Utilizing delay in the studio

[sabriel9v]

How do you guys prefer to use delay in the studio, pre or post take?

What are some cool techniques to maximize a room's acoustic qualities and make it sound more cavernous and reverby?

[Jesse G]

I would always add it afterwards. Makes editing easier when you don't have to deal with delay trails. And if you do it afterwards you can change it however you see fit whenever you want rather than be stuck with the delay you recorded.

 

To maximize acoustic qualities, I'd play with room mics, I guess. The specifics would depend on what the room is like.

[austikins]

Is reverby a word? The only thing I can think of that would make more reverb is to make the walls/ceiling/floor out of a harder, flatter, surface. That might just make it sound like echo instead of reverb though, depending on the size of the room.

[Flogger59]

 

Is reverby a word? The only thing I can think of that would make more reverb is to make the walls/ceiling/floor out of a harder, flatter, surface. That might just make it sound like echo instead of reverb though, depending on the size of the room.

 

 

It's a big reason why people track vocals in bathrooms. Morrison did LA Woman sitting on the pot.

[Lee Knight]

If you using close mics along with room mics, try delaying the room mics by 20ms. Think of a millisecond as a foot in length. So a delay of 20 ms is like that room being 20 feet farther away. It's not a perfect illusion but it's a pretty good one. Try it.

[WRGKMC]

The ideal place to add echo on a guitar is post power amp or speakers. like an actual room reverberates from the speakers. Putting it before gain stages makes for nasty resonances/beating that occurs.

 

I occasionally pull out my old space echo and mic the amps through that. Besides having an excelent/warm preamp in it, the tape saturation after the speakers is about as good as it gets. Changing tape on the space echo is good for maybe 4~5 hours tops, so it has high maintainence tag attatched to it. I cant buy the loops that were designed for it anymore which were much more durable. I have to use reel tape and splice a loop on it.

 

You can use electronic effects units too. I record with two amps, so I sometimes run my mics through a stereo effects unit for a ping pong effect or stereo choruses and such. The trick to it though is to run the echo post power amp with either a cabinet emulated DI or an actual mic on the speakers.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

How do you guys prefer to use delay in the studio, pre or post take?

 

 

Depends. If it's an intrinsic part of the sound on, say, a guitar or keyboard, I usually print it. If it's for most any other reason, then during mixing.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

What are some cool techniques to maximize a room's acoustic qualities and make it sound more cavernous and reverby?

 

 

If it's, say, drums (although it works on other things), I put up a room mic and squash the snot out of it to bring out the room. For drums, instant Bonham.