Master the use of reverb and your lifeless, two-dimensional mix will become a three dimensional panorama, says Steve Hillier.

Things that people do wrong with their music:

1. Write a composition starting with the drums. This is madness. Can you imagine Lennon and McCartney waiting for Ringo to set up his drum kit before writing their next Beatles smash? Obviously not.

2. Compress everything. At least twice. Anyone doing this in their mixes should stop now. Modern DAWs have an internal dynamic range that’s comparable to a pin dropping versus the sound of the big bang. Try using it, rather than squashing your music to the flatness of a pancake being sucked into a black hole . Compressors are like guns…only the sane should ever pick one up.

3. Use reverb badly, or not at all…

Unlike compression, everyone likes reverb. How can I say this with such confidence? Because nearly everything you’ve ever heard has been covered with reverb. Everything. Reverberation is what you hear when the sound from an event, such as a gun shot, bounces off a reflective surface, such as a wall, and then into our ears. It’s a fundamental attribute of how we experience sound, and our brains have evolved to use the information contained in reverb to help us survive in our everyday lives. If we’re hearing lots of sounds with long reverb tails on them, that suggests we’re in a large room, such as a church. Lots of short ‘early reflections’, we’re probably in a small room. Everything we hear has some reverberation on it before it ends up in our ears (we’ll ignore scientists who work in anechoic chambers for today).

Too many novice programmers don’t know how to use reverb, so they shy away from it, leaving their mixes dryer than Stewart Lee. Or they go the other way and use completely the wrong reverb sound, and get wetter than a Michael McIntyre show. Maybe programmers are confusing acoustic size with acoustic impact? Imagine this text on your page is your tune:

This is your mix,

This is your mix with the correct use of reverb on it,

Here’s your mix with a little too much reverb on it,

And here it is with way too much!

The effective use of reverb will make a component of a mix sound bigger, fuller and more comfortable for your audience. Without it, the sound will be tiny and illogical; think about it, in real life when will you ever hear a big dry sound? The answer is never. Ever! On the other hand, too much reverb and the mix will be wet and flabby, too big for anyone to comprehend.

How to use reverb:

So what do we do then? First, you need a decent reverb unit or plugin, don’t use just any old reverb plugin. I have a theory that the reason that reverb went out of fashion was related to the fact everyone used way to much  of it in the eighties. And many of them were using horrible cheap digital units*. There’s no excuse for that today. Invest some money and buy one each of both of these:

1. A traditional digital reverb

2. A convolution reverb.

A convolution reverb unit works by generating reverb tails based on impulse responses, recordings of reverberations from a real-world environment. They sound amazing; the best are extremely realistic and open up a world of possibilities. But you’ll need a traditional digital reverb too, probably a plugin based on classic hardware form the past. Since the late 1970s and up until about five years ago pretty much all reverb on records was simulated in some way, often by a microprocessor delaying audio, feeding it back into itself, doing some clever filtering and sticking it out the other end. It sounds great, if a little synthetic. But who cares? This is the sound of records, and they still sound great now.

Here’s how I use reverb in my own work. Your mileage may vary but most mix engineers I know use this approach or a variation on it:

1. Set up three reverb plugins as send effects on a bus, not as insert effects. The first will be short (less than 0.5 sec) and come from a convolution reverb using a room impulse response. The second will be a traditional digital reverb sound, such as a plate reverb, set to around 1.5 seconds decay. The last will be a ‘third option’, normally reserved for vocals and normally another plate or hall sound.

2. I then balance my sounds without reverb. Please note that I only use the bare minimum of compression at this point too!

3. When I’m happy with my mix, I then start placing my sounds in an imaginary three dimensional space. The shorter reverb sound places the drums and other high energy or rhythmical sound sources at the front of my stage, the larger reverbs put those sounds slightly further back and into a supporting role. The more reverb, the bigger the sound but also how far away it is.

Thinking of your mix as a three dimensional illusion is crucial for a comfortable and exciting result. Without reverb, your mix will sound like it’s stuck inside the speakers. Reverb brings the sounds alive and gives them the opportunity to leap out of headphones!

Why do so many programmers get this bit wrong?

What this all comes down to, time and time again, is the disconnect that bad programmers have between their brains and their ears and their music. They get into the habit of searching for answers to why their work isn’t working with the same cognitive tools that they use to explain why their internet router isn’t connecting to their laptop. This is not how music works. Our ears and our hearts should guide 99% of our musical work, the remaining 1% comes from experience and knowing how to use our equipment. So, from here on, start listening carefully to what’s going on around you. Listen to the difference between the sound of talking voices in a car and in the street. That’s reverb. Listen to the difference between the sound of tune in a club or in your iPhone headphones. That’s reverb. Listen to the sound of you brushing your teeth in a tiled bathroom. That’s reverb. And then, listen very carefully to the difference between your lifeless, static, two-dimensional mixes and three dimensional panoramas of the artists you most admire.

*Actually, the MIDIverb does have some great uses and you can probably pick one up for nothing at a jumble sale now if you look hard enough. Just don’t use it as your primary reverb tool.

Steve Hillier is a songwriter, DJ and record producer, who has worked with everyone from Keane to Gary Numan.  Steve is also a journalist and music technology expert, writing for Future Music & BBC Worldwide. Steve teaches Music Business and Logic Music Production Online at Point Blank Music School.

For more inspiration on using reverb have a look at these videos:

Listen to Mike Koglin: Reverse Vocal FX in Ableton:

Jonny Miller: Reverb – Dub FX

Keep up to date with all of Point Blank’s news, tutorials and giveaways by subscribing to our Youtube channel, or following us on Facebook and Twitter… and if you have something to say about this post, start the conversation with a comment below. Thanks!

For some of us this may be a very mysterious image: “panning” presets in a delay device of a sequencer DAW…

Well it IS a mysterious image until you check this article about the Haas effect.

Have you ever been so frustrated with a mix that doesn’t have life, wide stereo image and airy, “natural” space? Are you not getting enough depth in your mix? Have you added so much stereo reverb to add “space” to your mix that you end hating what you have done? Well… I have…

It is truly horrible getting every track in a mix sounding so “mono” after panning left and right different lines or instruments. It feels truly like there is something in the way from the original tracking to your final mix. The panning of some tracks helps very much to make a clear mix but sometimes that is just not enough to make things clear and certainly deeper, spacious, open and rich-sounding.

There is a solution to this lack of depth: The Haas Effect . It can take a simple mono instrumental or vocal line and give it presence or take it to the back of the mix, depending on how you use it and what other effects you add to the chain.

Basically, what you are doing with the Haas effect is making the listener’s brain to interpret the sound coming from a certain direction and angle in a way that is more natural to the ear than a simple panning adjustment. The Haas effect takes full advantage on the fact that we have TWO ears.

In real life, when a sound comes from the left it is received by the left ear BEFORE the right ear, so the brain interprets this difference as “a sound coming from the left”. The interpretation depends on how long is the delay between the two ears the less the delay, the more centered is the sound. This very short delay can be interpreted as a phase shift because the sound reaches first one ear and then the other. So, when there is no phase shift, no delay between the two perceived signals together are interpreted as dead center, with no panning at all.

We CAN use this psychoacoustic effect (the Haas effect) to print more depth and directionality into our mixes without even moving the panning control of the console! That’s why I put the snapshots from Ableton’s Simple Delay. You can make your own Haas effect presets in any delay that permits very, really shot delay times and also inserting a time shift between the two channels. The Haas effect is performed delaying one of the two channels (left or right) just a little bit, from a couple of samples to no more than 30 milliseconds (more in depth scientific info in the article from Wikipedia referenced above); the channel that reaches our ear first is the one that dictates where is the sound “coming from”, the later channel is interpreted as the natural tail of the sound.

As illustrated on the image above, the delay we will use MUST support 100% wet and the ability to delay each channel at different times; that is where the true nature of the Haas effect resides, in the little delay we can insert to one channel to widen stereo image and panning illusion.

If your delay does not support 100% wet setting, then it is not suitable for Haas treatment, this is because the delayed signal -since it is a very shortly delayed signal- has also a phase shift respect to the original signal, so phase cancellation will occur if you mix the original and the processed signals and you’ll end up with a strange comb filtered sound instead of the stereo expanded effect (unless this is exactly what you are looking for… you know there are no rules… If your target is the comb filtered sound then go for it).

Good amounts of delay go from just 2 samples (with the right plug-in or device) to 30 ms. More than 30/40 ms results in the brain interpreting the expanded sound as two different sounds coming from left and right, the signal is not expanded anymore, it’s clearly echoed or delayed.

I made a little demo using a mono piano loop, enhanced with a simple delay and a couple of other effects.

Piano Haas Effect Demo

(In the making of this little sample I didn’t touch the volume fader or the panning knob)

The loop is repeated four times. The first cycle is the original mono signal. The second cycle is the mono signal with a delay in the left channel of 10ms. The third cycle is the Haas effect enhanced with L/R equalization, higher frequencies are raised in the right channel and lower frequencies on the left channel*. The fourth cycle has some reverb added to get a deeper sound, more “roomy” sound.

It is important to know that the Haas effect can be reinforced by the way you make frequencies reach the ears. The brighter the sound, the more directional it is. Lets put in other way: when you hear a sound from the left the perception that the right ear has of the same sound in less bright because the head is absorbing some of the higher frequencies, that is also caused by diffraction: low frequencies can travel further and around obstacles more easily than high frequencies do. The point is that you can make a clearer Haas effect by making a difference in the spectrum perceived by each ear, so you may leave bright in the “closer” channel and more bass on the “further”. In Ableton Live you can use the Traditional EQ Eight to make a better configuration of your Haas processor. That’s what I did in the third cycle of my piano demo loop. I raised brightness in the right channel and bass on the left, so you get more “room” on the left, expanding the perceived space of the treated signal.

You can check a simple Haas processor I built in Live 6.0.10 and try new settings and tweaks to make it a better one for your goals, this one is quite basic but does the job with just one macro control (Haas panning and spectral difference).

Haas processor Ableton Live 6.0.10 Device Chain

· You can use the Haas phase shift on any signal mono or stereo. Just remember to adjust wet to 100% if you do not want the comb filtering in your audio.

· The less phase shift, the more “centered” is the sound.

· Haas effect can be reinforced with selective EQ on each channel.

· Using the Haas effect with some amounts of lowpass and reverb will send your sound to the “back” of your mix. The more reverb you use in a Haas processed signal the more it goes to the “back” of the mix.

· To get the “in the next room” effect lowpass at 600Hz and add a second delay with a time of 50ms or 60ms with ground 40% wet to make artificial reflections and a reverb to make the sound muddy.

· If you are trying to get the comb filtered sound by setting the wet knob below 100% you have to know that at different delay times different frequencies are cancelled, so explore a little to get what you really are looking for.

Mixes full of depth are the holy grail of home recording mixing, it’s one of those little details that separate amateurs from pros. Make sure you apply this tweak with good criteria. A track by track hard “Haased” song also sounds artificial and hollow, some mono sounds wont be bad at all, you can create huge soundscapes and powerful productions but just don’t overuse this tool if your aim is a natural sounding mix. Of course you can do what you want with your music, just make sure it is what you really want

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We love Mixing (at least I do). Mixing is always challenging and fun, it’s a stage where you can take some creative licenses (that you didn’t or couldn’t when composing) in the type of sound and expressive response you want to print in the final representation of the work. You become the director of the project, while you still have to take care of not ruining the composition and it’s first, original intention. It is truly a universe of its own in audio creation.

In my experience I have to say that when anyone begins the process of mixing for themselves or for someone else, they do it (and I did it too) thinking about mixing as a simple volume and panning tweak. Wrong!

Both volume and panning are the very main pillars of mixing since stereo audio was possible and since traditional analogue mix consoles were invented, but, as we all know, there are dozens of other factors that get into the picture and change it when you are trying to take your program into the next level.

One of these factors is Monitor Gain and its relationship with the way you may mix your records in the analogue console or DAW faders.

A very frequent mistake for every beginner in mixing (a mistake I committed a long time ago) is to try to “balance” the volume of the summing buss so it stays close to 0dB. I think this happens because we try to get the “finished-CD” sound quality out of the box without thinking about mastering.

Most of us “calibrate” our monitors to sound at a decent volume when the summing buss is peaking 0dBFS and the RMS levels are proportionally high. This is not necessarily a mistake but when you are trying to make a good sounding album* it is important to keep the original feel of the performances of the musicians and enhance it in the mix stage.

If you acknowledge the importance of mastering then you have to respect this: Any mastering engineer will ask you to leave, at least, 6dB of headroom in the stereo sum with no sound coming inside this margin, or barely invading it.

The reason?

(*)A good sounding CD is full of life, given to it by the mixing engineer. Mastering engineers will appreciate when you give them space to work and take your track from glory to pure perfection in sound. The other fact is that you are never going to clip your sound in the summing buss. everything will be just as you adjusted it, with absolute fidelity and zero distortion.

And how can we help them in their noble task? Well it is just a very simple setting but it will change the way you have percieved mixing and your mixes:

Raise the gain in your monitors (speakers/loudspeakers/headphones those things you use to listen to your music when working ) TURN THE KNOBS UP! Turn them up and NEVER lower them.

Find a comfortable volume to work. Back in the day, what I did in my studio was to open my music player (e.g: iTunes) and set the volume fader to the middle then played some tunes and raised the volume of my monitors until I heard it quite loud. Then I returned to the DAW and opened an old project with the fixed gain I began re-mixing and found that all faders went really down in the interface! From -6dBFS to -20dBFS and such… By the time I ended with a good sounding mix I realized the brickwall limiter in the master buss was doing nothing at all so I killed it. SURPRISE! my headroom is since then -6dBFS, sometimes -8dBFS, and people, I got to say, my mixes sound more open and clear, and I just LOVE it!

When I attempt to do some mastering I have all the space I need.

I guarantee you will notice the difference, the clarity, the PUNCH!

I recommend to turn up your monitor gain 20 or 30 per cent (and even 40% – that’s a third of a standard knob full spin). This will make everything stay in a decent volume in the DAW while you hear clearly, in a decent volume and with the highest definition.Bob Katz recommends to leave 20dB of headroom where the loud drum sounds are going to fit and a “cushion” of 6dBFS with no sound at all. That means that you have to mix at an RMS level of -26dBFS!

And THAT is a lot of space… but what about digital distortion in very soft sounds and fades of my rendered mixes?

Well, that’s why you should render your finished mixes in 24bit prior the mastering processes (the ideal is to render at 32bit float but 24bit will do just great). Even with the huge 26 dB headroom+cushion quality is not affected in a negative way, in fact the resolution grants better fidelity in the 24bit mix than in the finished 16 bit mastered track (there are other, very different factors that affect the excellent quality of the master but this article is not about mastering).

Raise the volume in the monitors, not in the faders. You, your clients and the music you mix will be thankful.

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by Bob Katz

Mastering requires an entirely different “head” than mixing. I once had an assistant who was a great mix engineer and who wanted to get into mastering. So I left her alone to equalize a rock album. After three hours, she was still working on the snare drum, which didn’t have enough “crack”! But as soon as I walked into the room, I could hear something was wrong with the vocal. Which brings us to the first principle of mastering: Every action effects everything. Even touching the low bass affects the perception of the extreme highs.

Mastering is the art of compromise; knowing what’s possible and impossible, and making decisions about what’s most import and in the music. When you work on the bass drum, you’ll affect the bass for sure, sometimes for the better, sometimes worse. If the bass drum is light, you may be able to fix it by “getting under the bass” at somewhere under 60 Hz, with careful, selective equalization. You may be able to counteract a problem in the bass instrument by dipping around 80, 90, 100; but this can affect the low end of the vocal or the piano or the guitar – be on the lookout for such interactions. Sometimes you can’t tell if a problem can be fixed until you try; don’t promise your client miracles. Experience is the best teacher.

Think Holistically

Before mastering, listen carefully to the performance, the message of the music. In many music genres, the vocal message is the most important. In other styles, it’s the rhythm, in some it’s intended distortion, and so on. With rhythmic music, ask yourself, “what can I do to make this music more exciting?” With ballads, ask “is this music about intimacy, space, depth emotion, charisma, or all of the above”? Ask, “How can I help this music to communicate better to the audience?” Always start by learning the emotion and the message of the client’s music/ After that, you can break it down into details such as the high frequencies, or the low frequencies, but relate your decisions to the intended message of the music. Some clients send a “pseudo-mastered” demonstration CD illustrating their goals. Evin if you don’t like the sound on their reference, or you think you can do better, carefully study the virtues of what they’ve been listening to. During your mastering, refer back to the original mix; make sure you haven’t “fixed” what wasn’t broken in the first place. There is no “one-size-fits-all” setting, and each song should be approached from scratch. In other words, when switching to a new song, bypass all processors, and listen to the new song in its naked glory to confirm it needs to be taken in the same or different direction than the previous number. Likewise, as you gain experience, you may want to “tweak” the “presets” in your equipment. Presets are designed to make suggestions and provide good starting points, but they are not one-size-fits-all and should be adjusted according to the program material and your personal taste.

To continue reading, download the PDF for Secret of the Mastering Engineer