Chain order preference. Reverb and Delay

[timbreman]

Still working on this Vst Synth. Got another question.

Because it's not a modular I would like to know what your preferences are for chain order for reverb and delay.

In general do your prefer the sound of.....

Reverb >> Delay

or

Delay >> Reverb

[Dubtek71]

Usually I go with delay then reverb. The other way you are sending the sound of a room through a delay. Which can create some cool efx tho...

[mekohler]

Delay before reverb.

[timbreman]

Good thing I asked.

I usually prefer my reverb before the delay but the other way around seems more logical for a vsti.

[Simonator]

I too would say delay>reverb.

... BUT...

Personally I find delay & reverb on virtual instruments really infuriating, and I know others do too as there was a thread on it a few months ago.

Most people have their own preferred software delays & reverbs (chances are, normally superior quality to the usual standard of the ones tacked onto soft synths)... so having them on the soft synth just makes it more of a chore to demo patches... you have to prat around disabling these to hear what the patch ACTUALLY sounds like.

I'd hazard that you might curry favour with the community by having a button that can be disengaged EXTERNALLY to the patch (ie in some outer 'shell' type affair) to switch off ALL effects indefinitely... so as you flip through patches you have the choice of hearing just the synth, or the synth with some random effects that don't relate to the production.

Whilst I'm on that matter... VOLUME!!!!

I tend to have my sound sources outputting really low levels, using the soft synth volume to 'gain stage', with my track level fader left at 0.0.
It then drives me crazy if I decide to change the patch and this causes the volume to MASSIVELY jump.
... If you could try to make all presets roughly matched in level... AND CRUCIALLY have the master volume level unaffected when you flick through patches it would be a big win in my book.

[timbreman]

Originally Posted by Simonator

I too would say delay>reverb.

... BUT...

Personally I find delay & reverb on virtual instruments really infuriating, and I know others do too as there was a thread on it a few months ago.

Most people have their own preferred software delays & reverbs (chances are, normally superior quality to the usual standard of the ones tacked onto soft synths)... so having them on the soft synth just makes it more of a chore to demo patches... you have to prat around disabling these to hear what the patch ACTUALLY sounds like.

I'd hazard that you might curry favour with the community by having a button that can be disengaged EXTERNALLY to the patch (ie in some outer 'shell' type affair) to switch off ALL effects indefinitely... so as you flip through patches you have the choice of hearing just the synth, or the synth with some random effects that don't relate to the production.

Whilst I'm on that matter... VOLUME!!!!

I tend to have my sound sources outputting really low levels, using the soft synth volume to 'gain stage', with my track level fader left at 0.0.
It then drives me crazy if I decide to change the patch and this causes the volume to MASSIVELY jump.
... If you could try to make all presets roughly matched in level... AND CRUCIALLY have the master volume level unaffected when you flick through patches it would be a big win in my book.

I completely understand where you're coming from about the fx. Sadly however too many people are sold on presets so I do plan on making some presets with fx but we do also have a section on the main tab to turn on/off all the fx quickly.

I will discuss the volume issue with my programmer and see what they have to say. Maybe we can figure out something slick.

[JES]

Delay before reverb usually, but reverb before delay for cool effects. You can also get some interesting modulation happeningnby running reverb on one return, delay on a second (add pitch shifted delay for more fun) and then feeding a little of that into the reverb.

[TacosWhenTwisted]

i'm backwards...i put my reverbs before delay. leads to a bigger sound.

[Californian]

There's no right answer it's completely dependent on the context of the mix.

dfegad

(Besides, reverbs are just reallllllllllllly close together delays, just like the difference between a compressor and a limiter is the ratio...not really a huge shift...)

[Simonator]

Originally Posted by Californian

There's no right answer it's completely dependent on the context of the mix.

You're absolutely right... but Jon is designing a soft synth, and needs to decide delay>reverb or reverb>delay for a fixed routing, so he's just asking what your preference would be forced to pick one.

Of course you can switch this off if it doesn't work in your mix... then add your own processing.

[aeonlux]

Most often, I prefer delays and reverbs in parallel.


cheers,
Ian

[Kramdown]

Reverb is last in the signal chain if you want the most naturalistic sound, but sometimes that's not what's wanted.

I hardly ever use the two together, preferring instead to adjust pre-delay, density, and other parameters in the reverb itself including type if I want delays incorporated into my reverbs.

[timbreman]

Originally Posted by TacosWhenTwisted

i'm backwards...i put my reverbs before delay. leads to a bigger sound.

I agree and do the same thing.

Actually surprised so many ppl like the reverb last.

If I were in a cave and yelled down the corridor the longer echos would supercede the shorter reverberations to my ears. I figured because my ears interpret it this way it would be more natural to have delay last.

Gotta give the ppl what they want though.

[darkhorse]

Really a puzzling issue at times.
I am a guitarist and pedal order is a very much important issue for me as I want the best chain order for the most musically useful tones. I know nothing of keyboard dealings and I do not deal with recording these days.

Seems like either effect in front of the other can really screw up the sound making it unnatural and less musically useful in my understanding of things (which is quite vast, ask my wife).

Looking at reverberation and delay echo in regard to what they are, a millisecond (ms) lag of the original tone or sound. Reverberation effect is a very short ms delay with the reverberation making for the number of repeats. A small room having less "repeats" or reverberation than a large, with a hall or arena having a long throw bounce of many repeats but spacious.

Too much and one losses control of the sound and musical naturalness. Not that the effect cannot be used as a weird or unique sound but not something one can use in a lot of forms. For example, a really huge reverb effect might be useful for long trailing notes but not for more standard chording or fast playing. Same with a delay that is set to near infinite repeat, the less you play the more workable the effect.

We must remember that a ms of delay is like having your speaker 1ft away, the perceived reverberation delay starts becoming an echo repeat at perhaps around 20ms or 20ft(guessing). Naturally a shorter reverberation ms would return to the ear before a longer distant repeat hence the logic of our friend in the prior post, makes sense in that regard. Seems unnatural to perhaps the way we are brainwashed into running pedal chains but a sound logic of the ear "in a cave or cavern". So from that basic idea of naturalness a moderate reverb before a delay would work. Problem error in the logic is that the short reverberation might indeed be heard first but the reverberation of the short will be repeated again in the longer delays which is perhaps unnatural, perhaps a nice mental puzzle in sound physics, does the short reverberation effect in a cave or cavern get repeated in the longer repeating delay trail? If the answer to that is yes, then it would seem reverb before delay used in a moderate setting like a plate would be the most natural sounding effect of all.

If you look at it both ways having either effect before the other can work, but it would seem the greater level of the effect use should be the one placed last. As in, if you want a really deep reverb effect, large and spacious this becomes the larger effect and therefore would work better after the delay. Having perhaps a mild plate like reverb before the delay just might actually work better with the delay taking on the roll of the more dominate effect. The counter argument could probably also be made that the overall reverberation of the cave itself would in effect contain the repeating delays within its totality therefore the reverb after contains the delay as is the more natural methodology of a guitar pedal chain.

So moderate settings of either effect works w quite possible the slight reverb before the delay being a more natural sound all things considered, but the reverb containing the delay is also certainly valid. Sort of goes against the normal way of the thinking of pedal order but it is all in the manner of the intensity of the effects being used. The more intense effect should probably go further last in the chain.

Having a separate reverb and a separate delay pedal or circuit simply creates a logic problem as placing either before the other would work depending on the level of either effect. The inherent problem is perhaps to have one unit to contain and manifest both effects but the design of the circuit has to place it somewhere in relation. Be nice to understand a true sonic analysis of a cavern reverb/echo effect and if the repeating echos contain the reverberation, I am thinking it does.


Pardon my verbosity but it is a working process for me as when I write out an issue like this it helps sort out my notions on the problem as well. After working through this I think I am going to try the reverb before and see how that pans out. Ideally if I could run stereo feeds through a L/R two amp setup I would consider reverb on one loop and delay on another.

Pedal effects positioning always creates a polemic polarity logic problem always confounding the solution as to the more intense effect being after the moderate as someone will say what if I want to tone down the more intense effect. And that brings us to the aggravating axiom of there are no rules in order and you gave to do what works for the tones you want. I always hate that, but it is probably the Occham's Razor logic.

[JRock]

I put the delay last in any chain. Each repeat cycle captures a different phase of whatever modulation is going on.

[darkhorse]

Originally Posted by JRock

I put the delay last in any chain. Each repeat cycle captures a different phase of whatever modulation is going on.

Worth experimenting with, I intend to give it a shot. At worst result I can still just use my reverb and delay separately. Moving the delay also allows me to get a buffer further towards the end of my loop chain. I use my TC units with the buffer circuit toggled.

[watari banzai]

i often use delay to create busier rhythms from otherwise sparse parts--im from the 90s--so i like my delays first

[darkhorse]

Been trying my reverb before the delay and so far seems to work fine still running it through various styles and uses but so far seems to do OK. It is a little different repeating the reverberation but not at all unnatural sounding. I am using a plate might present a problem on long throw hall reverbs. As I mentioned before anything after seems to become the more dominant effect. The delays are more pronounced more a part of the overall sound, had to lay them back in the mix a little more. I am still digging that TC delay really is the best one I have used to date.

[vonsac]

I recently have acquired some new effect units (Eventide Space, Strymon Timeline) that I have been experimenting with different setups, and I have recently come to a pretty neat one.

Originally I had routed both effects to the AUX of my mixer (mackie 1620i, for those who care,) primarily so that I could have the maximum depth of application. This way dry and wet are parallel, and could mix everything to taste without too much signal loss/noise/digital artifacts, as well as stretch the effects over 16 tracks rather than just 2 outputs.

However, upon recording simultaneously to tape as well as DAW, I soon discovered that on this mixer AUX -> FW does not work, therefore only the tape was getting any of the effects, while the digital version remains dry (appropriate in some situations, of course.) So after some trial and error, instead of having the AUX outputs go to the AUX return of the mixer, I started to input them into the mixers actual channel strips. This was actually better in many ways because now I also had 4x more stereo EQ and panning to shape the incoming effects, as well as the best part about this routing: the AUX effect feedback loop.

Adjusting the AUX mix on any of the effects (on their returned channel strips) creates a reciprocal feedback loop, which, at more intense settings will clearly feedback into oblivion, but on lighter settings (less than 50%) you get: dry signal(s), wet signal A, wet signal B, where A & B are both feeding into each other. I thought this was noteworthy, and will certainly have some interesting applications.


NOTE: This only works if your effects units MIX are less than 100%.

[twilightchant]

I've experimented with the two settings and I prefer delay into reverb. For busy keyboard parts I like to use these effects with moderation.

[Dave Peck]

MultiFX should be arranged using internal FX BUSSES to allow flexible combinations of serial/parallel routing with flexible wet/dry control of each FX back into the signal mix as well as forward into the other FX. Many synths that have on board FX (and even some fairly advanced multiFX hardware boxes) make the mistake of only allowing you to arrange FX in series, with a simple wet/dry mix control in each FX block. This routing flaw severely limits the versatility of the synth or FX device.

For example: Let's say you want a chorus, a delay, and a reverb, in that order (so the chorus goes through a delay and that chorus/delay signal goes through a reverb). BUT - what if you only want a small amount of chorus added to the first (dry) signal, and you want each delay repeat to have a much more pronounced chorus effect? You can't. Once you set the wet/dry signal in the chorus module, that same dry/chorus mix will be sent to the other effects in the chain.

The answer - Don't use wet/dry controls in the FX blocks. Instead, arrange the FX like you would on a real hardware console, with mulitple fx busses, and return level knobs and send knobs for each buss ON THOSE RETURNS, like on a console channel strip. You can control how much dry signal goes to each effect, how much chorus comes back into the mix AND - how much chorus goes forward to the other effects, SEPARATELY from how much comes into the main mix. That's how we do it with a hardware mixing console and hardware effects boxes and there is no reason to simplify the routing in a virtual system and lose all that versatility.

[offki]

Delay / verb. Doing it the other way causes cancer and hair loss.

Sent from my E15i using Gearslutz.com App

[duggabax]

It can be cool to feed a very short, impulsive sound with very short decay and no release into a dense reverb and use that as the main tone, rather than a complement to it. I like to feed that into a delay that feeds back into itself...things can get very thick and dubby...hazy and whispery. Love it. One of these days I'll buy myself a real tape delay and it will be wondrous...

[darkhorse]

Originally Posted by offki

Delay / verb. Doing it the other way causes cancer and hair loss.

Sent from my E15i using Gearslutz.com App

Oh that explains it, what about an erection for longer than 4 hours?

[boon]

why not allow a non fixed signal path for the FX section? a little button that swaps them??? can't be that hard can it? (says the guy who knows nothing about coding a plug in)

[timbreman]

Originally Posted by darkhorse

Oh that explains it, what about an erection for longer than 4 hours?

That would be from those pills you keep taking. Call your doctor immediately! :P

[offki]

Originally Posted by darkhorse

Oh that explains it, what about an erection for longer than 4 hours?

You need to use Zebra and Ohmicide then Aether to attain that.

[sleepwalker]

Originally Posted by timbreman

I completely understand where you're coming from about the fx. Sadly however too many people are sold on presets so I do plan on making some presets with fx but we do also have a section on the main tab to turn on/off all the fx quickly.

I will discuss the volume issue with my programmer and see what they have to say. Maybe we can figure out something slick.

Ableton Live accommodates this workflow elegantly. Presets can include any or all parts of a signal chain.