Control the Reverb in Your Mix

Reverb control and positioning can be challenging. Reverb is an essential effect, but too much can ruin your mix. As with everything around us, the key is proper balance. In this tutorial, we will learn how to use reverb properly. As usual, we already have a simple sequence in the SoundBridge: DAW. Among other elements, we will concentrate on the drum section.  

Let us hear the full mix as it is now.

~Full Mix - Unprocessed  

Controlling the Reverb

As we can hear from the audio example above, the whole mix sounds quite decent. Nevertheless, the drum section could sound a bit tighter. In order to achieve that, we will process our drum section with something not so familiar. The idea is to use a denoiser effect to shorten the unwanted reverb space in the drum section already processed with reverb. There are more than a few plugin options that can be useful for this task, but we have chosen the ERA-D by Accusonus for this tutorial. Let's add a fresh instance on our Drum Group channel within the SoundBridge: DAW.  

ERA-D is an effect that incorporates both De-Noise and De-Reverb Engine. While DeNoiser is also a powerful tool, in this tutorial, we will concentrate on the De-Reverb part of this plugin.  

ERA-D Interface

As you can see from the picture above, this plugin consists of two major parts. The upper part of the interface holds a dedicated spectrum analyzer, which is divided into four bands. Four small rotary icons are at the top of each band, and they control how much you affect one band with the De-Noiser or De-Reverb. By default, they are set to 50%. Below that, we can see a part of the interface which holds two big knobs. They are controlling the mix of the De-Noise and De-Reverb effects. On the left, we can see a signal path section. Here, you can choose only De-Noiser or De-Reverb to be engaged and their signal path to be either cascade or parallel. On the right, we can see an Output section containing switches for In, Out, and Diff. (Difference in the audio process). Below the also switches for StstereoLeleftand RirightIn the picture below, we have selected just the De-Reverb effect to be active and dialed the big knob to cut the unwanted reverb tail.  

Audio Examples

After a brief introduction, let us move to some practical audio examples, but before that, let us listen to an unprocessed Drum Group first.

~Drum Group- Unprocessed

~Drum Group- Processed With ERA-D

Ultimately, let us listen to the whole mix with the drum group processed with ERA-D.

~Full Mix - Drum Group Processed With ERA-D