whack
Your trick re panning the dry to one side and letting the reverb alternate in the panning field, the only thing is how do I pan only the dry signal??
Hi Cian
You also asked about reverb bussing/routing in another reply so I give you a quick run down of some reverb basics.
There are two* main uses for reverb:
1) as a value added effect on an instrument, like the reverb effect often built into guitar amps.
This type of reverb only affects the instrument to which it is applied and is normally added as an insert in the instrument channel, eg. the FX box or PC. The wet/dry mix is controlled by the plugin. A mono reverb will give the same effect as a reverb on an amp with a mic stuck infront of it, ie when you pan the track the dry and the reverb will pan together and will sound mono. If you use a stereo reverb (and set the track interleave to stereo) you will get the reverb in stereo. The pan of the dry signal will depend on the input levels on the reverb.
2) as a global ambience. You add the same reverb to every instrument to make them sound like they were recorded in the same room/hall/canyon at the same time. This binds them together and prevents the old "singing into a hair brush" effect where it's obvious that you're singing along to a backing track.
You
could do this by simply inserting a stereo reverb into the Master bus, but that's a bad idea. It just adds reverb onto the entire mix.
The "correct" method** is to create a bus, call it Reverb, route the output to the Master bus, then on every channel add an FX SEND with POST FADER which routes to the Reverb bus. Add a nice reverb plug to the reverb bus and TURN OFF THE DRY OUTPUT. The dry signal from each channel is still going the usual route through the faders, only reverb should be coming out of the reverb bus.
You can now add reverb to any instrument by turning the FX Send you assigned on each channel. All instruments will sound like they're in the same room (same reverb) and you can place instruments around the room left/right by panning (the dry moves but the reverb doesn't) or forwards/backwards (turn up the dry, turn down the reverb to bring forwards).
There are many tricks you can use with this. You can tighten up a drum kit by routing all the channels to a drum bus and using the reverb send from that, rather than individual drums, to place the entire kit at one point in the room. Then for any kit pieces that you panned (toms, maybe) add a tiny bit extra reverb using the send on the instrument channel. That will push it back slightly in physical space and give more depth to the overall sound.
This is very much into the realms of psyco-accoustic tomfoolery and the extra reverb should be added very sparingly, to the point where the casual listener wouldn't know there was extra added, but it's little things like this that are the difference between a great mix and a professional mix...
Oh my... I didn't realise I typed that much. I'm turning into Danni
*Other uses are available
** Yes yes, I know, other methods are available...