A handy vocal reverb technique - non linear decay - AUDIO SAMPLES on post #10

how about an envelope or two?

You could run all your verb through a reverb Bus and automate the output with envelopes.

Assign a fader to reverb level and ride it to the music.
Jiggle the fader to the beat to give it rhythm

Have to different reverbs on different bussed that come out at different times.

A gentle, small one with lots of pre-delay for the intimate parts and a big swelling one for the high energy parts.

Throw a little echo on a third buss and subtly ride it in on select parts.
At the end of a couple choice phrases
So subtle that you don't notice it unless you are looking for it.

I love automaion on reverb levels.
It gives a great dynamic sence of space.

I noticed that the song in question has a very even phrasing pattern.

Why do you think envelopes will not work? Just curious to understand your thought process.

I make my own IRs with the Voxengo synthesizer.... I agree with the idea that a "room" can be suited to a particular tempo.

best,
mike

when I clicked on that link Firefox crashed and I had to re start my computer to get it to work again! what's up with that?

Ok, I made audio examples instead. These were made with Waves RVerb. For clarity on what the reverb is doing, it's set to 100% wet.

http://www.mattlyonsmusic.com/sonar_samples/

Right click and download if you wish as might be easier to watch and listen in a wave editor. File size is 4.68MB and 320 kbps mp3.

Settings were:

Predelay - 27.8 (even though it's 100% wet, this is important because of the early reflections)
Time - 2.39
Size - 100
Diffusion - 100
Reverb Type - Non-Linear
Early Reflections - 0dB
Reverb - 0dB

Mind you this is not tweaked to the tempo, just roughly there, but not really! Everything is in the one file. Playing order is:

1 - Original reverb sound with a linear decay/
2 - Volume envelope. Could only do a fade at the end as all the other sounds were too close together.
3 - Gated reverb. Certainly not tweaked at all (or even set really!), but you get the idea.
4 - The effect I have been talking about. Non-linear decay set to the smallest value of 0.04.

The following tracks 5, 6 and 7 are tracks 2, 3 and 4 played along with an inverted track 1. This shows you distinctly what is different about each one. For those of you who don't understand this technique, it's playing two nearly identical tracks together and flipping the phase of one so that every single thing that is the same about the two gets cancelled out, and everything that that is different still plays along together.

My analysis:

1 - very muddy and wishy washy
2 - still verb muddy as nothing happens till the end where there is the envelope. The problem with this is that it sounds unnatural and no envelope is going to make it sound natural as the decay is much much more complicated than a simple lowering of volume
3 - gated verb on vox just sucks. surely it could be much better with tweaking, but save it for percussive sounds
4 - still very muddy but there is certainly a noticeable improvement in clarity, though it is small. This can't be mimicked with volume envelopes, but a convolution reverb would work. Most noticeable is the decay at the end. It is so much smoother than 2 and 3. I understand why but it's difficult to explain, hopefully you all understand why. If not, I can try to explain or someone else might like to.
5 - the first cancellation sample. Nothing is heard till the end where the tail was faded out.
6 - you can hear a few parts where the gate starts doing something, but it just can't get into the complexity of the reverb.
7 - you can hear all those tails getting cut off. These are what muddy the reverb more. All those tails are eliminated smoothly in the algorithm. Understand now why a volume envelope can't do this?


So there you have it. I will admit that in many songs those tails would be masked anyway and simply using a well tweaked gate or volume envelopes or simply a linear decay would be fine, but in very sparse mixes, the subtleties could really make a big difference to your vocal sound. It's a technique I'm certainly going to remember for the right project.

spacey


Matt I sure don't know how they did it but if were to try...

I'd dup the vocal track and put my verb on 2nd as track effect and use a volume envelope to adjust as desired. That way I could adjust voice/effect levels too without messing with the main vocal track.

And since I guess at things to try...this may be a very bad idea...

Check out post #9 and #10 cause we have it worked out!

mattplaysguitar


Philip - I'd agree that there is pretty strong compression on her vox and quite possibly some tube saturation too. I am supprised though that you seem to have gone as far as to say she was using an Avalon 737 (or are you just making an assumption?) with a German condensor mic and has lots of lower harmonic bleed, but you can't hear the hall verb... In my opinion the reverb is extremely wet and is very very clear. Listen to the sections where the vox ends and there is a gap, it is most obvious there. Then when the next line kicks in you can here the verb suddenly cut. Specifically, the times 21, 22, 23 seconds each have it very clear. My first impression was that a gate would work on these bits, but it won't because when the next line kicks in and the level is brought back up, the previous tail will still be playing with the new reverb which is going to really muddy the signal up. Also please elaborate on lower harmonic bleed as I have never heard of that one before and google gives me nothing! The vocal certainly sounds a lot more harsh on the youtube clip because of the lower quality, sounds much clearer on my cd. Maybe try listening to it in HD? Also are you on your monitors listening to this?

Tarsier - I believe you are correct. Envelopes can't work because they don't cut the tail that bleeds into a new verb sound (I elaborated on this in the original post). But your idea on modifying a conv reverb would definately work. Excellent suggestion!

Mike - I'll make an image to better describe it!

8 Ohm - I love automating reverb sends too, it works great but as I'll explain more clearly in another post, this ain't gonna work for this effect!

MemphisJo - No idea what's up with that! It's just a youtube link! You can search for the video youtube if you prefer. The song is By Sarah Blasko and is called Bird on a Wire.
 

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Matt, "lower harmonics" *bleeding* (a Philip assumption and possible misnomer) ... when there is generalized tube saturation-excitation ... harmonics and 'colorful-distortion' may smear pleasantly into the lower EQ spectrum (which is what I meant by "bleeding").
 
As an audiophile, I detected her 'leveled' colorful tone and hyper-warmth, that is all.
 
Indeed, her reverb is also lush and velvety (I just can't believe software reverb is giving that vox such warmth and color ... again, I'd 'probably' bet she is using a top-notch tube pre-amp mic pair to achieve this with outboard compression as well.
 
I'll try to re-read this thread and listen again later as you suggest to better appreciate the rich reverb components you've validated.
EDIT: Gated verb is a bit above my intelligence quotient, of late.

"But your idea on modifying a conv reverb would definately work. Excellent suggestion!

Mike - I'll make an image to better describe it!"

For the last two years I've pretty much only used convo reverb and I've been using my own home made true stereo IRs exclusively... I guess selecting or identifying a IR by length just seems contextual to the process.


Is the picture going to be of an IR?


What triggers the change in duration on the Waves plugin? I'm trying to wrap my head around understanding how the Wave plugin knows when to back off.

It seems like you could automate some parameter envelope within a reverb plugin to go in this direction.

best regards,
mike

Envelopes can't work because they don't cut the tail that bleeds into a new verb sound

Exactly.

Over on the "EQ of reverb" thread I posted this:

everyone should read Spaces Speak. Are You Listening? by Dr. Barry Blesser of Lexicon and EMT fame. And read his whole website. And listen to spaces. Neat ones show up in the oddest places.

Just thought it might be somewhat applicable here. Or not.