Reverb question

[mountain lion]

Hi

Whats the difference between applying à little or a lot of a hall reverb in logic vs using two different reverbs, a hall and a room?

Thanks

[Arpangel]

Hi

Whats the difference between applying à little or a lot of a hall reverb in logic vs using two different reverbs, a hall and a room?

Thanks

This is one-off those questions that’s almost impossible to answer.
Apart from saying, have a go, and see what happens, just experiment, there are so many variables, and possible outcomes, it’s almost infinite.
If you’re using plug-in's you can have multiple instances and chains, hall and room algorithms are different though, a small hall, won’t sound like a small room, and large room won’t sound like a large hall!
I’m a big fan of using multiple reverbs though, it stretches them, and makes everything sound much more dense, richer.

[Zukan]

Can you be a bit more specific and tell us a little about what you're trying to achieve?

[Luke W]

I think I see what you’re getting at, but yes some more detail would be handy. But as Arpangel has suggested, giving it a go will probably answer a lot of questions for you and hearing it happen may well mean it makes sense quicker than reading it. Set up two sends on a single track in Logic each feeding a different reverb at equal levels, and then use the mutes on the returns to switch between and compare what they're doing. Change the levels of the sends to whatever suits your questions and compare again etc.

[mountain lion]

Just Trying to learn more about reverb. I guess the obvious benefit of using one reverb instead of two is that you save processing power.

Sometimes you hear a song love the sound and want to recreate it.

Can you hear what type of reverb has been used in a song?

At least i find reverb easier to Grasp Than eq and compressors

[Arpangel]

Just Trying to learn more about reverb. I guess the obvious benefit of using one reverb instead of two is that you save processing power.

Sometimes you hear a song love the sound and want to recreate it.

Can you hear what type of reverb has been used in a song?

At least i find reverb easier to Grasp Than eq and compressors

As Luke says, just play around, and investigate as much as you can, as for recognising reverbs in tracks you like, that’s very hit-and-miss, often what you think it is turns out to be something entirely different, and sometimes the artists themselves (me included) can’t even remember what they’ve used.
However, I did have an AMS RMX16 for awhile, and that was just so distinctive it was ridiculous, I thought "yeah yeah the sound of a thousand tracks I love"

[Hugh Robjohns]

Whats the difference between applying à little or a lot of a hall reverb in logic vs using two different reverbs, a hall and a room?

It's the same as singing loudly or quietly in a big hall, versus singing at normal level in a moderate room. I think you'd be able to tell the difference!

In simplistic terms there are two aspects to consider here: (1) the returning level of the reverb tail itself -- which is what changes if you adjust how much reverb you have -- and (2) the acoustic character of the early reflections -- which is what differs between alternative algorithms like hall and room and those early reflections determine our impression of the acoustic environment being created.

So hall and room algorithms define different kinds of acoustic spaces and they create different sonic impressions. Winding up and down the send or return levels just changes how much of that particular spatial character you excite.

Which means the two approaches sound different.

Whether that matters to your particular application only you will know... and as others have said, experiment and make up your own mind.

[CS70]

Just Trying to learn more about reverb. I guess the obvious benefit of using one reverb instead of two is that you save processing power.

Sometimes you hear a song love the sound and want to recreate it.

Can you hear what type of reverb has been used in a song?

At least i find reverb easier to Grasp Than eq and compressors

A natural reverb is just the sum of the echoes/reflections of a sound on the walls of a specific environment, which depends their distance from the source and their material - specifically which frequencies they absorb and reflect - and the intensity of the sounds (since acoustic energy dissipates with distance, a very quiet source may never reach a wall, and/or its reflection be insignificant).

Then there's artificial reverbs, such as plates, which attempt to reproduce the above and generally fail at it, but still sound very nice when used appropriately.

When the natural reverb of a sound reaches our ear together with the direct sound, it filters this latter, changing its timbre in a specific way. Million of years of evolution and constant training from birth make so that our brain can use such timbre change as one of the elements to determine the location of the sound source and the size of the environment we're in. Roughly, the higher level of reverb sound with respect to the source, the further away from us the source is; and the more delay there is between hearing the source's direct sound and hearing the reflection, the more distance there is between the source and the walls.

So for a "natural" recording you don't really need more than a single appropriate natural reverb.. if you record an ensemble all together with close microphones but capture also a "room mic" - i.e. a listener which is separated from the source - adding that room mic is all it takes.

If you haven't recorded the room mic (or you have recorded sources in different places separately so there cannot be one), you can simulate it after the fact, either sending a bit of every track into a bus with "natural reverb" effect on, and mixing in the effect as you would do with the room mic; or even playing the recording into a room and capturing the real reverberation (which can be great fun if you have a good room).

Making music, however, is seldom about being entirely natural (with perhaps the exception of classical recordings). Hence the use of many reverbs at mixdown, not so much to simulate space, but to creatively change the timbre of the various sources in a pleasant way. Plate reverbs are the most obvious example, but having several reverbs set up is definitely another.

Delays are used in a similar manner, for example one of my favorite tricks to create a huge stereo width is to employ panned or ping pong delays.

In other words: past the simple "real world" concept, it's up to you to do as you like.