vienna convolution reverb - how to use

[szawadzkipiano]

Hello, I am kind of "newbie" in using reverbs. I read a lot lost days about it. I have my Vienna Suite and I would like to use Convolution Reverb in my project based on VSE and on Cubase 7. I have made FX chanell, I made sends on tracks with pre-faders (I already know how to do this). But I am really wonder what is the best way to use reverb. Normally it is rule that for accoustic music there are made on FX channel to reverbs - with long tail and early reflection, right? How to do this with convolution reverb? Should I put two convolution reverbs on FX channel , long tail and early? I am sorry for easy question, but I really need to finish my project, and learn using well reverb! Thank you in advance

[chj501]

Hello,

first of all: Music is my hobby and I do not produce things for CD or anything else (perhaps the pros have different or better ways to do this).

But I also had the same challenge and here is the way I used and use reverb in my cubase projects:

Some time ago I also used a convolution reverb for this (Cubase REVerence).

I simulated the early reflections with different Pre-Delay settings. You can fade-out the long reflection tail by editing the volume curve in the reverb settings of the early reflection.

For the reflection tail I truncated the initial attack part of the reverb (change start-parameter) and let the tail start after the early reflections (e.g. pre-delay of 40).

I think this could be a practicable solution for a convolution reverb.

Now I personally prefer using the newer Hybrid-Reverb (included in latest Vienna Suite update) for that suppose and making different send FX (e.g. 3 for early reflections and one for the reflection tail).

Of course you can also do this with the convolution reverb - the advantage of the Hybrid Reverb in my opinion is that it already differs between early and tail reflections - so I only need to mute the tail reflection in the sends of the early-FX and otherwise.

What I do in detail in cubase is to create send effects for every reverb type (only wet signal) and then create groups with those effects. After that I route my single instruments to these groups.

Example:

4 Reverb-FX with Reverb (wet signal only) in inserts (early-near, early-mid, early-far, reflection-tail)

One group "GrpRevTail" for reflection tail that has the FX of the reflection tail in sends.

Several instrument groups (e.g. "Strings, Woodwinds, Brass") that have one of the early-reflection FX in sends (near or mid or far) and are routet to the group "GrpRevTail".

An instrument (e.g. Violin 1) that is routet to one instrument group (e.g. Strings).

Of course there are many ways to do this and everyone has his own preferences.

Here a two short pictures of my own setup:

VSL Route FX Example

VSL FX Reverb Example

Best regards

Chris

[Dietz]

Hi szawadzkipian,

that's a serious question. A comprehensive answer goes well beyond the scope of a little forum reply. 😊 But I think I have to put two topics into perspective:

@szawadzkipiano said:

[...] I made sends on tracks with pre-faders [...] Normally it is rule that for accoustic music there are made on FX channel to reverbs - with long tail and early reflection, right? How to do this with convolution reverb? Should I put two convolution reverbs on FX channel , long tail and early? [...]

It is not always a good idea to have your reverb-sends pre-fade, and it is absolutely _not_ a "rule" that you have to use separate processes for early reflections and reverb tails. These are just some half-baked fragments of information, perpetuated out-of-context over and over again on some Internet forums. 😊 ... as a matter of fact, myriads of great-sounding records were (and still are) made with reverbs which provide both the ERs and the tail at the same moment, and which are fed by using the much more meaningful post-fade AUX-sends.

First, let's see what happens when you're sending a signal to a reverb pre-fade: As soon as you raise the volume of the original signal, the ratio between the dry and the wet signal will change, thus seemingly moving the signal closer towards the listener. As soon as you reduce the volume of the original signal, the opposite is true - the signal will move away into the room. Of course you could link the volume faders of the signal and its reverb return - but then you can't send more than one source into that reverb without changing the spatial relationship between several signals. Not a good idea.

... if you need more "wetness" than you can achieve by just routing an instrument's post-fade AUX-send into a reverb processor - why not raising the reverb's output volume? This will make things much more consistent and easier to work with.

Second - the "rule" that you have to use different processors for early reflections and reverb tail. In an ideal world, a good reverb machine is capable of providing both at the same time. This is true for algorithimc reverbs (where the algorithm(s) used have to be good enough to give you convincing results) as well as for IR-based convolution reverbs (where the chosen impulse reponse can ideally supply both the positional cues and the spatial enveloping). Of course, this world is far from being ideal 😉, and so you could run into restrictions in that respect. Then (and only then) it might (!) be helpful to build hybrid rooms from seperated ERs and reverb tails. This is easier said than done, and it's not unlikely that you will achieve just mediocre results with lots of effort, as long as you don't know exactly what to listen for.

... why not start with _one_ good-sounding reverb that does all of that. Later you could add a second instance which sounds similar, but maybe "more distant" or "more spatious", which you could use for those instruments that need more depth. This basic setup can get you pretty far. Once you got a feel for the possibilities and restrictions you could try to complicate matters even further by adding additional ERs to certain instruments (... but be aware that this tends to make things sounding "muddy" pretty fast when not done with caution).

Good luck! 😊

HTH,