Eddie,

Unless your hardware reverb units are Lexicons, chances are you can get a better result inside the box, not outside the box. Any time you are sending signal outside of the card for processing, you are going to add noise. There are so many free, nice sounding reverbs, that you really should avoid looping out to the mixer. Reverbs can have a 'time period' sound to them. As processing power has increased, the natural aspect of reverbs changes. I bagged my Alesis midiverb years ago because I found that I could get much better results in the box, than with the Alesis.

When you record vocals, or any source for that matter, you should try to set the gain staging so that it's a few clicks under 0 dB on the software's VU meter. You can always dial it back.

2 x 1/2 does not equal 1 when it comes to audio, BTW.

Adding reverb should be one of the last steps in a mixdown.

The main point of recording 'into the box' is to use the box. With an SM58, if you are close mic'ed you are almost assured to need to apply high pass filtering. Start at 80 Hz or so and go up from there, until you feel that the sound is getting 'thin'. Roll it back down 10 Hz or so from there.

Now, for reverb, it's almost always a good idea to bus the reverb. First, go get a decent freeware vst reverb like FreeverbToo http://www.sinusweb.de/freetoo.html . Place this into the aux slot and set it to 100% wet. Then, on your vocal track, start the aux knob at full left and as the track is playing back, slowly dial up the amount until you think it's too much. Then dial it back 25% of the travel from there.

While the effects that come bundled with RB can be good, I've not heard people brag on the reverb. It's o.k. to admit that not every effect in RB or PTPA is the best.

Another reverb that gots of airplay here on PG forums was the Anwidasoft reverb. Slightly limited in function, but still very usable. Then there is the whole classic series of Kjærhus plugins, hosted now by the Acoustica folks: http://www.acoustica.com/plugins/vst-directx.htm Everyone should have this plugin pack. It's the best deal going for 10 years now.

The reason you want to bus the reverb is so that you can send other track output there, without instantiating another copy of the reverb, which would eat more CPU.

I would send you a template project if I had RB, but I don't. Perhaps someone can help Eddie out this way - get him started with the right type of signal routing?

My Songs, photos, writing,etc.
My Sound Cloud