Engineering Sound With Reverb

Reverb naturally occurs in rooms. It is the reflections of sounds off of the walls and its what gives a room its tone. Think of them as millions of echos that blend together and fade away quickly. Reverberation decays rather quickly and gives the feeling of space. Your ears and brain have spent their whole life listening to reverb, but most the time you don’t really give thought to it. We want to be engineering sound with reverb to help give a feeling of space. The right reverb gives a track a smoother sound and feeling. Newer audio engineers tend to put reverb on everything which is usually a mistake. To much reverb can be bad, and it can muddy up your overall track. You should only apply it to the tracks the feel too close and personal to give them some space.A good sound engineer will add very little artificial reverb into his mixes. He will use the natural reverb of the studio to get the sound he wants. Close mic techniques start to eliminate room reverb, so you need to be paying attention while you set things up. This is why its important to have a game plan when going into a recording session. If you want little natural reverberation, set your mics close. But if you want to use that room tone, back those mics off a little to help capture the sound of the room.

Do a little experiment. Take a snare drum and mic it close in a sound dampened room. Record a quick track of a steady beat and set it up for playback. Now listen to the track with your eyes closed. Can you feel how the snare seems to be right in your face? Its should sound tight and powerful with some real presence. Now add some large room or hall reverb to it and play it over again. With you eyes closed again, try and find the snare drum. Its no longer in your face, but out in the room somewhere. Its power has diminished, but now its spacious and more pleasant. You can use different approaches to create different feels and emotions for the person listening.

Remember this exercise when you’re mix. If you want to engineer a sound that’s in your face with a punch, mic close and add no reverb. If you want a spacious feeling to the instrument, try and use natural reverb before you add it artificially. Invest in a good quality reverb unit or software plug-in and you wont regret it.