Music Guide to the Reverb Effect and It's Parameters

Reverb. Most people call this effect ''echo'' but that's not entirely technically accurate. Reverb is an effect used to apply the sound of a ''room'' to piece of audio. This effect primarily effects the perceived distance of the audio to your ear. You can make things sound farther away than they were actually recording.

Reverb provides an important function for creating acoustic space. Many theaters and venues for music and speakers are designed with acoustic space and reverb in mind. So it's important to be able to utilize reverb in your recordings and to understand how and why it works.

For a long time, natural reverb was the only way to have true acoustic space on recordings. So most, if not all, recordings were in professional studios with acoustically treated space. That is until nineteen eighties, which brought forth artificial reverb rank units of varying quality. When they were first introduced, the tone between a live room and a reverb unit was quite different but over the years the gap has closed considerably.

These days, software reverbs actually reign supreme as the quality they offer nearly identically replicates recording in a live room. Here's a run down of various parameters you will find on software reverb units:

Parameter One : Wet - This usually signifies an audio signal that has been processed with reverb.

Parameter Two : Dry - This signifies an audio signal that has not be processed with reverb and remains unaltered from the signal you offered.

Parameter Three : Early Reflections - These are somewhat self explanatory. Altering this parameter will change how fast or loud the echoes of the first reflections in your recording will be.

Parameter Four : PreDelay - This parameter alters the time it takes for the reverb to activate in accordance with the audio signal. Small PreDelays usually mean smaller rooms, while larger PreDelays usually mean bigger rooms.

Parameter Five : Density - Density controls the reverb that's not the early reflections. As it's namesake implies, the density controls the ''thickness'' of the reverb.

Parameter Six : Decay - Decay signifies how long the reverb will remain. Short decay times will cause the echoes to die almost instantly, whereas long decay times causes the reverb to last several seconds.

Parameter Seven : Diffusion - Diffusion will change how spread out your reverb sounds. Lower parameters can cause reflections that sound very far apart from each other while closer reflections sound a bit more artificial.

Parameter Eight : Mix - Mix signifies the ratio of wet signal to dry signal.

Parameter Nine : Damping - This parameter was created to emulate the sound of reflections being absorbed by various things in the room, such as carpet or furniture and wall fixtures.

As you can see, the permutations of these parameters are endless and so are the types of reverb. There is no set way to utilize reverb, and you should try your best to use your ear and decide what's best for you.