Delay before Reverb? Or Reverb before Delay? What's your preference?

Gamedojo

Power User
Not an earth shattering question, but I've recently noticed that The Reverb before the delay is smoother. But I'm having a tough time deciding on which I like best. I've always been in the school of thought to put the reverb very last, but I'm sorta digging the delay last.

Thoughts?
 
In series in really doesn't matter unless you are using drive or a stereo type delay with heavy reverb.

According to Cliff both are Linear Time Invariant which means that if you put one in front of the other it should should the same.

However, because the reverb is not true stereo (wet signal is summed), so if you have a stereo delay going to a reverb has mix of 100% it should collapse to mono. At lower mix levels the stereo delay will be picked up by the dry level.
So in your case you probably have a stereo type delay going to the reverb. In this case, placing the delay after the reverb may give a bit more stereo spread in the delay.
 
I prefer to have my delay and reverb separate and put in parallel to the dry signal.

Just a holdover from my pre-Axe-FX days, but it works for me. I don't like reverb in my delay or delay in my reverb. That allows me to have a clarity to my tone, but use effects without the 'wash' you can get and allows me to keep control of the volume as I mix in the levels of delay and verb with the expression pedals I use to do so.
 
Just as in a studio situation, delay before your reverb... It acts as pre-delay, and adds space before the reverb hits.... Otherwise, your source becomes unintelligible....
 
If you're a Galaxie 500/Dean Wareham fan there's a great bit in his book, Black Postcards, where he talks about reverb -> delay being the "voice of god" sound they used on Lee Hazelwood's vocals and the approach they lifted for the Galaxie 500 album sound.

So I use the voice of god approach when I'm going out in to Cure, E&TBM, Mogwai land.

But for the rock stuff I tend to run them in parallel so there's no delay in the reverb, no reverb on the delays. For the reasons Scott mentioned above PLUS: because I just freaking *can* with the Axe-Fx and I never could with my old pedalboard setup. Drunk on the power of the matrix! :)
 
Hmm thanks Java and Scott, I need to give both of these some consideration, with the WDW thing I'm doing
 
Yep, parallel here too. Also makes it much easier to keep the signal level consistent.
 
Just as in a studio situation, delay before your reverb... It acts as pre-delay, and adds space before the reverb hits.... Otherwise, your source becomes unintelligible....

doesn't matter (with the above caveats). If you have 2 LTI objects running in series, it does not matter which comes first.
Sort of like Red + Green = Yellow and Green + Red = Yellow.
 
I prefer to have my delay and reverb separate and put in parallel to the dry signal.

Just a holdover from my pre-Axe-FX days, but it works for me. I don't like reverb in my delay or delay in my reverb. That allows me to have a clarity to my tone, but use effects without the 'wash' you can get and allows me to keep control of the volume as I mix in the levels of delay and verb with the expression pedals I use to do so.

I do the same... for the same reasons too...

and there's the additional bonus that in parallel, they can occupy the same col on the grid so you end up with a shorter length to the fx...
which means more space to through in more goodies...
 
I put my speaker cabs in the bathroom for a natural delay/reverb and some awesome LOWS.....:p

I wonder what it'd be like to place the cab facing the corner of a room, facing the corner and then capture the IR from behind the cab...
 
At a pinch I would say Delay before Reverb or parallel, but it is a bit of a moot point because in a guitar sound I would use one or the other, almost never both.

Exception: maybe just a touch on the reverb aux when mixing just to give things a common space
 
Back
Top Bottom