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Old 04-21-2017, 11:07 AM   #30
Srender
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 26
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Some other ideas that might help make whatever reverb you choose more appealing to the ear:

Spaciousness comes primarily from arrangement. It's not only about instruments not stepping on each other in the frequency domain, but keeping the unnecessary from cluttering the time domain. Feng-shui. You help to better define and accentuate a "space" or "room" with reverb/delay. Even better if the elements inside the room are simple and elegant - in a way that suits the genre.

In a busier mix, throw a mono reverb behind an instrument. Stereo reverb on a track in a busy mix can muddy.

You've heard the high-pass and low-pass tricks to clean up the sound of the reverb in a mix - but my world was rocked when I lifted 8K on a reverb behind a vocal, and on a separate song (ballad), on a drum machine snare. Finding some nice high-end spice to accentuate in the reverb channel can be nice.

And this: for a lush sense of space behind an instrument, send to two different reverbs loaded on two separate tracks- one panned to the left, and the other panned right.

In terms of plugins, big upvote for Valhalla.

I certanly struggle with thinking, conceptualizing about this stuff too much. It is great to wear the engineer's hat to understand Haas effect, the effect of predelay in defining a space, etc. My struggle is to continue developing my understanding of the engineering side, yet while mixing, to de-clutch from thinking and conceptualizing, and to let the ear inspire intuition, decision, and taste.
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