Which reverb do you prefer?

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by TBman

I followed Doug's tutorial. I'm "sending" the wav through the reverb bus and then to the mixdown (I think that's the right explanation ) I'm using the same software.

Ok so when you are wanting to "compare" two different reverb plugins (the main priority is to eliminate as many variables as possible ) like levels and amount of reverb hitting the plugins and the main outs/mixdown.

First : put both reverbs on the one single bus track
That way the amount you are sending from the audio/guitar track to the bus track, will be the same hitting both plugins ( which BTW should both be set to 100% wet) because you are controlling the amount of wet vs dry by the amount of send level and or the amount of bus level .

Then all you need to do to compare, is toggle the bypass button on one, then the other, plugin GUI it self.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly

My biggest problem with recording is that there are to many choices. There's an endless supply of reverbs. An endless supply of anything in recording now days. Every day I would change things and then change them again. I quit for now. Back at it next winter though.

That's the inherent problem with digital recording: no mix is ever finished because we can always go back and change it.

As for reverbs, it's true there are MANY choices and I've moved from one to another to another etc. over the years as this list of reverbs I own demonstrates:
2016 Stereo Room
Abbey Road Chambers
Abbey Road Plates
AIR Non-Linear Reverb
AIR Reverb
AIR Spring Reverb
Altiverb 7
Black Spring
Blackhole
D-Verb
Fission
Little Plate
Seventh Heaven
Seventh Heaven Pro
Space
Studio Reverb
Tverb
UAD CS-1
UAD DreamVerb
UAD EMT 140
UAD EMT 250
UAD Ocean Way Studios
UAD RealVerb-Pro
UltraReverb
Valhalla Plate
Valhalla Vintage Verb

That said, as you gain more experience with them, some will start to stand out. For myself, the first reverb I used a lot was RealVerb but at that time I didn't have a lot of choices in my arsenal. I moved onto the EMT 140 for a while but I found that difficult to dial in. For a time, TVerb became one I'd reach for a lot but it wasn't always the right choice. Valhalla Vintage Verb calmed my reverb buying for a pretty long time ...at least until I saw someone selling an Altiverb license for a great price. Altiverb was something I'd read about often but the price kept my interest in check. I got it cheap enough that I could resell it and not lose a dime, so I grabbed it and wow... what a great tool that is. More recently I purchased Seventh Heaven and I'm using that more than anything right now, but the other favorites still find their way into things because sometimes they're the better fit.

But the key to figuring out what you like is trying them out and training your ears to focus on the various aspects that make up a reverb sound. One way to do this is to load several reverbs on your buss track, optimally adjust each, then A/B/C them. You really want to hear them back to back to evaluate them both in and out of the mix.

[TBman]

Okay, I adjusted the "send" to be the same value. You may have to refresh your browser to hear the change.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by TBman

Okay, I adjusted the "send" to be the same value. You may have to refresh your browser to hear the change.

The second is still quite a bit louder. That said, I think the reverb on the first one sounds better but I'm not all that fond of what it's doing on the low end. I'd probably roll off a fair bit of that.

[Gordon Currie]

As jim1960 said, still a mismatch between levels. That said, I lean towards the second one as it seems more integrated. With the first one, I hear a discrete early reflection that sounds a little like a slapback echo. That causes me to hear it as a separate effect.

[jim1960]

TBman, are you putting a meter of some sort on your master bus to check the level of each version before you bounce the files?

[TBman]

Originally Posted by jim1960

TBman, are you putting a meter of some sort on your master bus to check the level of each version before you bounce the files?

Duh. I'll have to figure that one out. Give me a few hours,

[Trevor B.]

Originally Posted by TBman

Duh. I'll have to figure that one out. Give me a few hours,

It's my understanding that Adobe Audition comes with the tc electronic loudness radar plugin in the box. Here's a video tutorial on how to use it:



Hope this helps!

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by TBman

Duh. I'll have to figure that one out. Give me a few hours,

If you don't have a useful meter, the Klanghelm VUMT is a good one and it's inexpensive.
A meter doesn't change the sound of your track in any way. It just gives you feedback on the levels you're hitting.

[Doug Young]

Audition has a cool loudness match feature as well that works pretty well. It matches overall volume levels, so the perceived level can be matched, not just peak levels. If the tracks are very different, its tough to totally nail this, but for two similar samples, it works very well. You also don't have to actually have it do the adjustment, you can just see how different two examples are.

Here's a screen snap. I just threw 2 random files in.

LoudnessMatch.jpg

I can hit a button and it will adjust the levels of the 2 files to match.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Trevor B.

It's my understanding that Adobe Audition comes with the tc electronic loudness radar plugin in the box. Here's a video tutorial on how to use it:



Hope this helps!

Originally Posted by jim1960

If you don't have a useful meter, the Klanghelm VUMT is a good one and it's inexpensive.
A meter doesn't change the sound of your track in any way. It just gives you feedback on the levels you're hitting.

Thanks. I'll work on this. I tried the match loudness, but it didn't work out that great... I'll keep working on this. It would be good to learn how to monitor and adjust overall loudness so all my recordings going forward would be consistent. Here's what I came up with so far. I enabled downloading for these two files in case anyone wanted to take a shot at it.

Voices from the Past:


Great Hall:

[GTR1960]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

Skipping over the level matching discussion that has already been well discussed, I listened to both and preferred the first. To me the second one seemed a bit "muddy"/low-middy (gee these words for sound are so inexact).

I wouldn't take my opinion to the bank, I'm not a big user of room reverbs on acoustic guitar, and today I'm not liking my own mixes much either.

I agree. I level matched them. I preferred the first track, the darker verb although there was more of it, sounded better to me than the brighter verb of the 2nd track. Of course you could always eq behind the reverb, and roll of the highs some, of the reverb in the 2nd track.

[Trevor B.]

Apart from the mismatched levels to my ears the reverb on the top clip sounds mid-low heavy and the bottom clip sounds too trebly. The compromise might be to apply the Abbey Road Reverb trick (low cut and high cut to focus the reverb in the middle) on both clips.

[Willie_D]

I like the subtlety of the 2nd one.