Reverb Basics Essential Tips for Audio and Music Production

Script

Welcome to our quick guide to reverb. Let’s dive in!

Reverb, short for reverberation, is an essential sonic phenomenon in music and audio engineering. Put simply, reverb is what’s left over after a sound has stopped. If you’ve ever played your instrument in a large concert hall or tiled bathroom and noticed that it sounds different from your bedroom or practice space, reverb is the reason why.

In a room sound waves bounce off walls, ceilings, floors, and objects to create the auditory environment. This environment is dependant on a variety of factors including room dimensions, the materials on the surfaces in the room, and the position of our sound source within the room.

These days, we can use computers to simulate all kinds of different acoustic environments. Your DAW includes reverbs that allow you to model the acoustics of grand concert halls, chambers, or entirely unique, otherworldly soundscapes"

Reverb is typically applied in one of two ways: as an insert, or in parallel. Applying reverb as an insert is simple and most often used by beginners: you add a reverb onto your track and adjust the mix parameter until you’re happy with the sound.

More advanced users tend to set up reverbs in parallel. Using the sends in your DAWs mixer, you can direct any number of tracks into an auxiliary track with your reverb on it, using the volume of the send output to determine how much reverb you would like. This has many advantages as it lets you send multiple instruments to the same reverb to create the sense that they’re in the same room together, and makes it easier to adjust the amount of reverb in your sound without affecting the volume of your original signal, all while using less of your computer’s resources. Quick tip: If you’re setting your reverb up in parallel, make sure you set the wet/dry balance in your reverb plugin to 100% wet.

After adjusting the amount of reverb we want to use, there are many other parameters that we can use to dictate the sound.

The setting that will make the most difference to the character of our reverb is the algorithm. This determines what kind of space we’re emulating, be it a hall, a room, or a physical reverberation device like a plate or a spring.

After we’ve found an algorithm we like, we can adjust the tail parameter to determine how many seconds we would like our reverb to last. While this reverb tail is important when crafting our sound, our brains use the earliest reflections of sound waves off the walls to determine information about what kind of a space we’re in. Spreading out the timing of these early reflections will make our space seem larger, while moving them closer together will make our space feel more compact.

Depending on the effect you’re after, you can also balance the level of your reverb’s tail and early reflections to create the sense that you’re very close to something [example with a lot of ERs and very little tail] or in an other-worldly space [example with no ERs and only a tail].

Exploring these parameters can help add depth and emotion to your compositions, whether you're programming orchestral instruments or crafting electronic beats.

Reverb is more than just an effect and can be key to crafting the soundscape you’re after. Finding creative ways to use it can help to both captivate your audience and elevate your sound.

Thanks for watching, and happy composing!