I try several different reverbs, both stock and seventh heaven but constantly manage to make it sound as a bathroom. I am now trying to use several different reverbs a short, bright a second, longer, darker but I am not happy. I also use predelay, 25,40,50,80,120,and 200ms but its not helping. When I listen to commercial recordings it never sounds like a bathroom, it just sounds large. Any tips for me? Less early reflections?
I also try EQ before, cutting the sub but no real improvement. Its vocals.
Insert? Or FX channel?
Timing the decay to the track can help:
There is also more info here about EQ that is worth trying out as a starting point:
It all depends on the original recording.
If there is a lot of room ambience it won’t help. The signal needs to be as dry as possible for the reverb to work properly.
And also just a mixing tip, always mix your instruments in context. The effects you add/tweak must be done with all the tracks playing. Never do this with the instrument soloed or you will always find that it doesn’t sound good, especially for vocals.
Thats sounds good, I have a untreated room now, my studio is full of blackmold. But people very often work with the vocals only and adding effects`? are ju not a bit to conservative? Its not easy to hear small changes to the effetcs if you play all the instruments also?
Thanx everyone, why a FX-channel? How do you mean?
That’s the whole point. If you don’t hear small changes when the whole project is playing back, then those small changes are useless. That’s the reason why you need to mix in context and adjust the parameters until you hear the changes within the full mix.
It’s like making a detailed ice carving and then it starts raining and it melts, you don’t see all the small details anymore, but from a distance it looks the same.
It’s the same with audio, if you spend hours putting effects on your instruments individually, and when you play them all at the same time it doesn’t sound like you expected, then it’s a loss of time.
I was just going to ask “Why do you want to make your reverb sound like a bathroom??” and then I properly read the post 
3 Likes
Rolf, perhaps you should tell people exactly how you have set up your reverb as an effect. For example, some new users might mistakenly use a reverb as an insert and leave it set to 100% wet not realizing that that’s usually not the best way to use a reverb when mixing.
One can never have enough bathroom-like reverb!! 
Actually jut for sh*ts and giggles I searched for bathroom impulse responses, but there were really not many results. Weird, I’d have guessed more people would like to simulate them singing in the shower 
1 Like
Thanx all, I use presets and I use it on a send from my vocal. Please tell me how to use it!
Are you just joking? I dont want toilett, bathroom or church… On good albums it does not sound like that.
Please understand that I am learning, I may very well be doing some big beginner mistake.
Here are some screendumps. its the default settings for seventh heaven, I try these among a million other settings. I have a image also of my send, here I use two reverbs
Do you understand that people do add effects without the other instruments?Its you who are an exeption, not me?
Why do you have two reverbs in your Sends ?
You have one before the tuner, and one after it. First I don’t think the tuner will work good if you feed it with a reverb signal, and the second reverb may interfere with the first one and create the bathroom effect.
Please explain the purpose of each effect and why they are in this specific order. This will help us understanding what you want to achieve.
Is that wrong? I use two different, its one bright one darker?
I think that if you’re stacking reverbs you’re going to have a harder time controlling it all, and it’s especially difficult if you’re relatively new to all of this. I would recommend just using one reverb for now and learning how to get that to sit well in a mix before adding more.
And if you’re new to this then perhaps what you also want to do is to choose a reverb, then set the send to for example -10dB, and then lower the FX track fader to minus infinity. Then as you’re playing back you gradually increase the level of that FX track fader until you can hear the reverb and then adjust to an appropriate level.
Honestly, a lot of reverbs sound like crap if you send a loud signal into them and then play them back at 100% with no attenuation. They “work” once you turn it down.
Once you have that done however you’ll need to be a bit careful with how that reverb works with everything else. How it sounds in isolation doesn’t always translate well to the mix.
3 Likes