Room information

Talking about reverb.

Sometimes I notice unstable room informations in recordings and even in performances of bands playing live who use drum machines or midifiles in the backing.

Normally the human brain is very sensitive to analyse room informations.

What would you think about an interview where the interviewer stands in the cathedral of Cologne while his partner is sitting in a car?

For my taste two people playing together should have the same room information. In most cases you need to take care with electronic instruments. Some have penetrant programmed fixed room informations to sound better.

Reverb is a good glue to get things tight and close. Not every instrument needs reverb in a recording context.

If you need to use sample players let it sound naturally in the overall context. There is no wrong reverb. Reverb can be part of taste and even an important musical ingredient but "unstable" reverb doesn't improve anything.
:)

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I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to reverb, although I use an extremely basic editing (Audacity, which calls it "Gverb"). I play an acoustic instruments (saxes), so record with a microphone and must then give the track appropriate reverb so that it sounds like I was in the same room recording with others. Although Audacity is in most ways very basic, it has an excellent program to deal with this and adjust the room's ambience very precisely.
There are 7 parameters all adjusted by "sliders":
1. Room size is adjusted in square meters.
2. Reverb Time (fully adjustable)
3. Input bandwidth
4. Damping
5. Dry signal level
6. Early reflection level
7. Tail level.
Takes a while to learn how each of these effects the sound. The result is being able to contour the sound quite precisely. By comparison many other editing programs feature preset reverb that is named. I've seen programs where there are literally hundreds of these presets.

The last thing I want to do is have to go through and listen to some large number of presets until I find one that's right. Chances are, the more choices, the less likely you are to take the time to find something appropriate and will just settle for "close enough". Using Audacity's Gverb I can adjust the sound contour within a few seconds.

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