KVR Audio

jotb · Post by **jotb** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:26 pm

hi,
i`m searching for a reverb for real drums i can`t find one that sounds really good. any suggestions?
primaly rock drums. thanks

fizbin · Post by **fizbin** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 10:19 pm

When you say reverb, do you mean a small to medium studio room type verb for thickening or more of an ambience reverb? I'd suggest trying the former in place of the latter.

fizbin

jotb · Post by **jotb** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 7:09 am

yeah i mean thickening!

brianbrian · Post by **brianbrian** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 8:23 am

Try using a convolution reverb, with IRs of chambers (or alternatively, some Lexicon chamber samples). The EMT 250 is a pretty "thick" or fat sounding reverb that works great on snares or most any percussion and the EMT 140 (a dense plate reverb) works well as an overall drum verb too. You should be able to find free IR downloads of any of these (although the Lexicon verbs and the 250 use modulated delay lines, which can't be accurately represented with a static IR...the IRs still sound very nice though). Make sure to check out http://www.echochamber.ch , they have IRs of the 250, 960L (check the chamber/ambience/room programs), and samples from the UA emulation of the 140 plate.

For an algorithmic verb, try demoing the ArtsAcoustic one.

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:03 pm

I'll second brianbrian. Also the ambience impulses from the 960 and PCM91 are very good for rock drums. There's a nice set of 960 plates - but I'm not personally that keen on plates for drums. Rock drummming tends to be recorded live in drum rooms, so you poosibly would do better with the ambiences and rooms. A different kettle of fish for electronic drumming obviously.

brianbrian · Post by **brianbrian** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 1:59 am

Forgot to mention, for thickening, some gated or non-linear patches work well. Probably the best examples of these programs come from the Roland R880 verb and the AMS RMX16 "Non-Lin2" program. With this type of reverb you can get away with setting up a very big sounding verb, since it cuts off rather abruptly, preventing the large tails from totally clouding up your drum tracks (especially in faster songs). Be careful with over-doing this type of verb, unless you really like that 80's drum sound.

You can make this type of verb with most plugins that offer a non-linear/gated program, or by putting a gate on any reverb return, triggered by the snare, or entire drum mix, etc. Then just adjust the decay/release of the gate to work with the tempo of the song.

brianbrian · Post by **brianbrian** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 2:01 am

BTW if you feel like spending an ass-load of money, the TC Electronics verbs for Powercore are worth investigating. The DVR2 verb is an EMT250 simulation, and the Non-Lin verb obviously does the gated/inverse reverb thing.

mute · Post by **mute** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 2:27 am

The free (donation ware) smartelectronix plugin Ambience, has really good presets for tight studio/room and snare/kick/kit setups and they sound amazingly good.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 4:54 am

Hate to raise hackles but Princeton Digital 2016 has a great percussion setting.

mandolarian · Post by **mandolarian** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 5:00 am

Hackle-raising Heckler!

I haven't tried the 2016 on drums yet. Thanks for the idea, Mr. Fripper!

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 3:30 am

The 2016 is good for small rooms, and small rooms are good for natural sounding drums. (Took me a while to appreciate the 2016's strength, when the presets display it's overwhelming weakness at larger rooms).

For some real hackle-raising - if you want to experiment with inverse reverbs on percussion (and why wouldn't you?) grab the demo from www.artsacoustic.com and hear for yourself. Experiment with the 7 different algorithms - I tend to like the Small or Fast ones for drums, but try them all.

best reverb for drums