How to guage the reverb for recorded vocals

[Elessar [Sly]]

I have always found it tough to be 100% happy with reverb on vocals. This is both singimg and screamy/growly tyoe vocals. I tend to use logic plugins for reverb. Can anyone give me some pointers?

[nightflameauto]

For one thing, I've never been happy with Logic's built-in reverb. Delays, fine. Reverb just seems to always either disappear, or wash the entire track out with no in between.

For another, I've gotten more and more used to relying on delay for vocals and letting reverb be extremely sparse on the tail end. That may not work for everybody, but it seems to work for me.

As far as balance, good speakers/monitors, a room that isn't an echo chamber so you can tell what's verb and what's natural, and time tweaking.

[Elessar [Sly]]

Any decent free reverb plugins?

[nightflameauto]

Any decent free reverb plugins?

I'd have to do some digging to find 'em. I ended up buying a bunch of reverbs from a few different companies when they go on sale. I mostly use the TRacks verbs, and keep it pretty sparse.

[Matt]

I really like the Ambience reverb VST - http://magnus.smartelectronix.com/

[Markdude]

Rhythmic delay instead of reverb (quite low in the mix) goes a long way and sometimes works better than reverb (or in addition to reverb), especially for modern production values.

EQ the reverb return. Hi pass quite a bit so things don't get muddy. Low pass a good bit if you want things to sound natural but more dense, or if you're going for an old school 70's kind of "sheen" to your vocal tracks, don't low pass as heavily and maybe even boost some of the highs on your return.

Set decay times that are in time with the song. Maybe a quarter note or half note. Same with pre-delays (which really help to make the reverb sound like actual reverb instead of just making the vocal track sound washy), which you can time to maybe a 32nd or 64th note.

Even though it seems like it goes against most rules of thumb, try compression AFTER reverb. It makes perfect sense, really. It's kind of like an automatic way to automate the wet/dry mix of the reverb. When there's singing, the vocals are overpowing the reverb and it's not really all that perceptible, then when the singing stops, the compressor clamps down and brings up the level of the reverb on the tail of the vocal. The result sounds very natural and musical. I believe I read about that from Eric Valentine (Third Eye Blind, All American Rejects, QOTSA) and he also mentioned doing that for snare drums sometimes, which makes sense (although I haven't tried it).

[Markdude]

Btw, one rule of thumb if you're going for natural sounding reverb (and not a deliberate, attention-capturing effect) is to put the reverb level at 0 and slowly bring it up until you can just barely perceive it. THEN, turn it down a db or so. Sometimes it's one of those things where you don't really notice it's there, but you notice something's missing if it's gone.

[GuitarBilly]

What I do is I set up where I think it sounds good then I take a quick mp3 of it and listen to it in the car or a boombox or anything that is not my studio monitors. That's how I gauge reverb, eq, volumes etc.... there is really no rule, it depends on the music style, but one thing you should always do is make sure it sounds good on media players "normal" people use, like car stereos etc...

[nakedzen]

I usually put a send to another track and use that as the wet track instead of using the wet/dry knob of the plugin. Much easier to control the amount, also you can eq the wet signal differently than the main vocal this way.

+1 on using short delay instead of verb as well. Plugins I usually end up using are Variety of Sound NastyDLA, TAL-Dub-II and Freeverb by Dreampoint. The high and low pass filters are very useful in Freeverb and NastyDLA if you want brighter/thinner or darker repeats to make the delay more subtle.

[Cirrus]

+4 billion on delay instead of reverb. Keep the repeats low and modulated/ distorted/ band-passed and it basically sounds like reverb that works in a mix, unlike actual reverbed-vocals which typically sound like THIS VOCAL HAS REVERB or if you go a bit more subtle THIS VOCAL IS DRY.

If reverb is the order of the day, long pre-delays are good, maybe in the 100ms range. and Band-pass the reverb so it has its own space in the mix rather than washing everything out. Then (and this is the crux of all my mixing related posts) AUTOMATE the reverb send. The is no one setting that will work for the entire mix - you have to ride it so it doesn't sound overblown or buried. some phrases can be more dry while others, often long sustained notes, you can wham the reverb up for some atmosphere.

[Bardagh]

Spend $50 on the Valhalla Room plugin. You will not regret it - no way, no how. There are some decent free reverbs out there like the Kjaerhus classic reverb and the Variety of Sound Epicverb, but I kid you not there is just something about Valhalla Room. It has tons of great presets that 9 times out of ten need little to no tweaking. But I do usually send clean vocals first to a delay then into the reverb.

[Bardagh]

+4 billion on delay instead of reverb. Keep the repeats low and modulated/ distorted/ band-passed and it basically sounds like reverb that works in a mix, unlike actual reverbed-vocals which typically sound like THIS VOCAL HAS REVERB or if you go a bit more subtle THIS VOCAL IS DRY.

If reverb is the order of the day, long pre-delays are good, maybe in the 100ms range. and Band-pass the reverb so it has its own space in the mix rather than washing everything out. Then (and this is the crux of all my mixing related posts) AUTOMATE the reverb send. The is no one setting that will work for the entire mix - you have to ride it so it doesn't sound overblown or buried. some phrases can be more dry while others, often long sustained notes, you can wham the reverb up for some atmosphere.

I think it really depends on your style of music and the atmosphere you're looking to create. The right reverb with the right settings after a well set delay can add something worthwhile.

[Elessar [Sly]]

What logic delay would you recommend for this sort of thing?

[nightflameauto]

What logic delay would you recommend for this sort of thing?

I've honestly used the built-in delay that comes with Logic quite a bit. Very low repeats, pick a note for the repeats (I usually go quarter, eighth or dotted eighth), play a bit with high and low pass to keep it from flooding the mix and there ya go.

[Elessar [Sly]]

What logic delay would you recommend for this sort of thing?

I've honestly used the built-in delay that comes with Logic quite a bit. Very low repeats, pick a note for the repeats (I usually go quarter, eighth or dotted eighth), play a bit with high and low pass to keep it from flooding the mix and there ya go.

Which one? There are a few in built ones.

[nightflameauto]

What logic delay would you recommend for this sort of thing?

I've honestly used the built-in delay that comes with Logic quite a bit. Very low repeats, pick a note for the repeats (I usually go quarter, eighth or dotted eighth), play a bit with high and low pass to keep it from flooding the mix and there ya go.

Which one? There are a few in built ones.

The first one you come across that's just a straight stereo delay, not the ping-pong one.