stereo or mono reverb for drums? whats the norm?

[keithl]

Since getting the PT/002 system, I finally have enough tracks to do what I want (ok, always could use more!), but...

when you guys mix down drums, do you give the snares and toms a stereo reverb or mono (pros/cons). I always used mono, but was thinking about it more last night. My thought process is that the stereo reverb would just be cluttering things up...alas, I could be wrong!

How about instruments?
what do you usually use...stereo or mono?

[Third Eye Studios]

Mono in, stereo out is usually what I do, with drums and instruments.

[keithl]

when you say out...each drum? snare = stereo, left tom = stereo, right tom = stereo?

[nightshadecrisis]

i try to group and send to verbs, so for instance left and right tom will go to the same reverb. i rarely put any reverb on anything other than toms and a bit of plate reverb for snare. sometimes i'll send all the drums lightly to a room reverb. almost all of the reverbs i put on things are stereo.

ev

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Using Sends and Returns

Create an audio track.. say for your vocal.. name it "VOX", create a mono Aux Track for your Reverb.. name it "REVERB".

Switch to your Mix Window and in the Display menu select Mix Window Shows... and select All.

In the Mix window you have 5 buttons in the top section for your 5 inserts.. below that you have 5 buttons for your sends.. For the track named "VOX", using the first send button create a post fader send to Buss 1. A small window with a send fader will appear on the screen. Keep the output of the track "VOX" set to your stereo buss which is usually Outputs 1&2. Set the input of your track named "REVERB" to the same buss you selected (Buss 1).. keep the output of the "REVERB" track set to Outputs 1&2.

Control + click (Command +click on a Mac) on the solo button of the Aux track, "REVERB", to solo isolate it.

Instantiate a (mono/stereo) reverb on your Aux track, "REVERB" and set it to 100% wet.

Set the Aux Fader ("REVERB") to zero (Alt click on it - Option click on a Mac).

You can now use the send fader to send signal from your "VOX" track to your "REVERB". Because the send is post fader the sent signal is in relation to any rides you do on your vocal track.

Rail

[asa]

Typically I use a stereo reverb for all sources, whether they be mono or stereo. Also, I try not to use too many reverbs, this can make your track seem unnatural and also make it hard to make the instruments sound cohesive. Set up your scenario using sends and returns, like in the instruction left by Rail. You can control panning to the Reverb, if you find that is needed, from within the Send Window, the same window that has the fader used to control the amount of level you send from the source track to the reverb. It has pan sliders that work the same as the Pan Sliders on audio or aux tracks.

[homerg]

For drums, I "send" the stereo overhead tracks to an stereo AUX track which has a stereo reverb as a plug-in. Sometimes I add extra reverb to the snare by sending it to the same bus. I don't like a lot of reverb on drums, but that's probably because my room is very natural and bright sounding. I guess if you have a very dead sounding room you would probably need more reverb to bring the drums back to life a bit. Just experiment with the options detailed above.

[neomodo]

Question about this reply -

If I create a mono Aux channel - when selecting the input (from the VOX send) It asks me to select either the left of the right channel... that seems odd... Is this a question of setting my IO for the bus to be a stereo bus with no mono (L & R) specifications? That seems odd too... And I suppose that the send from the VOX channel should be set to send out to the stereo bus right?

Obviously I'm a little confused but I just happen to be playing around with sends setup when I saw this post...

thanks

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Well.. your actual Vocal track should be a mono track -- there's very seldom any reason to place any effect directly across a mono track which changes the track into a stereo track. Use Sends and Returns for effects... use inline inserts only for correction type devices like EQ and compression.

Rail

[neomodo]

What I did was go to the IO settings and deleted the Bus I had (FX Send 1) with to subs (L & R) and recreated it w/out the sub paths and just told it to be a mono bus. I'm sure this is wrong. My Vox track IS a mono track but in the send to option it gave me the option to send to FX Send 1 stereo or FX Send 1 L and FX Send 1 R - I'm sure it probably won't matter all that much either way but with the IO change I mention above it simple didn't give me the left and right option when it came time to set it for the Reverb channel - I'm probably just being pedantic.

thx