I think I already know that you can too much reverb... I think.

I've been demo'ing some reverbs the past week and now I want them all.

Can you have too many reverbs?

Thoughts?

Ideas?

Comments?

I believe you certainly can have too may different reverbs within a single mix. Instead of putting a different one on every track it might be better to go back to the concept of sending several tracks of varying amounts into one or two main reverbs. 

Also there is a limit to how many lush or very high quality reverbs you can have in a mix too. If you have got 4 or 5 lush expensive reverbs in a mix you will find they become harder to hear.  Mike Stavrou who is a very respected engineer here in Australia and writes for our mag Audio Technology here wrote an interesting article a few months back on this very subject.

He says and I tend to agree too that it is good to have a handful of cheaper more lumpy or less smooth (grainy) sounding reverbs as well in your mix. These are good because they usually use far less CPU resources. And the good news is that we all have them anyway. They tend to stand out rather well. Also the brain and the ears and your room acoustics will tend to smooth them out to a certain degree and fill in the picture a bit.

Think of the best mixes you have heard and ask yourself how many reverbs are present. Often it is usually only one! (or one noticeable one anyway)

I don't know, I find myself using the same ones all the time.

For my weird movie soundtrack sort of projects, Logic's own Space Designer (convolution) pretty much exclusively. In Pro Tools - McDSP's Revolver. 

(BTW, you mentioned using Pro Tools in the software forum recently - if you haven't done so, check out McDSP plug-ins. IMHO, they're among the very best).

As a set and forget/just works, Lexicon.

As a tweaker's delight - Valhalla Room.

I still dig the old IK CSR, particularly on drums - toms and floor toms seem to like that reverb.

These seem to do pretty much all I need and to provide plenty of variety.

Which ones are you leaning towards at the moment Mike?

I can.

I've been demo-ing the Exponential Audio stuff the past week.

It has made me rethink my thoughts about convolution reverbs.


best regards,
mike

backwoods


Which ones are you leaning towards at the moment Mike?

The Exponential Audio pair called Phoenix and R2, and all the ValhallaDSP stuff seems to good to pass up to me.




best regards,
mike

mike_mccue


I've been demo-ing the Exponential Audio stuff the past week.

It has made me rethink my thoughts about convolution reverbs.


best regards,
mike

I think I've tried as many convolution processors as I'd ever care to by now.
 
Funnily enough the one I use most now is the one from this package;
 
http://freeverb3.sourceforge.net/
Called Freeverb3VST_Impulser2
 
I just run filters in front of it and any modulation I want after it.  All the basic IR controls I want are on it and you can stack 9 up and the latency is as good as any of 'em.
 
The envelope controls on it are not good although they do work, but I tend to shape my IR's by manually editing beforehand these days anyway.
 
I just like the fact it does the convolution job really well which is all I want it for and the rest of the chain can be of my own specific choosing.
 
I found after the initial buzz of using convo's I found there was something badly lacking so I tend to use a hybrid chain now.
 
So I don't think you can have too many as long as they are each very distinct in what they do.  
 
Certainly you can use too much which is a different question altogether. 

Anyone messed w/ the NI reverbs?

I bought Breeze and B2 and thought "that's that", and then this new company exponential audio comes along....

carl and jim roseberry both say these are the best algo reverbs they have heard.

And Lexcion PCM has taken a massive price cut too and is affordable!

I'm telling myself to be satisfied with what I have. The new ones don't really sound that much better to justify more dollars.

It's a funny little world when you look thru reverb topics at gearslutz and kvr etc and see the programmers themselves wading into each others threads. There seems to be a far amount of snippiness between them.