FX Channel delayed reverb (side-chaining)

Hello,

I am looking to replicate certain functionnalities I have seen in YouTube tutorials.

In the following video, the guy uses what he calls a “return channel”, inserts a Reverb, a compressor and then routs the the signal to the instrument track. The main purpose of this procedure is to delay the reverb.

- YouTube (see at 2min).

I have created an FX channel, inserted a Reverb, a compressor and tried to side-chain it to the instrument track, but I am not able to delay the reverb.

Anyone knows how to achieve this? Am I doing something wrong?

Quick guess is that a comp/gate that is triggered by a sidechain signal, for ex. kick, is used to mute/noise gate the reverb signal’s onset.

I would try to use a reverb fully wet with a decent predelay parameter, or better yet an attack stage on the reverb signal itself. The new Cubase reverb has some features that may even do that, but I can’t be for sure.

Yes this is exactly what I am trying to do: to delay the attack of the reverb.

As you pointed, I can’t seem to trigger the sidechain signal like I would do if it was routed to a kick line.

I have Cubase Artist 7 and the only reverf plugin I have by default is the Roomwork SE. The predelay gives a bounce effect when the reverb is not fully wet but it doesn’t delay the attack. There is no attack parameter you can control on this reverb plugin.

Do you know any plugin that allows you to delay significantly the attack of a reverb ? I don’t understand why in the video the sound is triggered by the lead and why it doesn’t work in Cubase…

Oh, you have Artist. I’m not sure if there’s any limitations with respect to sidechaining.

I could probably come up with an elaborate scheme to delay the verb, but I would have to think it out.
I do not think what I wrote at first (sidechain gate) will work, because it will also gate the tail.

Maybe the verb is sent out again post fader.
Turn original verb buss all the way down in level.
Add a mono delay.
100% wet.
The delay setting, if I’m thinking straight, should push the verb forward, ie. delay the entire signal. The dry signal is ignored.

…something along those lines would be the way I’d approach it.

REVelation, is the new Cubase reverb. IIRC it has pretty good pre-delay range, as well as a delay for the late reflection, which almost works to the point of chopping or gating.

You may want to take a look & see what else you can find - Roomworks SE is quite limited but it is functional, and there are some great plugins out there if you look for them…start off here:

You will definitely need a transient shaping tool along the lines of any of the ones listed at
FREE Transient Shaper VST Plugins - Bedroom Producers Blog and it seems that Transient is highly recommended.

Create an FX track, and put your reverb in slot 2, with the transient shaper either after or before it, depending on how you prefer the sound. Can I ask why you are sidechaining, and exactly what the thought behind it is?
I am not saying don’t do it - I use side-chains all the time for various effect but I am not sure what you are trying to use it for if all you want to do is change the attack of the reverb.
The quoted example is using the attack on the compressor - a slow attack here will allow reverb transients to pass, a fast attack will catch them, and the sidechain is telling the compressor to listen for the sidechain input and not the reverb input so will compress the reverb output when it gets a signal from the track you have S/c’d it to listen out for - you did remember to set up a send to the sidechain input of the compressor at the right level, yes?

I love to fiddle with effect returns using sidechaining - it’s great fun & stops them being static. Works great with reverbs (a gate makes sure the effect is only audible when the dry track is present, a compressor enhances it again only when dry track is present, or can be set up to duck it by switching off the make up gain - the list is long) and I also almost never use a straight delay either. Maybe you can let us know exactly what you want to do, and post a CPR file - then we can take a look at it & make suggestions.

Funny you should mention this - just done exactly this on the Love And Rockets remix for “Seventh Dream Of Teenage Heaven” and the opening track where there is a delayed reverb on the acoustic guitar that is triggered from a silent kick drum (ie with the fader pulled right down and not muted or it will not work) that is sent pre-fader to a gate inserted after the reverb in the FX channel.
I have attached the channel setting files for the kick drum, the acoustics and the reverb channel as well as a screenshot for the gate settings.
The important part is that the kick drum needs to have it’s fader pulled right down, with the send to the gate sidechain set to 0dB and pre-fader. The reverb is triggered by the acoustic guitar, and the gate is triggered by the kick drum. The gate must be a VST3 one with sidechain activated.

Enjoy.
Gated Reverb.rar (90.3 KB)