How to Use Reverb: Basic Techniques and Settings | LANDR Mix Tips #10

Reverb works best as a send effect.

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When you create your bus, you’ll have to decide whether to make it stereo or mono.

It may seem like you would always want a stereo reverb. But there are some situations where a mono reverb is actually more effective.

Either way, you’ll need to set up your bus based on how many channels you’ll need for your reverb.

If know what type you’ll need (hall, plate, room) and whether it should be short, medium or long, you’ll be able to get yourself into the ballpark relatively quickly.

I’ll start with a medium plate and I’ll exaggerate the wet mix slightly so it’s easy to hear as I tweak the settings.

First use the damping controls to hone in the frequency content of the decay, then make overall adjustments with the high and low cut filters.

It’s not unusual for these settings to appear to conflict. For example, right now I’ve got a rich reverb character using lots of low damping, but I’m also attenuating the overall lows to work in the mix.

Part of the fun of setting up reverbs is how these controls interact, so feel free to explore!

Next up you should decide on the time based parameters of your reverb.

Getting the length of the reverb decay right can be tricky. If the decay is too long, lingering tails can clash with the different chords in a harmonic progression

If the early reflections are obscuring the attack of the dry signal, you may need a longer pre-delay but If you can hear a distracting gap between the dry signal and the reverb, you might have too much pre-delay

Now that the characteristics of the reverb are dialled in, you can choose the volume of the reverb relative to the dry signal.

A little bit really goes a long way in this situation. No matter good the reverb sounds, too much wet signal can cause issues in the mix.

On the other hand, If you have to turn the wet down so much that it’s barely audible, chances are your other settings might not be right yet.

You should be able to strike a balance where the reverb is present without being overwhelming and contributes positively to the sound.

Now that you know how to set the parameters on your reverb plugin, get back to your DAW and dial in the perfect for verb for your track.

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Check out the 15 Best Reverb Plugins for Every Mixing Situation: blog.landr.com/best-reverb-plugins/

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