The idea of adding reverb is simple enough but how do they work, and what are your plugin options?

If you listen to a musical instrument played in a space, then you’ll be hearing a combination of the direct instrument sound and the sound bouncing off the walls. This second component is called reverberation and contributes immensely to what the instrument sounds like to us. In computerbased production we can, of course, record instruments in spaces, and by using the correct microphone techniques capture this effect at source. However, often we’re working with samples and synths. In this case we can add a sense of space using artificial reverbs, which either use algorithms and delays to create a room effect, or use a convolution process, creating the effect by using impulse responses captured from real spaces.

All of this sounds simple enough, but use of reverb can be confusing at first, and it’s clear there’s a bit more to this than simply grabbing the latest reverb plugin and hoping for the best. In fact, get it right, and reverb can really help to bring your sounds together, and there’s no doubt using reverb can make mixing a track much easier.

So, how do we use this effect? Firstly, it’s pretty common to add reverb using an auxiliary bus, which basically sends a split of our track audio off to the processor then adds the effect back into the whole mix. There are various reasons we do this, not least because applying the same shared reverb to multiple sources can help make our overall mix more cohesive. Also, reverb is often an additive effect, and adding is what an auxiliary bus is good at. Even so, using a reverb as an insert is also fine, and a perfect choice where you need a one-off effect that you won’t use elsewhere. We will, of course, look at both methods in our walkthroughs.

“Get it right, and reverb can really help you to bring your sounds together”