Of course the signal would have to be printed (as with any outboard).
I remember working at The Strongroom and there being several EMT 140 plate reverbs in the biscuit cupboard (of all places!) – these were hooked up to various desks across the building and at any one time you could send out to them and return the signal in Pro Tools ready to use. A signal is fed into the membrane which rattles the metal sheet and the contact mic feeds the resulting tones back into the desk. Plate reverbs are large metal sheets with a membrane at one end and a contact mic at the other. One of the sexiest sounding reverb is that of a plate reverb. Here they are dry with no other effects.Ĭlean guitar (courtesy of the very talented Martin Case) The Audio Examplesįor the purpose of this article I’m going to use the same four audio examples for each type of reverb. Image © Europeish.īroadly speaking, this is undesirable, and most recording environments I’ve been in have sought to damped any natural reflections in the build and acoustic treatment of the room and micing techniques. My home studio for example has certain frequencies that build up due to the nature of the materials the walls, floor and ceiling are made from, their distance and position from each other and probably a whole other plethora of things. Believe it or not, not every room actually sounds as nice as a cathedral some sort of utopian glazier. Reverb is both something we add out of choice but also a natural phenomena we might actually seek to eradicate from our recordings. In this article I want to have a quick look at some of the different types of reverb available, some of my favourites and some reverb party tricks. I am always excited when getting a new bundle of plug-ins to check the reverbs out, from the run-of-the-mill rooms, halls and standard simulations to the more ethereal, drone-tastic ones. From a sound design and production angle you can radically change the tonal makeup of a sound. From a mixing point of view it can be necessary to place dry recordings in an imagined space, from drum mics, lead vocals, guitars, percussion etc. Reverb is by far one of the most useful and interesting effects in modern production.