX environment.

Utilising state-of-the-art State Space Modelling technology, CTC-1 captures the character and personality of legendary analog consoles that are otherwise out of reach for most musicians, producers and engineers. Going far beyond virtual channel strips and mastering plug-ins, CTC-1 is capable of changing the way how people mix inside a DAW. Priced around £76.

It's available from here; Presonus Shop

Guitar Tone For The Bedroom Producer

Dialling In Guitar Tone

I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it? ~ Jeff Beck.

 When it comes to guitar playing we can talk about technique, showmanship, guitar manufacturer and gear but all that falls by the wayside if that one all important element is missing... 'Tone'. What would any guitar hero's reputation be if it wasn't for them having the expert ability to 'dial in' that killer tone for the sickest rhythm sound or rip roaring solo. The more elements you have (Amp, Compression, Eq, Modulation, Distortion, Delay, Reverb) the more time it will take to find and the more confusing things can become. It's easy to get lost in the maze of choices available so why not keep it simple and build on that from there.

 In the Pro Studio having a 100W Marshall/Fender/Rectifier cranked up to find that sweet spot required, where the amp just starts to break, is no problem having nice isolation rooms so you don't go deaf listening to it, but for the bedroom producer, that's just not an option. There's neighbours, other family members and even Fido and Garfield the cat to not scare the 'by-geezas' out off when you suddenly press record and strike that first power chord. Nowadays manufacturers are aware of this and have went out to capture that specific market with offerings of 1-5W versions of their amplifiers. This allows for a lower volume setting to hit that all important sweet spot on a tube/valve amp without measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale.

 Now this is great news for the home recordist with neighbours and no soundproofing but those amps are still quite expensive and give a one amp sound. For most the mainstay of their guitar playing and recording will be through Guitar amp simulators such as Amplitube, Bias, S-Gear etc that can give loads of various amps/cabs/mics/pedals for far less but for many purists they completely miss the target of sounding authentic.
 Now you could definitely argue that point out all day long but truth be told, like plugins are to hardware, the gap between a real tube amp mic'd up and a simulation is closing all the time. Watch online the cream of the crop simulator, the Kemper, and be amazed as to how many purists have failed to tell the difference. Again a Kemper is extremely expensive but considering how much you would have spent on all the gear it simulates and well you wouldn't have much change from having spent tens of thousand of dollars/pounds.

Software Guitar Simulations

 So if your recording at home in a bedroom/kitchen/basement it's safe to say you don't have huge budgets to splash out on gear and so the only option left open to you is software simulations and that is where I want to aim this at.

 Dialling in a tone to any of these simulations is not as simple as just loading up one of their extensive presets, unfortunately it's not that easy. Rather like the real world counterparts you need to dial in your tone and be aware of how the real equipment responds so you can simulate it. Now presets give the wrong idea that all of that has been taken care of for you, but don't be fooled. There are some basic things you can do before hand to get as close as possible to mimicking the real amps & cabinets.

1. First up - Audio interface. Most two channel interfaces have a dedicated ¼" instrument jack. Now some claim to be Hi-Z this is supposed to mimic a guitar amp socket but don't be afraid to try out the mic/line input instead. The instrument input is clean, untouched, but the pre-amp mic/line input can add some colour and warmth to the signal that really helps in taming those upper harsh digital frequencies that give away the fact you've played through a guitar simulator. After all, in real world conditions, the mic on a guitar cab is always through a mic pre such as a Neve/Api/Console that all colour the sound.
2. Secondly - If your just choosing the in-software cabinet simulation that comes with your Guitar Sim of choice then your losing out massively on realistic tone. Most believe that ⅔ of a guitar tone comes from the speaker cabinet. So with that in mind wouldn't it be prudent to get as close to that as possible? Fear not that is indeed achievable for the bedroom producer in the form of Cabinet Impulse responses, most notable, those from Rosen Digital, Redwirez and Ownhammer. Go to any of their Websites and you will find they all offer a free sample, so what are you waiting for? Mimic a Mesa boogie 4x12 cabinet for FREE. Now that's what I call low cost. If on the other hand you can afford to splash out a little cash? My recommendation is the Justin York Collection from Ownhammer   simply sublime.
3. Thirdly - Copying the real Eq frequency response of a real cabinet. Now why do you need to do this, isn't that what a Cabinet IR is? Well yes and no but knowing that speaker cabinets produce next to nothing below 75hz and the same in the upper frequencies with anything over 5k and you can see there's a range where that sound needs to stay and resonate in. That can vary greatly if you then add further processing to your guitar track with Eq, Compression and tape emulation. Also note  Marshall, Fender and other speaker cabs have a mid frequency dip too around 400hz for the Fender and slightly higher for the Marshall. see Fig below.

So for instance SOUNDING LIKE A GUITAR TUBE AMP there is a very quick, simple step that can be taken to duplicate the sound of a guitar tube power amp with the Presence and Depth set to 0, similar what is offered in other OwnHammer speaker cabinet impulse response libraries. To replicate this sound, following the cabinet IR loader add an EQ with a parametric bell curve set to -3 dB at 400 Hz. Adjust the Q/bandwidth to roughly where the edges of the curve start to make the initial cut around 100 Hz on the low side and 2 kHz on the high side. If necessary, adjust the Q/bandwidth to taste from here to best suit your sound source and tonal preference. Similar to this:-

 Here you can see I've dipped out around 400hz adjusting the 'q' so the shoulders of the dip hit around 100hz up to 2k to mimic a Fender Cab. I've also added a low pass filter at 5k with a slight 6db slope, nothing too aggressive, to mimic the fact that most speaker cabs don't produce anything above that range.

Conclusion

 Now of course tone and everything surrounding it is extremely subjective. Look on any forum that touches on it and you'll see quite heated debates. We all have an idea of what a killer guitar tone actually is and they are all different. Some love Les Paul's through a Marshall, others a Fender Strat through a Fender 2x12, so who's to say what is 100% right or wrong. But that's not the aim of this example. It's about getting as close as possible in sound to the real thing when using a real tube amp in the urban setup is just not practical. If you can afford a Kemper then great your already there but for most modest setups software is the only option and that's what we're trying to improve on here.

Watch the video below as I show and discuss some of these ideas.