Avoiding Crimes Against Reverb: 5 Ways to Avoid the Most Common Reverb Mixing Mistakes

A Danish concert hall, designed with memorable reverb in mind. Image by seier+seier.

Reverb is an incredible resource. It’s a staple in sound design and mixing. Producers, musicians, and mixers alike use reverb not just as an effect—but as a tool.

Since the dawn of the recording age, engineers have gone to great lengths to fight bad reverb, while desirable reverb has been sought after.

But despite the best of intentions—and a wealth of powerful processors—many new mixers do not understand how to use reverb effectively.

Mixes across the board are often riddled with errors and counter-productive use of reverb. Fortunately, many of these mistakes are easily remedied. It just requires that you know what to look and listen for.

Below, we’ll discuss some of the most common issues when it comes to employing reverb, and a few strategies on how to avoid each of them. Take note, and happy mixing!

1) “Washing Out” Your Tracks

Reverb can be beautiful. The spatial resonance and stereo image that a good reverb provides can make a mix come to life, adding a sense of space that allows a track to breathe across the stereo field.

However, reverb, when used in excess, can give diminishing returns. The phrase, “too much of a good thing” certainly rings true here.

The term “washed out” refers to a sound that is too heavily-saturated with reverb, often to the point where the reverb’s influence is greater than that of the underlying track.

When reverb is caked on to a track like this, one of two things will often happen:

1) In a dry mix, the washed-out track will stick out like a sore thumb.

If the rest of your mix is relatively dry, and you decide to wash out, say, a vocal track, it will sound unnatural and disconnected from the rest of arrangement.

Yes, reverb is an “effect”, and it can be used in ways that are wacky and creative. Yet in most instances, reverb should be used as a tasteful effect that makes sense in the sonic environment you are creating.

2) When paired with other “wet” tracks, the entire mix will become muddy.

Unfortunately, adding reverb to all the other elements in the mix is not the fix for this issue. If many tracks in a mix get slushed up with a washed-out sounding reverb, then the entire mix will become nothing but a maelstrom of swampy sound.

Proper reverb use—even when it’s prominent—should sonically enhance the presentation of an instrument rather than dominate it. And when used well, reverb can actually improve clarity. But whenever you “wash out” a track, that sonic clarity is compromised.

This compromise in audio clarity occurs when reverb reflections overlap with one another too much. You may already know that reverb is created when a sound wave is reflected off of a surface. When those reflections are loud or intense enough, they will induce more reflections, creating reflections of those reflections, and so on, until they are so numerous that they blend into the effect we know as “reverb”.

If we let things get out-of-control, then this chaotic feedback loop of reflections can cover up all the detail and the most articulate components of the audio source (especially in the all-important midrange frequencies), leaving it sounding muddy and blurred.

Fortunately, there are a few surefire ways to help you avoid “washing out” your tracks, even when a heavy dose of reverb is just what the mix needs.

How to Avoid It:

–Try adding “pre-delay” to your reverbs as a matter of habit. 30ms is often a good place to start. This delays the reverb from kicking in until the selected time has passed.

Pre-delay effectively allows the initial transients, attack, impact, and articulation of the instrument to shine on its own before the reverb tail swells up behind it to add depth, weight and interest to the note’s sustain. This is also how reverb tends to work in large spaces in real life.

Since pre-delay effectively separates the reverb tail from the dry track, it can be even more apparent to the ear at a lower overall level, allowing you to reduce the amount of reverb and sonic clutter you add to the mix while still achieving the same sense of ambience and space.

In some genres, timing a quick pre-delay to the tempo of the track can feel appropriate, giving it purposeful rhythmic feel at longer settings, and helping it blend into the track less intrusively at shorter settings.

–Add an EQ to your reverb bus. If you use just a touch of reverb to create a sense of space and enhancement in the high-end, the track will cut through a mix without things sounding cluttered.

This may require EQ on your reverb sends or returns. Many modern reverb plugins allow you to EQ your reverb sends and returns. If yours doesn’t, you can always add an EQ before or after your reverb on the reverb bus.

Try cutting lows and low mids using a shelving or highpass filter to reduce the weight and space that a reverb takes up in the mix. Alternately, try reducing the high end with a shelf or a high pass filter to create a dedicated reverb that adds some weight and body to thin, higher-frequency instruments.

–Try delays instead of reverbs to get a similar sense of space with less clutter. Sometimes, simple is better.

2. Inappropriate Reverb Placement

Many beginners will put reverb on everything. Reverb makes things sound better right?

Well, not necessarily.

Reverb is a powerful effect that has an appropriate place for use. But some tracks simply do not need additional reverb.

Most of the time, and on most instruments in a mix, any reverb should feel natural and balanced. In many cases, there will already be enough natural ambience on many of your recorded tracks to do just that. So don’t just go adding reverb to elements because you think you’re “supposed” to.

If you’re unfamiliar with how a natural and balanced reverb should sound, there are many ways you can train your auditory palate:

First, attend good live shows. Make a point to listen to the sonic response of different rooms and spaces.

Second, try recording an playing instruments in a variety of rooms. Get to know how frequencies react in their respective environments. Experiment with putting up a room mic on a variety of sources to get a feel for what natural reverb sounds like.

Third, listen to hit records—especially older ones where the production has stood the test of time. Forty years ago, it was commonplace for engineers to incorporate natural reverbs through both mic techniques and post-processing, and the best of them crafted mixes that still sound great and timeless today.

How to Avoid It:

–Before applying reverb, ask yourself whether the track really needs it. What are you trying to accomplish? And is reverb necessarily the best tool to do it?

If a track sounds too “close”, then softening the high end or adding a touch of subtle delay can push it back in the speakers slightly without adding clutter.

If a track sounds lifeless or uninteresting, then you might try brightening it up, or adding saturation, delay or modulation to impart some intrigue and character without the mess.

–If you absolutely must apply a little bit of reverb to lend a sense of “space” or depth-of-field to an inappropriately dry track, try starting with very short room reverbs or plates, under 1 second in length.

Alternately, try bringing up a room mic or re-amping the track and recording it to create your own organic room reverb. And don’t be afraid to try a delay instead of a reverb in order to move a track back without adding all the complexity of a room reverb.

–Learn first-hand how different instruments in the frequency spectrum interact with different acoustic environments, and let that be your guide.If a sound sticks out inappropriately in a mix, or seems to disappear, no matter how loud it is, it may be due to unnatural reverb placement.

3) Not Knowing What You’re Using Reverb For

Remember that reverb isn’t just an effect. It’s a tool. And there are many problems that it’s just not suited to solve.

Many mixing novices use this tool too often, and for the wrong reasons. For the best results, an engineer should use reverb in a more systematic and considered way, with a specific end-goal in mind for each use.

For example, you might want to widen up the drums with some stereo reverb, use another reverb to help soften up and smooth out a tambourine or add personality and texture to a “feature” instrument, and then put some short room reverb on a dry, close-mic’d instrument to help incorporate it more naturally into the rest of the track.

How to Avoid It:

The key here is to familiarize yourself with a variety of reasons to use reverb in the first place. Always have a concrete end goal in mind, like one of the following:

–Use Reverb to Widen
Using a stereo reverb (or two differentiated, hard-panned mono reverbs) can turn a reverb into an auxiliary widener. This is one way of turning mono tracks into magic and giving them a sense of natural spread and space

–Use Reverb to Soften
Reverb can be used to naturally attenuate an audio source’s high end. If there is a bothersome, piercing track, a reverb can act as a natural softener by spreading out the energy of a high-frequency instrument across a wider slice of the frequency spectrum.

–Use Reverb to Eliminate Dryness
When you encounter sounds that are excessively dry and feel like they are sitting right up against the front edge of the speakers, then incorporating reverb can give a sense of the instrument living in a more natural acoustic space along with the other elements in the mix.

When using reverb in this way, it is best to try and create a natural sonic environment. Try using no more than 1-3 reverb busses for an entire mix. This continuity in reverbs will help preserve a natural and cohesive feel, while still allowing you some variety in reverb length and placement.

–Use Reverb to Sonically Enhance
You can also use reverb to create a sense of time, place, personality and character. Sometimes, an interesting reverb can serve as a decisive signature effect for a track.

Often, just 1 or 2 elements will need a significant dose of whatever specialty reverb you’ve crafted in order to leave a distinct and memorable impression on the listener’s ear. And, if you craft it just right, a little bit should go a surprisingly long way.

4) Creating Reverbs for Individual Elements Instead of the Entire Mix

A mix isn’t just a bunch of tracks bounced together. A mix is one cohesive stereo track.

Think of a mix like a cake: It’s the combination of many different ingredients, but after being baked, it becomes one solid thing. It’s not just a bunch of ingredients in a bowl. Sure, you can taste all of the elements. But the idea is for them to work together in a singular experience.

Improper use of reverb will make your cake crumble, and your whole mix fall apart. If every different track uses a different reverb, then your mix will never feel well put-together. If the drums are big and roomy, but your guitars or vocals are dry, that combination just won’t match.

Unless you are going for a special effect, try to make every track in the mix feel as though it were recorded in the same room or space.

How to Avoid It:

–Use only 1-3 reverbs on your mix. At maximum, you might try a short room reverb for individual instruments that sound too dry, a medium plate for instruments that would benefit from some extra sustain or “softening”, and a longer reverb to create either distance or a “feature” effect for important lead instruments.

–Pick a sonic environment to represent and run with it! If you want the track to feel big and expansive, make it feel big and expansive. If you desire something vibey, low-key and intimate, make sure all the reverbs represent that vision.

–Consider the tempo of the track. In general, faster, denser tracks will warrant shorter reverbs, while slower and sparser tracks can allow you to get away with longer decay times.

5) Using Reverb as an Audio Band-Aid

Much of the time, beginners don’t use reverb in the considered and intentional way we’ve just discussed. Instead, they use reverb as an audio band-aid.

Is a track poorly recored? Poor performed? Just throw on some reverb on as a cover up!

Do not do this. There’s a reason professionals stay away from the band-aid tactic.

Why? Because it doesn’t work.

At best, it will make your track sound muddy, and much of the time, reverb will just emphasize the flaws in your less-than-average tracks.

A bad performance is a bad performance regardless of the effects used. And, although poor recording choice may be improved with some other audio repair software, it will usually NOT happen with a reverb.

In either case, throwing on a band-aid masks the real solution: Often, your best bet is to re-record—or failing that, make use of another special tool: The “mute” button.

How to Avoid It:

–Have a good recording to begin with! (Sometimes easier said than done.)

–If you find yourself using reverb to “fix” a track rather than enhance it, stop. First, try other tools like EQs, multiband compressors, denoisers, declippers and the like. And if all else fails, see if the track can be either re-recorded or scrapped entirely.

–Remember that reverb is supposed to enhance a track, not act as a band-aid. A bad performance or recording with a lot of reverb on it doesn’t sound like a good performance or recording. It just sounds like a bad performance or recording with a lot of reverb on it.

In the end, there is no perfect, one-size fits all answer for how and when to use reverb. Everyone has a different process, and the most important thing is to practice often and to come up with a considered, purposeful, and intentional approach that is all your own.

Pay attention to cause and effect. Listen deeply and critically to how reverb is used on your favorite mixes. And whatever you do, try to find something that feels right to you.

If you can avoid the key mistakes detailed above, there’s no question that you will come to find that a well-used reverb is a complex, but very rewarding tool.

Nadav Biran is a music producer, audio engineer and the co-founder of Catzaudio.

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