Stereo Verb vs Space

Hey,

I've been re-evaluating some of my recordings. I've noticed the reverb sounds very...well mono, it doens't have any width, I want to make it sound as though the singer is pulling back from the mic and filling up the room, so it needs to sound like there's reflections coming from the sides, not just the front.

Anyone got any advice on how to do this? And maybe some other things I should consider?

One idea I had was to setup mic's in a bigger room that're either in an X/y configuration, maybe closer to one wall then another (although that's more likely to create the illusion that the reverbs coming from that side) or two different sounding mic's. Perhaps in different positions in the room away from the singer. Unfortunately I don't have an omni mic so I can't use an M/S setup which I'd like to try.

I mix ITB btw. I use cubase SX, so as far as I know, using a stereo plugin on a mono track doesn't work?

Hey Antman,

Sounds like your well on your way.

Q: Are you feeding your Reverb unit with one input or two???

If you'll set the input to be feed by a couple busses, you'll be more likely to get a better spread on the output of the device. Also try to set it up Pre-Fader then you can really tuck the vocal back into the reverb. Also the pre-delay on the reverb needs to be brought up and that will help you get a better spread. I like it around 128 ms for most of my music.

Your other choice using X-Y during tracking in a big room will also work very well. Id try the singer on one end of the room with a vocal mic set cardiod, even try building a booth around the singer to make the performance in it's own space up close. Well I just went back and saw that wasn't the sound you were after, but know that it's an option for the right song. On the other side of the room set up a pair of mics equal distance from the floor to ceiling and side to side .. in an X-Y configuration. Get the stereo setup levels pretty close to the same level as the center vocal mic. Record on three tracks. In the end you will need far less reverb in the mix with this set up.

Sounds like your well on your way to creating something you'll be very proud of for a long time.

Good luck,

Russ

Nashville

try two mono verbs set slightly different, panned hard LR. also try stereo "spreaders" after the verb on the aux [like waves s1, psp stereo enhancer, etc]. just two things that come to mind right off the top of my head.

Nothing like the real thing baby....

Real Room = Real Reverb

Try using SPIN AUDIO'S 3D DELAYS VST/DX plug in.

Then, draw a diagram on paper of your singer in the imaginary space he's standing in... Calculate, with the following scientific equation:

[the speed of sound is 344 m/s (770 mph or 1238km/h)]

how the sound is bouncing off various imaginary "walls" in your imagined stereo environment. Set the plug-in to deliver the appropriate reflections within the stereo/binaural field.

The temperature and pressure of the room will, of course, affect how fast the sound travels, but you can use the above equation as a very useful starting point.

A very useful form of that number is: 1.1 feet per millisecond

Of course a real room would have one delay time for front to back, another for side to side, another for floor to ceiling, another for front to side to back to other side, and an infinite number more for more convoluted paths... and each would have differing amplitudes and spectral characteristics. Convolved reverbs come pretty close to this (though the decays don't always sound right to me - - but generally that gets buried in the next chord anyway so maybe I'm nitpicking here) - - but my point is still: If you want real reverb you need real space.

Plugins are great, and I do use them, but I don't think any artificial reverb I've ever heard sounds convincingly like real space. (After all, how many different empty rooms can one own?)

I agree that only a room will give you a room... Human ears are strangely savvy about ambient cues.

I was just suggesting the SPIN AUDIO 3D DELAY plugin, faute-de-mieux.

It does offer 6 different delays, each one stationable in 3D space, and each one tweakable for feedback, delay time and filtration (Lo Pass or Hi Pass).

I would think that a savvy and clever producer, armed with the sound speed equation above, could cobble together a pretty convincing "faux room".

Yeah, sorry Ras, didn't mean to get preachy on ya....

It does look pretty cool.

There used to be a pretty cool one that came with older versions of Sonar (or maybe Cakewalk?) that let you shape a room with arbitrary numbers & sizes of walls, then let you position sound sources & virtual mics in that space as well. I don't remember the name, something with a 3 in it, but it was way frickin' cool. It WAS a huge CPU hog (at least, for the CPU I had at the time). But it was pretty useful.

No, you weren't preachy at all! No harm, no foul. You know your stuff. I am quick to defer to the erudition of all here, as I am only an intermediate student of the MP&E side of things.

Yes, that old Cakewalk plugin of which you speak was called SOUNDSTAGE, and I still use it. It really does sound surprisingly good-- smooth, not jangly-- and I've gotten some decent little mixes out of it. Using it now with a stronger CPU, it causes no problems at all.

Try this:

Save these settings as a preset in an appropriate delay plug in:

Multi Tap Delay

Dry out -Inf.

Wet out 0.0dB

Mod Rate 1.0Hz

Mod Depth 0%

Feedback 0%

Number of taps 2

tap 1

Tap gain 100%

Delay 1ms

Pan L -100%

tap 2

Tap gain 100%

Delay 15ms

Pan R 100%

///

After you do that, try it out. You can tweak and adjust for different shades, and learn while you do it.

Tip: Automate the panning. _~

While your at it, duplicate the track and use it in certain areas for wicked comb filtering and other phase anomalies. :phil:~~~

:phil:

Send the mono track to a stereo Buss, and open there the RoomWorks reverb plug, and leave it at 100% wet. If you are in doubt about the reverb sonics for vocals, try another reverb plugin who has early reflection parameters. I rather use multiple reverbs on Busses for a single vocal track, sometimes huge spaces ,but just brought up very little on the Buss fader

.

Angelo, so your main vocal dry track still remains in mono? with the stereo 100% wet track mixed behind that?

P.S. How have you been?

mine would remain in mono [or you can click the prefader button and automate down the dry mono] if you want to lose it and go wet [or automate the mix on teh verb at the same time], although im really not sure why except for creative purposes one would do that.

The result will be stereo with the lead vocal as center phantom source. The usual stable in the center phantom source as most lead vocals have in a pop mix.

.