![mixing live sound mixing live sound](https://rowman.com/L/15/381/9781538134658.jpg)
![mixing live sound mixing live sound](https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/media/2020/03/7-Live-Mixing-Mistakes-You-Might-Be-Making-Featured-Image.jpg)
Then I stand in front of the kit and pay attention to how he hits.
![mixing live sound mixing live sound](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/2f/f6/59/2ff659ecbff600514fac308e246fac81--devon-cool-stuff.jpg)
One of the things that I do when I am first working with a band is ask the drummer to play. I prefer the drum kit to sound like I was standing in front of the kit. Symphony for kick drum is not the preferred result. It drives me crazy when engineers close-mike a drum kit and then overemphasize particular drums within the kit. Use More Than One Reverb on an Instrument to Create SpaceĪ drum KIT is a complete instrument compiled of a bunch of single drums. In the end, the type of reverb is a personal preference, but it does matter which one you choose. To me the break up is weird on some of those. I tend to shy away from plate reverbs, or even some convolution reverb acoustic space modeling. But there are types of verbs where break up is more noticeable, just by virtue of what they are. It actually lets you shape and customize the reverb decay. Some artificial reverbs do it better than others. It is smooth sailing all the way until it dissipates into the noise floor. Acoustic reverb doesn’t break up at the tail end. Why? Because it doesn’t happen in reality. It’s also the first thing I notice when I am listening to an artificial reverb. There are a lot of technical reasons (that I won’t bore you with here) for why that happens, but let’s just say that it ain’t easy to fix that. The hardest thing that a manufacturer has to do when making an artificial reverb is eliminate the “break up” that happens at the very tail end of a reverb. H-Reverb has some amazing sounding halls. I like the sound of hall programs on most artificial reverbs. The type of reverb I use depends on the instrument I am putting it on. So for something that is fast, I might use 800 milliseconds (0.8 seconds) of the parameter “reverb time” on an artificial reverb.
Mixing live sound full#
So with the long pre-delay and a 2-second trail, we’re actually talking about almost 3 full seconds before we hear the reverb trail off. Now remember – we are using long pre-delay times here. I generally use 1-to-2-second reverb times. By using reverbs with relatively short reverb times, you can create depth without muddling your mix. Sometimes we find ourselves in acoustical spaces that already have long reverb (1, 2, 4 seconds, or even longer). Shorter Reverb Time (Size) Is Your Friend I find that in an unintelligible space, this helps to keep the depth of the reverb without masking the original signal.Ģ. I generally use from 40 to 80 milliseconds of pre-delay on every reverb that I use. I use longer pre-delay times in order to separate the signal and the reverb, to make sure that they remain two distinctly heard occurrences. Pre-delay happens in nature, but not usually at the times that I am talking about here. Pre-delay is the delay time between the input of the signal and the FIRST occurrence of reverb. Here are some general rules that I follow on most reverbs I use for my live mixes. So how do we use reverb on a vocal without making your high-energy mix sound awful and unintelligible within the acoustic space? It is a balancing act, for sure. A close-miked vocal without reverb is just that – unnatural. WHY? Because the human ear is used to hearing the spatial reflections caused by a vocal (or drums, or guitars) in a room. Without the depth that artificial reverb provides in our mixes, we would actually LOSE intelligibility in our mix. To be fair, most newer buildings are taking this into account by putting in acoustically treated panels that can be moved in or out, depending on what is in the venue that day, but even then it’s a battle of Plexiglas, plastic seats, and concrete floors.īut the alternative of NOT using reverb will leave you with a dull, unexciting mix. But as soon as we show up and try to put a rock show in that environment, it gets messy. They WANT the room to go audio blitzkrieg when 15,000 people are cheering for their favorite sports team. They were built (by acousticians) to get BIGGER when the room is energized. Remember, most arenas and stadiums were NOT built to have rock shows in them. Then, in the live world, there’s the added problem of how reverb interacts with the reflective slapback of the acoustic space you are mixing in, causing unintelligibility and a mishmash of audio chaos. Creating the right artificial space in your mix without clouding instruments or masking vocals is an art form in itself. Find how FOH engineer Ken “Pooch” Van Druten (Linkin Park) uses reverb to create a clear and exciting live mix in any venue, no matter how challenging.