Reverb
1. Natural Reverb
2. Chamber Reverb
4. Plate Reverb
Mechanical Reverb Systems
5. Gated Reverb
6. Digital Reverb Systems
3. Spring Reverb
Reverb is created when a sound reflects off its surrounding surfaces, then these reflections again reflect off the surfaces, then the process continues creating a 'wash' of overlapping echoes. These echoes remain audible even after the initial sound source has been taken away.
In a natural reverb context, the dry/wet balance is determined by the distance between the mic and the sound sources. By playing close to the mic, dry signal is relatively louder than the room noise, leading to a dryer recording.
Playing further from the mic causes direct sound from the sound source to blend with the room noise. With the room playing a larger role in determining which sound waves reach the mic, a wetter sound is created.
An echo chamber is a hollow enclosure used to produce reverberation, usually for recording purposes.
A loudspeaker is placed in the room. The audio signal is sent from the mixer to loudspeaker, which plays audio into the room. This triggers the room acoustics to create specific reverb sound. A mic in the room then records the reverberant signal and sends it back to the mixer.
Now recording and mixing engineers had an isolated reverb signal to manipulate. The flexibility to separately process dry and wet signals and set dry/wet balance during the production process was a crucial development in audio production.
This initially introduced as a feature in Hammond Organs in the 1930s and 1940s. As these organs were sold mostly for home use, and as people were accustomed to the reverb of a church space when hearing organs, consumers wanted an effect to replicate this reverb.
Laurens Hammond, developer of the Hammond Organ, created this effect by repurposing a device designed at the pioneering Bell labs. This device used springs and wire to simulate the delay experienced during long distance calls. Hammond used this concept and similar materials to create a delay-based reverb effect called spring reverb.
Plate reverb is achieved by feeding a audio signal through a thin metal plate suspended in a frame. It
The reverb time can be adjusted by damping the vibrations using felt pads
Plate reverb was used in many recordings throughout the 1960s ans 1970s; it gives a distinctive, rich-sounding reverb due to the sound being fed through a metallic plate.
It was most commonly used on vocals and drum sounds, and is still preferred to the digital alternatives by some engineers today.
The EMT 140 was a famous plate reverb, manufactured in the late 1960s
Spring reverb has a more metallic sound and than plate reverb
7. Convolution Reverb
Gated reverb or gated ambience in a studio processing technique that combines strong reverb and a noise gate. The effect is often associated with the sound of 1980s popular music. It was developed in 1979 by engineer Hugh Padgham and producer Steve Lillywhite while working with the artists TXC, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins at Townhouse Studios in London.
The effect is typically applied to recordings of drums (or live sound reinforcement of drums in a PA System) to make hits sound powerful and ‘punchy’ while keeping the overall mix clean and transparent sounding. Unlike many reverberation or delay effects, the gated reverb effect does not try to emulate any kind of reverb that occurs in nature. In addition to drums, the effect has occasionally been applied to vocals.
Digital reverb could use algorithms based off of physics to recreate accurate reverb effects.
By using a series of delays (with the level, frequency content, and timing of which by mathematical algorithms), digital reverb units can effectively reproduce the effect of a natural reverb tail.
EMT introduced the first commercial digital reverb system in 1976. The EMT 250 Electronic Reverberator Unit not only contained a highly adjustable reverb processor, but also the capabilities to apply effects like chorus, phasing, and delay.
8. Software Reverb Plug-ins
Convolution reverb reproduces a real reverb from a real space, and was pioneered by Sony in the late 1990s.
The development of digital reverb also saw the introduction of convolution reverb into the music production realm. Sony released the first real-time convolution with the DRE-S777 in 1999, allowing more organic results than purely algorithmic units. Sony DRE-S777 digital convolution reverb unit
How does it work?
An impulse reflex is generated in a space, and the (impulse) response (IR) is recorded. Mathematical algorithms subtract the impulse reflect from the reverb and this can then be applied to other sounds.
Convolution reverb is heavy on processor usgae, so it is very important to correctly route it into your DAW; it is most efficient to do so as an auxillary send/bus effect.
Software reverbs are either algorithmic or convolution based.
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