Reverb mix level

T

torkolort

Inspired
Hi

So, I've completely underestimated the importance of reverb when recording direct. I made a thread like a month ago asking why my direct recording sounded so bad as opposed to playing "live". Then Cliff and others mentioned that I should add some reverb, but I had a reverb block so I kinda just ignored that :shock:

I usually have the mix around 20-30% but right now I tried to go 100% (I've tried that before, but gave up because of the problem I'm about to explain). When I boosted the mix to 100% on one of my lead patches it just sounded WAY BETTER! But now there's input delay when I play. The time parameter was at 1.5 sec and I read on the wiki that it should be 0.10 sec, but as I decreased this parameter the sound started to fade drastically and when I got below 0.25sec there was no sound whatsoever. Is this normal?? I've also tried lowering all the other parameters including pre delay and tail delay, but nothing helps. The delay starts when I go to mix level 80% and above. If I just could get rid of that input delay I would so be in heaven! What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

edit: And yeah I'm on FW v10 if that matters.
 
Are you talking about running it 100% in series? If so, there'll be a degree of delay involved before the sound kicks in. The size of the room you've picked will have an effect on this, and also the pre-delay parameter (been a long time since I played with the Axe's reverb, but I assume there's one in there) will add to this if it's set anywhere above zero.

Setting the mix to 100% means you ONLY get wet signal, no dry signal. Up above 80% you're still pretty close to killing your dry signal off entirely. If you set your mix to 100% wet and then cut all the parameters down (in an effort to reduce the delay) so that the reverb is going to be tiny, it's only logical that you'd pretty much end up with no sound at all. You're basically cutting out your dry signal completely, and then reducing the wet signal down to near nothing as well.

The only time I'd ever use a 100% wet mix is to have a huge spacey effect, where I'd probably actually want the attack to be affected like that. Otherwise I'd always have the mix down fairly low, or more likely, I'd run it 100% in parallel (mainly coz I find it easier to think of it this way) and adjust the volume.


What kind of sound are you actually going for?
 
Oh well....and I thought I just figured it out :(

Just to compare...

100%
http://www.4shared.com/audio/TAd6QqIf/100.html
30%
http://www.4shared.com/audio/HqNiM5Lu/30_online.html

I realize now that it doesn't sound that good anyway...but please listen to both these clips and try to understand why I for a moment felt that the 100% mix sounded good. The 30% is so harsh and flat and doesn't sound right, I like the first one better because of the roundness and smoothness in the tone (except for the very audible picking). In a way it sounds more real, only....not. Imo, the 30% mix recording sounds awful. The 100% is closer to when I play through the Atomic.

As you may notice I'm into Petrucci stuff, though with very little technical knowledge about how to get there.
 
IMO that sounds fine. One lead guitar track on its own is only really going to sound so big. Once you put it into a full mix, the way you hear it will change. What might sound like harsh high freqs when the guitar is solo'd might be what helps the guitar track have a nice clarity in the full mix, and any harshness will be tamed by the highs in the cymbals, vocals, whatever...

IMO the 100% one just sounds a tad silly, at least for any kind of "normal" lead playing.


Otherwise, if you really want to tame the harshness, I'd start in the amp block, maybe a cab change, or with some PEQ work, not by cranking the mix in the reverb block to dull the high freqs. ;)
 
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