Question about sends in general

[chico.co.uk]

Here's something I don't quite get with sends in music software, maybe i'm missing something.

Say I want to add reverb to a bunch of instruments, maybe i've got two acoustic guitars, panned hard left and hard right. If I add reverb inline on each track, the reverb on the left guitar also comes from the left, and the one on the right guitar sounds from the right hand side. So if i mute one track I only hear sound on one side of the stereo spread.

But if i use sends to send both tracks to the same reverb bus, I hear the reverb tails in the middle of the stereo spectrum. I can try to pan the reverb bus track to one side, but I obviously can't pan it both left and right.

Is that what's supposed to happen by design? It sounds weird to my ears. Am i missing something?

I had this ages ago in Sonar, although i couldn't quite figure out what it was that sounded "wrong". I seem to get this with racks too, although I need to play more to check that ...

[Kiwiboyus]

Well reverb would be stereo by nature wouldn't it? If you tried to pan it hard to one side only I think that would sound wrong. Now if your guitar is hard left then you would naturally get more on that side but you'd still have reverb on the right from the guitar.....

Or am I missing the point here

[valley]

If you tried to pan it hard to one side only I think that would sound wrong.

Not necessarily. It'd just sound like an effect. A lot of people use reverb in ways that aren't really appropriate to the understood point of reverb, I.E. achieving a sense of space and location in a mix. Using different reverbs on individual sounds is a common example.

chico: what you are describing is a natural outcome of what you are doing. If you really need hard panned verbs you need to put individual reverbs on each channel.

[chico.co.uk]

I think it sounds wrong all coming from the middle of the track myself. But be that as it may, lets say you want to use a delay rather than a reverb, but the delay should echo "behind" the stereo spread of the sound, rather than have all the delays come from the middle of the track. Or a phaser, or any other effect ...

Is it just me?

[chico.co.uk]

chico: what you are describing is a natural outcome of what you are doing. If you really need hard panned verbs you need to put individual reverbs on each channel.

Fair enough chief. I guess i'm just looking for someone to say that, so I can stop trying to unsuccessfully do it with sends.

So how do people apply reverb to a drum kit? Say a bit to the snares, and a bit to the hi-hats or whatever. Should the reverb tails just be centred in the stero spread?

[valley]

So how do people apply reverb to a drum kit? Say a bit to the snares, and a bit to the hi-hats or whatever. Should the reverb tails just be centred in the stero spread?

If you are trying to apply reverb to create a room effect then the reverb should be centered.

If you heard a real drum-kit in a room that was off-centered from you, you'd hear reverb all around you, but perhaps a little louder (depending on the room shape) from the direction of the drumkit.

What you are trying to do is kind of bad practice IMHO. It's fine with delays, but can create hard to deal with muddiness with reverb, unless your mixes are very sparse. I've heard it done well on some lo-fi and dub for example, but I don;t imagine you'd hear it anywhere else much.

[valley]

I think it sounds wrong all coming from the middle of the track myself. But be that as it may, lets say you want to use a delay rather than a reverb, but the delay should echo "behind" the stereo spread of the sound, rather than have all the delays come from the middle of the track. Or a phaser, or any other effect ...

Is it just me?

That's where you use an insert.

Sends are specifically for effects that are global to an entire mix. If the effect isn't global it's an insert candidate. You might have a compressor on your bass, kick, and leads, but unless they are all sharing the same compression ratios, you wouldn't be using the compressor as a send (not that you;d normally send to compressor anyway). Delay and reverb is like that - if you want hard panning effects and the like you probably aren't looking for the effect to be shared.

[chico.co.uk]

What you are trying to do is kind of bad practice IMHO. It's fine with delays, but can create hard to deal with muddiness with reverb, unless your mixes are very sparse. I've heard it done well on some lo-fi and dub for example, but I don;t imagine you'd hear it anywhere else much.

You're probably right. I think it's a throwback to when I started recording years ago on a four track. I didn't have a reverb unit, but I did have a delay pedal that I would set up between the mic and the input on the 4 track, and would use it to add a touch of delay in the background to vocals, which made them sparkle. I'd then pan the tracks wherever i wanted (the tracks obviously having delay recorded onto them too)

Then when i later got a multi effects jobby with a reverb, i'd just do the same with reverb and delay on vocals, acoustic guitars etc.

So I guess I'm maybe used to that sound, and when I try sends in software it sounds a bit odd to me. I guess i'm used to the reverb and delay following the track, and have maybe subconsciously got used to accomodating that in my music and not hearing it feels weird.

I get similarly thrown if I record vocals or guitar as stereo rather than mono tracks, and then wonder why they don't pan like I'm used to hearing things pan ...

[IIRs]

What you need is a True Stereo reverb (not that hard to find as a plug-in) together with a True Stereo aux send (never seen one in a software mixer, and you need to spend a lot on an analogue desk to get them..)

[valley]

What you need is a True Stereo reverb (not that hard to find as a plug-in) together with a True Stereo aux send

That'd be a rack then, no?

[IIRs]

That'd be a rack then, no?

Of course!

Yet another case of Tracktion's paradigm crapping on all the big boys'

Having said that I tend to apply reverbs to individual tracks or groups, with judicious use of Freeze & Render (as I'm very fond of SIR these days, but my PC struggles to keep up).

Thats just my style of mixing though: I like to keep a lot of things totally reverb-free anyway, and when I do use verb I like it to be tailored to the part.. even if it just has a different pre-delay time to other tracks. Sharing reverb with sends always felt like a compromise to me anyway, and Tracktion lets me avoid that now (even with my old crappy cpu )