Week 155: Reverb Tools for Bigger Reverb Do you want a bigger, wider, more interesting reverb sound? Of course you do! So you need Reverb Tools, which is called "Channel Tools" in SONAR. This also makes for a very useful FX Chain.
The most common setup for this technique is to insert your reverb effect of choice, followed by Channel Tools, in a bus and then feed this a send from your source track. But there are no rules, and you may find using the Reverb/Channel Tools combo as inserts in a track will do the job for you.
There are two ways to increase the width. Use one, the other, or both.
Option 1 is to set the Delay mode to Pre, and adjust Delay L for the desired amount of added width. Typically you’ll choose a value from a few milliseconds to 30 ms or so. This provides the usual “delay one channel more than the other and it sounds wider.”
Option 2 is to set the Input Mode to Stereo, and use the Mid and Side controls to make the sound more centered or wider, respectively. You’ll usually leave the L and R Gain controls at 0.0, and turn up the Side Gain for a wider image...then adjust Mid Gain to taste.
For the FX Chain, I also added a control for the Left and Right sliders so the output changes from mono to stereo by turning the Mono <> Stereo knob more clockwise. Think of this as the “master image width” control. To edit the FX Chain control to do this, right-click on the knob and choose Edit Control. Set one destination to Channel Tools – Angle L with start and end values of 50% and 100% respectively. Set the second destination to Channel Tools – Angle R with start and end values of 50% and 0% respectively. I also added a button to swap channels.
That’s all there is to it! Try Reverb Tools—I mean, Channel Tools—after your reverb, play with the controls as described, and you’ll be rewarded with a bigger reverb sound.