I found this article informative.

It gave me some excellent ideas on how to use reverb more effectively than I have been using it to date.

https://www.waves.com/adding-depth-to-a-mix?utm_source=wnletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=6-tips-get-tips-btn&utm_campaign=weekend-content-chambers-reverb-july-27

Regards,
Noel

Good article! Thanks

The idea to pan a reverb return to similar but slightly wider space than the source was a new one to me. I’m not even sure I can do that in my current DAW templates where I have a couple different verbs setup on send/returns. Gotta try that one.

Good find, interesting.. I think most will benefit from this .

Thanks

Can anyone reply as to how they would accomplish the limited spread reverb besides sending to two instances of a mono reverb and panning the outputs of those instances?

Scott,

I have reverb set up on a bus, and Reaper lets me control the panning and volume as part of the send data.

While I've been panning my reverbs, my approach has been a little more haphazard than the method suggested in the article. I'm looking forward to trying this more refined approach.

Regards,
Noel

You guys have hearing so far beyond mine that it is overwhelming to even contemplate it.


Bud

Panning of source Track combined with Width adjustment in reverb maybe (?)
Ambience is cool

Noel, that's actually pretty typical for sends in nearly any DAW. I'm talking about the output of the reverb itself being limited in spread to a certain pan 'section'. Just because you pan the input to a reverb, does not limit it's output to a certain band of the left to right pan - in fact, most reverbs intentionally do quite a bit of mixing of the signal to simulate what happens in a reverberant space.

Bob, when you listen to this, does it seems to limit the ambience output to a 'section' of the L/R space?

yep
like I said, Ambience is cool (at least here)
All controls work .. which also means you have to consider all the controls <grin>

I just don’t understand how the ‘width’ control knows where to pan the width.

I’ve been trying to listen for this in some recordings and I honestly don’t have any reference recordings where this is apparent.

Plenty of hard panned reverb returns (lots of Beatles, VH, Kings of Leon), but nothing where the reverb return is just slightly wider than the source signal and panned similarly.

The input decides where center is; pan it half left and it is half left.
From there you have more left than right going into the reverb.
The width narrows how much wider that reverb is.

If you want 'exact' control a reverb routed out to (presumably) hardware and recorded back as separate tracks via a mixer could be panned exactly where you want, if you could record the resulting stereo reverb signal as 2 separate MONO tracks and control them in the mix later.


It's much like panning a stereo piano sample to still have some L/R feel, but be mainly on the right side of the stage. It's much easier using two separate L/R channels and panning those to the width you desire.

My DAW (Logic Pro X) has a “Direction Control” feature that let you do that with stereo tracks. I like to pan pianos very close to the vocal but still maintain the stereo spread. Our current post in the User Showcase “State Lines” is, hopefully, a good example of this.

Apologies if I’ve drifted to far from the topic.


Bud

Really informative stuff here - good find, and thanks for sharing!

I hear so much modern music that is just soaked in reverb. I understand that it's a certain aesthetic they are going for, but it seems a bit much to me.