KVR Audio

4ppleseed · Post by **4ppleseed** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:57 pm

Hi all,
I was watching this video where Dave Pensado and Arial Chobat talk about setting Reverb decays to the BPM of the song:

http://youtu.be/xQUYiaHNv5Q?t=13m45s

I've looked around for a 'Reverb Calculator' or whatnot but no dice. Anyone got a simple way to work this out?

Thanks

BERFAB · Post by **BERFAB** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 6:16 pm

IIRC the owners manual for the Ensoniq ASR10 (and possibly their other synths) had a BPM chart intended for use with delays and reverbs. I don't know if you're looking for something different because you're dealing with reverb decays, but the division of beats into seconds should be the same.

If no one else finds it online, I'll see if I can find it and scan it.

Cheers
-B

BERFAB · Post by **BERFAB** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 6:19 pm

Actually, these online calculators give you very detailed information. Take your pick:

http://www.thewhippinpost.co.uk/tools/d ... ulator.htm

http://web.forret.com/tools/bpm_tempo.asp

http://www.musiccalculator.com/

Cheers
-B

4ppleseed · Post by **4ppleseed** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 8:11 pm

BERFAB wrote: http://www.thewhippinpost.co.uk/tools/d ... ulator.htm

AHhhh I saw this and didn't put two and two together. So you can see from the youtube video they have the predelay set to 29.5ms. The bpm of Superbass is 126. So that means they are setting the predelay 1/64 note.

But why is the actual time of the Reverb 1.88s? That doesn't seem to match up to anything.

EDIT: Scrap that. I think the track is actually 127. Therefore the 64 is bang on 29.5 and they are setting the reverb time to around the 'Seconds Per Measure' - is that common? To have the reverb almost 'pump' each bar a bit like sidechain?

BERFAB · Post by **BERFAB** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 1:48 pm

You don't see a lot of these charts anymore because most products now automatically sync to the beat that you set. The math is all done internally. It's been over a decade since I even glanced at one of these charts.

I'm afraid I'm not going to be much help on your specific question as I tend to really only care about matching the BPM to delay times and I use my ears for everything else.

osiris · Post by **osiris** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 5:32 pm

I thought most producers just sidechained reverb tails to the kick with a compressor. Too easy?

wesleymayhem · Post by **wesleymayhem** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:16 pm

There's a VST out there called DTFC that I use a lot for this. There is a legacy thread on KVR about it here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview ... 05&start=0

PeterL · Post by **PeterL** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 11:01 am

I do it by ear without any calculator with this plugin:
http://studiostav.com/products-page/
It's much faster and if your favourite reverb has just % instead of ms for decay time no calculator will help....

JohnRock · Post by **JohnRock** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 8:29 am

One of the secrets of hit-making engineers is that they time the reverb to the track. That means timing both the pre-delay and the decay so it breathes with the pulse of the track. Here’s how it’s done.

The decay of a reverb is timed to the track by triggering it off of a snare hit and adjusting the decay parameter so that the decay just dies by the next snare hit. The idea is to make the decay “breathe” with the track.

Hope this can help you.

Krakatau · Post by **Krakatau** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 9:02 am

this feature seems to be the main marketing argument for the last reverb from exponential audio

https://www.exponentialaudio.com/nimbus

and these two next have rather useful sync-to-tempo parameters

ValhallaÜberMod (of course !)

https://valhalladsp.com/2011/12/16/valh ... d-windows/

and Tone2 Ultraspace

https://tone2.com/html/ultraspace.html

...all the question is IMHO, how they handle continuous variations of tempi ...but i'd say that apart from these peculiar case, it's still anyway a very good thing as apprenticeship to do such job manually

BTW :

JohnRock wrote: The decay of a reverb is timed to the track by triggering it off of a snare hit and adjusting the decay parameter so that the decay just dies by the next snare hit. The idea is to make the decay “breathe” with the track.

....THIS is very cool trick !!!

mitchiemasha · Post by **mitchiemasha** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 11:49 am

No need for a reverb calculator.

60,000 divided by the bpm, quarter note, divided by 4, sixteenth note, divided by 4 again, 1/64. Always round up.

Divide or times by 2 depending on requirements.

Also request every synth to add it as a feature, some have it already but it's still quite rare, which is BAD for how important it is.

MogwaiBoy · Post by **MogwaiBoy** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 8:16 am

+1 easiest way to set the decay so your snare reverbs so they just fade before they overlap on the main hits in the time sig. Predelay would usually be so fast that it doesn't matter if it's 5, 15 or 25ms. Longer predelays (as a special effect) veer into delay territory, so yeah... sync to track (use a BPM <-> millisecond converter).

Also compressor after reverb on (particularly drum) buses sounds really alive.

Hermetech Mastering · Post by **Hermetech Mastering** » Thu Dec 29, 2016 9:33 am

http://www.analogx.com/contents/downloa ... eeware.htm

Setting Reverb time decays (and PreDelay etc) to BPM?