Remember that reverb is cumulative. What's in the track gets added to the buss, gets added to the master and if you're not careful you end up with mud soup. I've heard mixes where nothing is very well defined due to all the verb....especially when you verb the bass.

Personally, my individual tracks are all dry as a bone in the Mojave desert at 3pm on a sunny day. I place a very light verb in the buss for the guitars if they have their own buss which is not common, a light verb on the vocal buss which is common, and then another very light verb on the master. Often I will end up shutting some of those off and relying on just the master with a touch of light verb. Dark plate, light plate, but nothing too obvious.

For staging, I simply use the panning of the instruments to create width and the levels to create depth. Louder in the mix is closer, and quieter in the mix is more to the back.

Often if you have one instrument with a noticeable reverb or a vocal with reverb and leave everything else dry, the listener will still think there's reverb on everything. In recent mixes, I tend to stay on the dryer side of the equation. Unless you're using reverb for a specific purpose, it's kinda like compression in my book.... yes, you want it there.... no, you don't really want it to be obvious.

my opinion.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 02/11/18 05:29 AM.

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