Making Music
  Computer Music Software and Hardware

Environment simulators

Given the complexity of reverb, several developers have produced more user-friendly effects along the lines of room simulators. They may include parameters such as room size, room shape, liveliness (the high frequency absorption parameter), and room characteristics. Cakewalk's Audio FX 3 goes one stage further by allowing you to design your own room, select and position the microphones and place the performers in it.

Some reverbs such as Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Mirror and the room simulator in Samplitude use the 'impulse response' of an environment.

This is the acoustic response an environment produces in response to an impulse such as a percussive sound. This can be applied to audio tracks exactly like a normal reverb effect.

There are dozens of impulse responses for Acoustic Mirror covering environments such as  theatres, classrooms, halls, bridges, stairwells and tunnels, and the intrepid experimenter can create their own impulse responses, too.

Sing something distant

Because reverberation gives us our perception of the environment a sound is in, we can use it to help create 'artificial spaces' for vocals and instruments. A lot of reverb will give the impression that a vocalist is singing in a cathedral while very little reverb will make it more up-front and in-yer-face. A natural reverb with average damping may be ideal for a ballad but you may prefer a livelier sound with less damping for a rock song.

Reverb can also be well used on instrument tracks to take the dryness out of a synth sound, for example. It is also very popular with drums and a common ploy is to apply reverb to just the snare drum to create a rock drum feel.

The secret of using reverb is not to use too much, yet modern reverb effects seem to positively encourage OTT application. It is so easy to 'improve' a sound by cranking up the reverb level but in a mix it will sound muddy and indistinct so start with small amounts and add more if required.

Delay and echo cho ho o...

Reverb and echo or delay are closely linked as both involve repeats of the original sound. However, whereas with reverb the repeats are so close together that they sound like a continuation of the original sound, with echo the repeats are far enough apart to be individually distinguishable.

The words 'delay' and 'echo' are often used interchangeably although technically, a 'delay' could be a delay of any length whereas you'd expect to hear an 'echo' as an individual sound coming pretty soon after the original. Something to be aware of but not get hung up on. Many effects even blur the distinction, being able to create so many short delays that the result sounds like reverb.

The first echo units were tape-based and created simply by running a tape loop through, first a recording head and then several playback heads.

Famous units include the Watkins Copycat and Roland's Space Echo which were much used by cabaret vocalists.

The lure of the tape-based echo unit is such that Steinberg released a tape echo simulation plug-in called Karlette.

Modern delay units are, of course, digital, and with the power and flexibility of software comes increased possibilities for creating new effects.

<< Previous    1  [2]  3    Next >>