Hi Among my many faults are my lack of understanding of Reverb!
I am trying to make an EDM track and it occured to me that perhaps some producers are muting tracks and only leaving the reverb in the track?Would that be correct? or would it sound just too far back ?Thanks H

When you work with reverb, you have the original sound, which is called Dry, and the reverb, which is called Wet. You mix those. It is possible with some reverbs to mix anywhere from 100% dry to 100% wet. I would call 100% wet highly unusual, for special effects only.

When you work with Reverb and Delay in a DAW, you should not put these effects directly on the channel strip (track) - you would rather put these effects an individual AUX tracks, where you choose to send the audio from your instrument to.

The basic concept is to have an AUX track with your Reverb set to 100% wet signal, and then from your dry instrument track you decide how many Db you wish to send to your AUX track.

An example is drums. Typically you would split the each drum into an individual track. The Bass Drum you would like to keep dry or provide i very tiny twist of a gated or plate reverb 0.3 to 0.9 milliseconds. The snare or hand clap might need some more space to sit correct in the mix.

On vocals it get even more complicated, because you might use a different reverb/delay in the verse and another more spacey feeling in the chorus - just producers always say "make the chorus BIG".

If you're on Instagram I recommend you to follow "mixing_tips" - a source of very good advise.

Good luck with your EDM.

This is a helpful article which I've read multiple times and referenced before, myself: https://ledgernote.com/columns/mixing-mastering/mixing-with-reverb/

It's bit longish read, here's my summary from own mixing experience.

If something should be taken out it's the point of using sends, as that's pretty much what "kids these days" with their multicore i7-s don't get -- they slap tons of effects on every track -- because they can. You can and usually should get by with two reverbs, one short and with prominent ER for percussive and shorter elements, and a long lush one for ambiance (vocals, pads, keys, some guitar parts etc.) The neat thing is that you can use the ratio of sending to these two to control the "depth" in 3D space of some sound.

The second point is that subsonics and bass have no place in the reverb signal path.

The third point that you should take out is that you should use compression to "duck" reverb out of the way of rhythmically prominent elements such as kick, snare, bass and vocals while still being able to immerse some of them into more reverb than you typically could if you weren't using ducking.

The rest of it you'll figure out yourself through practice.

Of course I'm just a hobbyist so - use your own discretion, and have fun with it!

If you record the Bass Guitar (or a bass drum)directly into the DAW without any Mics, then you end up having a desert dry bass. When recording through a mic you will get some reverb or early reflection into the mic, so the sense of a room around a bass is possible - but I fully agree that it is a very delicate thing.

But I guess Reverb still suffers from being heavily abused during the 80's pop and rock music.

That is why you put a reverb on an aux bus and add just a touch of reverb on the bass.

for the most part the RealTracks i use have their own reverb. if i have a solo vocal i use reverb as a plugin in the vocal channel strip but for more than one track i do use the aux send and return.

nicest reverb i've found so far is the Lexicon MPX-i Reverb which has a really nice vocal plate preset.

Thanks Matt ,Peter ,Deryk,Mario and Bob for taking the time with your tips and links.
I am going through the article Deryk and I did hear before that ducking the reverb on the vocals is a good idea ,so im going to look into that .The song is coming out well and Im finding that by processing the effects better and spending time on them it is becoming clearer, Cheers H

Hi One last thing please
How do I get the Realtracks I have In Realband to have no reverb.I have the 2020 and I cant see a flat dry and centre option like in BIAB ,Thanks Hugh

[quote=Hugh2Hi One last thing please
How do I get the Realtracks I have In Realband to have no reverb.I have the 2020 and I cant see a flat dry and centre option like in BIAB ,Thanks Hugh [/quote]

If there's reverb on them, which I'm not entirely convinced there is.... it is very little. Generally, I find that I have to add reverb to the tracks in the form of a light reverb on the master buss in my mix down.

Another thing to consider....and something I do quite often. I assume that the tracks are dry. I put reverb on the things that specifically need it. Guitars and vocals mainly. The other tracks stay dry... drums, bass, keys, etc.... In the final mix, I might drop in a Studioverb2 with a very low level verb at about 10% or so just to give a slight cohesiveness to the mix. Remember that reverb is cumulative so go easy on the knob. Also, an audible reverb on one instrument tends to give a sympathetic verb to the other things in the mix because our brain has a hard time differentiating the sounds.

I've also heard of engineers who do in fact use the reverb signal only in their mixes. I've never experimented with that so I'm not sure of the details.

Hi Herb,
Sorry missed your answer ,thanks for the sound advice .So Ive never put reverb on the master buss so I must try that in the way you discribed.Also what you said about the engineers using reverb out put only is what I was looking for in my original post .I wonder does anyone know if is their any tutorials anywhere .
Thanks again much appreciated Hugh

Put the reverb in an Aux slot in the mixer.
Feed the tracks you want to use it on to that AUX slot in the desired amount.
Set reverb effect itself to 100% wet.

That way the dry sound comes from the track, the reverb comes from the AUX slot(s) and get mixed together at the main output.

As far as a tutorial, here's one our own Mac wrote long ago, but still applies.
http://www.audiominds.com/reverb.html

The above site has many good basic tutorials on recording, mixing, etc.
Worth taking the time to read some of it if learning the craft early on.

Just to be clear: The tracks, in this scenario get sent/assigned to 2 places. A. They get sent/assigned to the main L/R buss like they already are. That's the dry signal rharv mentioned. B. They get sent/assigned to your aux/reverb buss (aux buss with your reverb plugin on it). That aux/reverb buss now gets sent/assigned to the main L/R buss. You then blend in the reverb by adjusting the level of the aux/reverb buss. That's why the reverb plugin itself can be at 100%.
In most DAWs that I've used the send from the instrument track has an adjustable value. So, not every instrument gets the same amount of reverb. But for starters you will probably set this at unity or zero (not + or -). Most often, for me, they all go negative, below unity.