PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I'd like to read what philosophies you might have about reverb.
I see a lot of posts about this and that reverb being soooooo great and how some people use dozens of them at a time.
Call me curious
Cheers!
Paul

Anybody who uses dozens at a time is just muddying up their mixes, I've seen guys do great stuff with 4 & usually use about 1-3 myself. One of my pet peeves is inappropriate use of reverb, where it sounds like everything is in a completely different sonic space from one another; very unsettling to the ear.

Anyway, reverb helps create a sense of dimension in a mix, making different sounds seem more up-front or pushed back. One of the greatest mixes I ever heard was a friend who used zero reverb *except* on the main element, the whole song sounded sounded a bit too in-your-face but then blossomed out when that one element came in.

It's also used to create resonance, to make a vocalist or snare sound bigger than they really are (it's not a cheat, you do this on nearly all vocalists). Some people will use a dirty gated reverb on a snare drum to get more rattle.

I think the dozen-at-a-time reverb discussion is only valid if you are talking computer-performance, i.e. the PCI bus capacity etc.

Since reverb is one of the most resource consuming effects, it's usually a good one to benchmark a system, so that may be the reason for the high numbers of reverbs reported.

It's also something that is used in almost every mix, so a high quality one is important.

masterVerb ups the ante for the free reverbs on the Pulsar platform!

Reverb is the most important effect but you don't want to use to much of it. I don't need to use many reverbs either. I find if I mix with headphones on I always end up putting too much reverb. The only time I would use a heavy reverb would be as a temporary effect in a very sparse, minimalistic section of a piece.

braincell:

hehe, that's odd.. I always find myself mixing the reverb quieter when mixing with headphones (because i feel the reverb appear louder in the headphones)..

but that might be to my loudspeaker and headphones.. both are quite average..