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Reverb Flashcards

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1
Q

what goals do you want to accomplish with reverb in your mix?

A
  • to create space
  • to create style
    echo
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2
Q

what is creating space with reverb?

A
  • glues together tracks making the mix feel cohesive
  • creates depth and width
  • turns a 1 dimensional mix into a 3 dimensional mix
  • draws attention to what you want
  • creating space is more of the scientific part of mixing
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3
Q

what is creating style with reverb?

A
  • makes a mix sound unique
  • helps the mix sound larger than life
  • creates energy and connection
  • will be heard by the listener unlike creating space
  • creating style is more the creative part of mixing
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4
Q

what is reverb?

A
  • the sound of a room
  • a tone imprinted on top of your instruments tone
  • reverb is sound waves that have left a sound/instrument and are bouncing around the room thousands of time
  • all these reflections are returning to your ears after a few seconds
  • we hear those small delays as reverb - the sound of the room
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5
Q

what is reverb in a mix?

A
  • a tool we use to recreate that process of sound waves bouncing around a room and giving it a certain tone
  • types of reverb can vary from sounding massive as well as being as if you are in the room with them
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6
Q

what are the parameters of a reverb unit based off of?

A
  • based off of something in acoustical physics
  • in order for you to understand what you’re really doing, you have to understand what the reverb plugin is trying to emulate
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7
Q

what are the 3 stages of sound?

A
  • direct sound
  • early reflections
  • late reflections
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8
Q

what is the direct sound?

A
  • the direct sound is the sound wave that travels in a straight line to your ears
  • since the direct sound doesn’t bounce of any surfaces, its “dry” - its tone hasn’t been affected by the room
  • in a mix, the direct sound is the sound of your instrument before the reverb
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9
Q

what are the early reflections?

A
  • the sound waves that bounced off on or two walls and went straight inti your ears
  • these are the first little echoes that actually reach your ears
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10
Q

what are late reflections?

A
  • the echoes that bounce of dozens of surfaces dozens of times
  • thousands and thousands of tiny little echoes that might take a second or two to reach your ears
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11
Q

what is significant about the 3 stages of sound when used with reverb?

A
  • our ears use each of these different stages of sound to determine different things about the sound and bout the room that its in
  • the direct sound and the early reflections can be used to determine how big the room is, how far away the sound is and what direction the sound is coming from
  • the late reflections are really what your reverb comes from - they are the things our ears use to determine the makeup of the room and the shape of the room and the tone of the room and all of these little individual factors that help us visualise space
  • the early and late reflections are the things that the reverb plugin is trying to emulate
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12
Q

what is the cave analogy in relation to the 3 stages of sound?

A

if you’re in a cave with someone and they clap:
- the direct sound is the first sound thats going to reach you after your friend claps - this won give any information other than knowing you heard a clap
- the early reflections will be the first few sound waves that bounce off the cave walls and into your ears
- this will tell you the distance of how far away the person is who clapped, the direction of where the person is in respect to you, and generally how big the room is
- the late reflections won’t give you any information about where the sound is, they give you all of the colour of the room
- without the early reflections, you wouldn’t know what direction the clap came from or how far away it is
- without the late reflections you wouldn’t know you’re in a cave

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13
Q

what is the space parameters on a reverb plugin?

A
  • room size
  • distance
  • pre-delay
  • dealing with the early reflections
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14
Q

what is the room size parameter?

A
  • the size of the room whether big or small
  • the room size parameter is essentially just a fader
  • its changing the length of the early reflections - changing the length of spacing between each individual echo
  • the more you increase your room size, the more spaced out the echoes of the early reflections are going to be
  • like wise, if you make the room size smaller, the distance decreases and they become alot more closer together
  • this is why. big rooms sound so huge to our ears as each of the early reflections are much more spaced out in contrast to a smaller room
  • room size and decay time are not the same thing
  • decay time is how long the late reflections last where’s room see deals with the early reflections
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15
Q

what is the distance parameter?

A
  • a setting that controls how far away a sound feels to the listener
  • if you have a very small distance, then the sound is going to feel very up close
  • if you have a large distance, the sound is going to feel far away
  • small mistaken decreases the volume of the late reflections and a greater distance increases the volume
  • distance is an important parameter for creating a 3 dimensional sound because you’re going to want too use different distances on different instruments
  • if everything was set at the exact same distance, you’re still going to get a fairly 2 dimensional sound as everything will sound as if its in the same spot of the room
  • you can create a sense of depth with distance
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16
Q

what is the pre-delay parameter?

A
  • the pre-delay is a delay between the direct sound and the reverb
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17
Q

why do we use pre-delay?

A
  • to make the room sound bigger
  • to make an instrument sound closer
  • to separate the instrument from the reverb
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18
Q

at are the 2 kinds of pre-delay?

A
  • early pre-delay
  • late pre-delay
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19
Q

what is early pre-delay?

A
  • the delay between the direct sound and the early and late reflections
  • early pre-delay is helpful for establishing distance - the longer the early pre-delay, the closer something seems
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20
Q

what is late pre-delay?

A
  • a delay between the early reflections an the late reflections
  • late pre-delay makes your room seem larger - also helps to create separation but more if you still want to have some feeling of depth inside your instrument
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21
Q

how to use pre - delay on your plugin:

A
  • plugins only typically give you control of one pre-delay or the other
  • they don’t usually give both the early and late pre-delay
  • what some plugins may do is hide the other pre-delay inside one of the parameter knobs so that its apart of the back end of the plugin
  • for example, the distance knob usually may contain a bit of early pre-delay as just apart of the algorithm itself
  • if a plugin doesn’t give you access to an early pre-delay, you could fake it by turning the distance knob up
  • when it comes to your late pre-delay, they may have place it inside your room size parameter
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22
Q

what is the natural setting for an early pre-delay?

A
  • 1-50ms
  • anything outside of this bracket, our ears will hear a literal delay in the sound
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23
Q

how to find out what type of pre-delay is on your plugin:

A
  • grab a short percussive sound like a snare
  • place a reverb plugin directly onto it
  • make sure your dry and wet sound are 100%
  • turn your pre-delay as high as it will go
  • hit play and listen out for what is delayed
  • if the snare sound is different then you have a late pre-delay because the early reflections have been baked into the sound
  • if the snare sound is exactly the same then you have an early pre-delay because that pre-delay is pushing both the early and late reflections back
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24
Q

what reverb parameters change the tone of the reverb?

A
  • decay
  • damping
  • density
  • these settings change up parts of the late reflections
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25
Q

what are alternate names for late reflections?

A
  • reverberation
  • decay time
  • reverb time
  • reverb tail
  • reverb length
  • RT60
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26
Q

what options do sound waves have when bouncing off surfaces?

A
  • reflection
  • absorption
  • diffusion
  • the sound of our room is heavily influenced off of these three things that are happening
  • decay, damping and density help to emulate those three properties
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27
Q

What is reflection with sound waves?

A
  • emulated by decay time
  • decay time is a measurement of how many reflective surfaces there are in a room
  • the more a sound wave reflects, the more the decay time is going to last
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28
Q

what is the decay rule of thumb?

A
  • dense mix with lots of instrumentation = shorter decay times
  • space mix with less instrumentation = longer decay times
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29
Q

that is absorption with sound waves?

A
  • top end gets absorbed much faster than your low end
  • damping emulates absorption
  • more people in a room creates more absorption which people try to emulate for arena rock
  • less people in a room creates less absorption which people may emulate to create an intimate feel
  • always consider where you want your instrument to be playing to figure to how much damping you want
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30
Q

what is diffusion with sound waves?

A
  • when a sound wave hits a surface that is really sharp or random, instead of bouncing off a the same angle, its going to bounce off completely randomly and sometimes even split into multiple different sound waves
  • this means sound waves are now bouncing in random directions all throughout the room and youre getting a more even sound, whereas if you had very low diffusion, you’d be getting much more obvious delays in the sound of your reverb
  • diffusion is essentially spreading the energy evenly around the room
  • diffusion is emulated by density
  • density basically controls how focussed the late reflections sound, how even they sound
  • a higher density creates a much more even wash of reverb
  • a lower density is going to have alot more of the original sound thats delaying and decaying throughout the reverb time
  • yet again, picture the room you want to be in
  • the denser the sound, the less dense the reverb should be
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31
Q

what are the 5 tool settings for mixing with reverb?

A
  • EQ
  • wet/dry mix
  • early reflections / late reflections mix
  • stereo spread
  • modulation
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32
Q

How can you utilise EQ?

A
  • in terms of reverb, it allows you to shape the sound in such a way that it fits inside the mix
  • if your reverb doesn’t have an eq within it, you can add a separate plugin which you put before the reverb on the plugin chain
  • the reason why you put it before, you’re going to have less accuracy in your cuts, but you’re going to get much more smoothness out of it
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33
Q

what is the abbey road trick?

A
  • turning on high pass / low pass filters to focus the sound and reverb
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34
Q

what is the wet/dry mix tool?

A
  • dry = sound of the instrument
  • wet = sound of the reverb
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35
Q

what is the early / late reflection mix tool?

A

having a fader that controls which reflections you hear more of

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36
Q

what is the stereo spread mix tool?

A
  • how wide the reverb sounds in contrast to a mono sound
  • can be seen with a ‘width’ parameter
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37
Q

what is the modulation mix tool?

A
  • adding slight timing delays to the direct signal so that the early and late reflections have a bit of variation to them
  • parameters on the reverb plugin include mod.speed and mod.depth
  • mod.speed isn how fast the delay happens
  • mod.depth is how aggressive the change itself is
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38
Q

what is room reverb?

A
  • a reverb modelled after a standard room
  • not usually big or long
  • an average / standard reverb
  • has shorter early reflections and shorter late reflections
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39
Q

what is hall reverb?

A
  • modelled after concert halls
  • very large rooms
  • has long early reflections and long late reflections
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40
Q

what is chamber reverb?

A
  • modelled after the old reverb chambers
  • huge rooms filled with reflective surfaces that they would put a speaker into and then put a microphone at the other end of the room and just pump sound into it
  • that sound is then recorded onto tape
  • has medium early reflections and medium late reflections
  • half way between a live and a smooth sound
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41
Q

what is ambience?

A
  • really just a focus on the early reflections
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42
Q

what are all of the 3D reverbs?

A
  • room
  • hall
  • chamber
  • ambience
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43
Q

what is plate reverb?

A
  • huge metal plate in a studio with a pickup on it
  • engineers would send audio into this big metal plate which would vibrate the plate and would get picked up by those electromagnetic pickups and would come back sounding like a reverb
  • plate reverb has no early reflections or natural pre-delay, its all late reflections
  • really helpful for getting a good tone without pushing anything back into the mix
  • plates will typically either sound really smooth or really jangly depending on which you are using
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44
Q

what is spring reverb?

A
  • similar to plates but instead of a large metal plate, they use a large metal spring including pickups again
  • the most least subtle reverb to of them all
  • has no early reflections or natural pre-delay
  • more metallic than the plate
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45
Q

what is algorithmic reverb?

A
  • reverb that is simulated via a computers algorithm
  • a whole hunch of compels I’s and O’s that are creating this sound
  • probably 80% of reverb plugins are algorithmic reverb
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45
Q

what are the different reverb plugins?

A
  • algorithmic reverb
  • convolution reverb
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46
Q

what is a non-linear reverb?

A
  • a huge group of reverbs
  • most common being gated verb as heard on 80’s drums
  • a reverb that doesn’t act naturally to nature and reach one sounds different depending on the designer
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47
Q

what are the 2D reverbs?

A
  • plate reverb
  • spring reverb
  • non-linear reverb
48
Q

what is convolution reverb?

A
  • natural reverb
  • sampled reverb
  • known for being tonally flexible and alot more realistic
  • take up a huge amount of CPU and processing power
  • alot less control over the sound of the reverb
49
Q

what are the 5 different cues to determine how far away something is?

A
  • overall loudness
  • the difference between the direct sound and the reverb
  • the overall brightness of a sound
  • dynamic range
  • early pre-delay
50
Q

that is the overall loudness?

A
  • the further away something is, the quieter its going to be
  • the science behind that is while something moves further away from you, that means that sound waves have to travel longer distances to reach your ears
  • the longer a sound wave goes, the more energy it loses
  • thats because it has to travel through air which is full of particles
  • the mixing tool to help us with this cue is the volume fader
51
Q

what is the difference between the direct sound and the reverb?

A
  • the closer you are to a sound, the less distance the direct sound has to travel
  • but the further away you are, the more distance the sound (direct) has to travel
  • the louder the dry sound and the lower the wet sound, the closer an instrument is going to seem to the listener
52
Q

what is the brightness of a sound?

A
  • high frequency energy (what causes brightness) is absorbed first when it comes to acoustic treatment
  • something close sounds brighter and something further away sounds darker
  • the mixing tool you would use for this is EQ
  • using a low cut and high pass filter can be used for creating distance
53
Q

what is the dynamic range?

A
  • things that are further away have smaller micro dynamic ranges
  • things that are closer have larger micro dynamic ranges
  • this is because most of the transient energy lives in the top end and the upper mids
  • the longer the sound travels through the air, the more of the top end and upper mids are absorbed
  • if all the stuff that makes a peak sound like a peak gets absorbed the you are going to have a smaller macrodynamic range
  • the mixing tool you can use to reduce the dynamic range is compression - particularly thickness or depth style compression turning down the peaks and up the valleys
54
Q

what is early pre-delay with distance?

A
  • the larger the early pre-delay, the closer the sound feels to us, the smaller it is, the further away the sound feels
  • the reason for this is that if something is really close to you, the direct sound doesnt have very far to travel, but the walls are still very far away for so everything is going to have to travel very far to hit the wall and then come back to your ears
  • if a sound is far away from you at the backside of the room, then the direct sound will have about the same distance to get to your ears as the early reflections so you have a very small initial time delay gap
55
Q

what are the 2 direction cues?

A
  • interaural Lebel difference (ILD)
  • interaural time difference (ITD)
  • your ear uses both of these cues to determine where a sound is coming from
56
Q

what is interaural level difference?

A
  • the sound thats coming into one ear is louder than the sound going into the other
  • the further the sound wave travels, the more loudness it loses
  • if the sound is on the left hand side of your head, the sound wave would have to travel through your head to reach your right ear (head shadowing)
  • the sound wave is then absorbed by the soft matter in your head therefore losing energy making it quieter for the right ear
  • your brain uses this lower level to determine where this sound is coming from
  • the mix tool to trigger this effect would be panning
57
Q

what is interaural time difference?

A
  • if a noise is coming from our left, then the sound wave is going to hit our left ear first and then our right ear about half a millisecond later
  • that extremely tiny amount of time tells our ear that the noise is coming from the left hand side
  • this is what’s known as the precedence effect
  • the mix tool to emulate this is Haas delay
  • Haas delay is just a hyper fast delay, about less than a millisecond fast
58
Q

why is the haas panning delay times?

A
  • 0% pan = 0.0ms
  • 25% pan = 0.23ms
  • 50% pan = 0.42ms
  • 75% pan = 0.55ms
  • 100% pan = 0.59ms
59
Q

how can you make a Haas delay sound more realistic?

A
  • you want to add some head shadows to it
  • the greater angle you are trying to pan, the greater you should turn down the volume of the delay
60
Q

when head shadowing with the Haas delay, how much volume should you reduce for the open ratio?

A
  • 100% pan = -6dB
  • 50% pan = -3dB
  • 25% pan = -1.5dB
61
Q

why aren’t Haas delays always used?

A
  • if your mix every gets summed down to mono, Haas delays can wreck your sound
  • for example, altering tone and volume
  • better to use it in the background on 1 or 2 instruments
62
Q

what is the showdown system?

A
  • creating depth
  • creating distance
  • creating direction
63
Q

what is depth in the shadow system?

A
  • emulated by adding early reflections to all of your instruments to give a sense of depth
64
Q

what is distance in the shadow system?

A
  • take advantage of the distance cues to create a foreground and a background in your mix
65
Q

what is direction in the shadow system?

A
  • take advantage of the direction cues such as panning and Haas delay to be able to separate our tracks and place them in a very specific spot in our mix
66
Q

what is the mix depth matrix?

A
  • helps us to create depth in our mix with ambience and three dimensionality
67
Q

how do you create depth with the shadow system?

A
  • create 4 aux sends on all of your tracks and buses
  • label them each being: front, middle, back and room tone
  • send 100% of your tracks to the front aux track
  • once you have this matrix set up, you want to visualise what room you think your song is e.g. outside / arena
  • once you choose you preset for the ambience you are going for, you then want to alter the room size
  • this can be done by setting the early reflections to 100% then slowly increasing the size of the room until it feels right
  • next you want to focus on the room tone
  • start by setting the late reflections to 100% and alter the decay, density and damping to alter the tone
  • aim to have your decay time in sync with the mixes bpm to help accent the groove
  • the more complex the arrangement, the short the decay time should be
  • tweak the density by taking it to 0% and slowly increasing it until it feels right
  • when it comes to damping, the more full the room is with stuff, the more aggressive your damping should be
  • once you have finished altering these parameters, set you ER/LR to 50/50 and tweak anything needed
  • after this change the ratio so that there’s more early reflections than late as that is where the depth comes from rather than the late colour
68
Q

what are the main ways to alter an instruments distance?

A
  • Early pre-delay
  • ER/LR balance
  • wet/dry balance
69
Q

how do you create distance with reverb in the shadow system?

A
  • copy over the reverb from the first aux track to all of your other aux tracks
  • this will enable you to have the same general room setting for each of these aux’s so its going to feel like all of your instruments are performing in the same room
70
Q

how do you create distance in the shadow system with early pre-delay?

A
  • large pre-delay = closer to the listener
  • small pre-delay = far away from the listener
  • first go to your front reverb and make a large pre-delay depending on what room you are emulating
  • then go to the middle reverb on the middle aux and put a medium time pre-delay on it
  • then go to the back reverb on the back aux and have little top none pre-delay on its
71
Q

after pre-delay alterations, change up your distance parameters:

A
  • on the front aux, you want a very low distance parameter
  • for the middle aux you want about half way on the distance parameter
  • for the back aux, you want a much greater distance
72
Q

how do you create distance in the shadow system with ER/LR balance?

A
  • mostly early reflections: close to listener
  • 50/50: further away from the listener
  • on the front aux, you will have mostly early reflections set with a small amount of late reflections for a more natural sound
  • on the middle aux you want to include more late reflections with your early reflections to push it back
  • on the back aux, you are looking for a more even distribution of ER and LR
73
Q

how do you create distance with wet/dry balance in the shadow system?

A
  • mostly dry = closer to the listener
  • mostly wet = furthest fro the listener
  • when altering wet/dry balance ratio with an instrument, you will have the send on 100% wet and send 100% of the instrument that you want to that send
  • you can alter the ratio by turning dow th volume fader of that send
74
Q

how do you alter the room tone in the shadow system?

A
  • make the room tone 100% late reflections as it is solely for colour
  • set pre-delay to 0ms
  • set distance roughly in line with the middle aux distance
  • if this doesn’t give you the room tone you want then you can always increase the distance since you will get more and more late reflections and therefore more colour
75
Q

how do you assign instruments to the 4 aux’s created I the shadow system?

A
  • first of all select all of your tracks and turn your front send all the way back down as it was only used to set up the depth and general room soon
  • now you hit play on you track and listen to each instrument thinking what instruments you want at the front, middle and back of the mix
  • this is typically divide as 25% in the front, 25% in the back and 50% in the middle
  • you often have vocals, kick, bass in the front aux as well as the snare
  • once you have organised your tracks into three aux’s, you now need to decide what needs more colour being the sound of the room
  • right now, the depth has been created, but not much in the sense of room colour
  • listen to your mix again and decide what needs more colour and send it to the room sound aux
  • unlike previous aux tracks, with room sound you are not sending 100% of the instrument to it
  • you’re just adding as much as you feel like is necessary
  • this then concludes the “mid depth matrix”
76
Q

how should you pan instruments if they are in the front aux?

A
  • its best to keep them panned central to keep that distance small to the listener
77
Q

what should you do in terms of direction if you have recorded an instrument with multiple microphones?

A
  • its best to make each track mono
  • its easier to mix sounds when they’re mono first them stereo later
  • make these multiple audio files stereo with panning to create a more 3 dimensional sound
78
Q

when Haas panning to create direction:

A
  • create a send on your chosen instrument
  • select post fader on this send as well as all of your other sends on that instrument chain
  • add a very fast delay to your new aux (sample delay for logic)
  • link the left and the right delay together
  • the amount you set your delay time will determine how far your panning is
  • if you are going to carry out Haas panning, you have to have the send panned in the opposite direction of the original track
79
Q

what are the 2 things you want to avoid when using stylistic reverbs?

A
  • creating space
  • creating mix gunk
80
Q

when using style reverbs:

A
  • have an early pre-delay between 50-150ms to make sure the ear heard a notable delay between the dry and wet sound
  • you want to time your pre-delay to the tempo of the song (use a delay time calculator)
  • for style reverb, focus on the mono reverb rather than the stereo reverb
  • when using style reverb, have a high ratio of late to early reflections
  • once you have created your style with your remix, slowly mix it in with the dry signal
81
Q

what is reverb mix gunk?

A
  • huge thick reverb can sometimes hurt more than help
  • the more complex the arrangement, the less room there is for reverb
  • the more simple the arrangement, the more reverb there is room for
82
Q

with style reverb, consider whether you want a short/long decay time:

A
  • usually mixes play more nicely with shorter decay times between half a second and a little bit over a second
  • if you have alot of space in your mix then you can have longer decay times
  • time your decay time to the tempo of your song
83
Q

how can density affect mix gunk?

A
  • the denser the reverb, the better it will sound in solo, but the more gunk it will add to your mix
84
Q

how can the abbey road trick help with mix gunk?

A
  • removing the low end and top end
  • most reverb gunk lives in the low end
85
Q

what is a deesser?

A
  • fast acting compressor that only compresses at high frequencies or a certain band of high frequencies
  • primarily used to reduce sibilance in vocal recordings
  • can be used to smooth out high frequencies in other instruments such as hi-hats or symbols
  • with vocals its the high end hiss with the s,f or t sounds
  • sibilance factors may include distance from the microphone as well as positioning around the microphone
86
Q

what is the threshold on a deesser?

A
  • only applies reduction to signals above the number you set
87
Q

what is the maximum reduction on a deesser?

A
  • the maximum reduction that will be applied when the signal passes past the threshold
88
Q

what is the frequency on a deesser?

A
  • this is the centre frequency that you’re gong to reduce, so its the frequency where the sibilance is detected at
89
Q

what is a band pass filter on a deesser?

A
  • useful for listening and reducing a specific band of high frequencies
90
Q

what is a high shelf filter on a deesser

A
  • useful for reducing a full range of SE sounds that are above the frequency that you’ve selected
91
Q

what should you avoid with vocal reverb?

A
  • long decay time
  • short pre-delay
  • both of these (especially combined) tend to make the vocal swim in the mix and makes it difficult to hear what the vocalist is actually saying
92
Q

what are two types of outcomes of vocal reverb?

A
  • bounce = shorter decay time
  • connection = longer decay time
93
Q

if you are looking for a longer vocal connection reverb, you may consider side chaining your reverb:

A
  • side chain compression: where you get a compressor to listen to a different instrument rather than the one its compressing
  • create a new send on your vocals known as a ‘dummy send’
  • select ‘no output’ on your send and use this ‘dummy send’ as an input for your side chain
  • this allows your reverb to pushed out of the way nicely whilst the vocal is singing, but then It comes back in between performances resulting in a nice connecting sound with reverb
94
Q

how can throws help with connection with vocal reverb?

A
  • because you can automate gain of either a delay or reverb towards the end of a phrase to fill in the void
95
Q

what should you consider with density when adding reverb to drums?

A
  • drums have very small densities of sound
  • the less dense an instrument is, the more density the reverb needs
  • in order to have a great sounding reverb on your drums you want to emulate a more diffused room and have a greater density
96
Q

what ideal preset its good for drums with reverb?

A
  • room or chamber
97
Q

why do you want to avoid a long pre-delay time with reverb on drums?

A
  • this will allow more consistency with the sound and take away bit more of that delay sound
  • this makes drums bit more of an exception in comparison to other instruments
98
Q

why do you want to avoid bright reverbs with drums?

A
  • they simply don’t play nicely with drums
  • can be fixed with damping + EQ
99
Q

why would you consider using a noise gate on a snare?

A
  • every single time the snare reverb comes in, the noise gate opens up which means you hear it as you normally would
  • every time it goes below the threshold, it holds for a little bit, then releases for a little bit
  • gives a very 80’s sound
  • if you decrease the gain reduction, then it will only clamp down on the tails f the reverbs rather than its entirety, its just adding a little extra pull away from them
  • when timed with the music, it can give a nice sense of groove to your reverb
100
Q

what is the threshold on a noise gate?

A
  • tells the noise gate at what incoming level should it close / open the gate
101
Q

what is reduction on a noise gate?

A
  • how much volume is reduced when it goes below the threshold
102
Q

what is the attack on a noise gate?

A
  • sets the time it takes to fully open the gate
103
Q

what is the hold on a noise gate?

A
  • determines the minimal amount of time that the gate stays open before releasing and closing again
104
Q

what is the release of a noise gate?

A
  • how slowly the volume is covered after the audio signal falls below the threshold
105
Q

what is the hysteresis on a noise gate?

A
  • turns the threshold into a range instead of a single number
  • helps to prevent chattering which is an unnatural sound caused by the noise gate
106
Q

what is a side chain on a noise gate?

A
  • a function that allows you to link the gate to another audio source
107
Q

what are the filters on a noise gate?

A
  • don’t affect the tone of an instrument
  • they’re only affecting how accurate the gate is and where on the frequency spectrum you would want it to operate
  • you will also have a monitor section which will allow us to listen to what is just happening to the cut offs
108
Q

what is Gate/ducker on a noise gate?

A
  • a gate lowers the audio when its below the threshold
  • a ducker lowers the audio when its above the threshold
109
Q

what is the lookahead on a noise gate?

A
  • makes the noise gate more accurate giving it more time to prepare to close
110
Q

how do you set a noise gate for use?

A
  • set reduction to as low as it can go
  • lower the threshold so the only the desire sound is opening the gate
  • adjust the attack time
  • adjust the hold and release time
  • adjust the hysteresis
  • turn on the monitors and adjust the filters
  • increase the lookahead
  • increase the reduction level
111
Q

how do you set a noise gate for the “ducking” purpose?

A
  • step 1: route the band and the vocals to their own respective aux tracks. send all the band to one send titled “instruments” and then do the same with the vocals alone
  • steps 2: create a send on the vocals - this is to bypass an sort of latency that can occur when side chaining an entire mix - make sire to set the outout of the send to “no output”
  • step 3: place a noise gate on the band aux track and side chain the vocal bus
  • step 4: select ducker
  • step 5: set the reduction level at -10dB
  • step 6: lower the threshold so that the gate only opens when the vocals are singing
  • step 7: adjust the attack time, about a medium to slow attack to keep it natural sounding
  • step 8: adjust the hold and the release time
  • step 9: adjust the hysteresis to prevent chattering
  • step 10: adjust the lookahead
  • step 11: increase the reduction level
  • this ducking trick works best if you use them at the beginning of your mix
112
Q

what do you want to avoid with electric guitar reverb?

A
  • if you have a really complex guitar part, you want to avoid a really big reverb
113
Q

what type of reverb is compatible with electric guitar?

A
  • spring reverb
114
Q

what type of reverb would you apply to rhythmic guitar parts like palm muting or power chords?

A
  • a much shorter reverb
115
Q

what is phantom reverb?

A
  • a reverb set from either the two different tracks (one hard left and on hard right) or from the instruments bus
  • then you swap the left and the right side of that reverb so the reverb from your right double track, is showing up in your left speaker and vice versa
  • so you get a phantom image of one particular recording in the opposite ear
116
Q

how do you create phantom reverb?

A
  • create a send for your double track
  • select a reverb for your send but make sure you pick dual-mono as you select your reverb
  • dual - mono means you have the ability to change the settings on the left side of the plugin form what is on the right side of the plugin
  • dual - mono means that if you have an instrument panned all the way to the left, then you’ll only hear the reverb in the left unlike with stereo
  • add a gain plugin and apply ‘swap L/R’
  • this flips the stereo image so anything coming in on the left now comes in on the right and vice versa
  • for example, you can a guitar part that is panned hard left, but then the reverb is going to be panned hard right
  • this reverb will be focusing more on your early reflections rather than your late reflections
  • make sure you couple up your reverb when making these settings
117
Q
A

Music production (5 decks)

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