The chicken or...?

[Alex O]

Hello to you all,

Here's something I've often wondered about: what comes first in the endmix, compressor or reverb?

Let's say we have a full orchestral mix, with inserts and eq on all individual channels, some routed to groups sharing the same "pre-reverb" (like an Altiverb Berliner hall 12 m on all Brass tracks) etc etc. Yet in the end I usually add some "overall" reverb to the master track, and of course some compression (depending the case). But I often wonder: what is "the way to go", how do the pro's usually do it?

Personally I mostly put the "masterverb" after the "mastercompressor", but I don't hear anything wrong when I reverse the order.

Both work for me, but I remain curious how others see this.

Feel free to share your experiences, and thanks a lot in advance!

Alex

[doubleattack]

Hi Alex,

there is a very interesting video tutorial about vsl jazz drums using the vienna suite compressor. It shows very impressivily what happens with the reverb at compressing short reverbed drum attacks (using different attack and release times for the compression.) 

To make a rough guess I would say, the shorter the signals so more audible the effects. (Hope it make sense, sounds a bit awful in english, obviously I'm thinking german...)  So that rule will be the same with a single track or a master. Just my wild musician playing one's hunch. But very interesting question. So I'm curious too, what does the professionals say.  

Best

Frank   

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hello Alex

The usual job of a compressor is "compressing the signal". In other words: Low levels will be lifted up (increased) hi levels will be compressed (decreased in a way).

So let us now play the last chord of an orchestra. After the (direct) sound of the orchestra has stopped we still can listen to the sound of the reverb.

If the reverb effect is placed before the compressor this sound of the reverb will be lifted by the compressor until the point we adjusted before or until a gate will close the line.

This may sound unnatural in a certain situation but it also can be the effect you are looking for.

In other words: If the compressor is placed behind the reverb it also compresses the sound of the reverb.

The listener feels that the signal contains a bit more reverb this way in most of the cases.

So if you want to have the natural fading out of the reverb you should place the compressor before the reverb in the row.

Best

Beat

[Alex O]

Thank you very much Beat, that was the logic I lacked.

And thank you too Frank, for your kind reply, I will certainly have a look at this compressor tutorial you mentioned.

All the best to you,

Alex