I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for getting a cleaner mix when you use a lot of reverb and delay in your music.

It's part of my style and I don't want to have to compromise it all that much by cutting down the reverb/delay tails or making the sounds more dry, but then a lot of people tend to say that if you use to much reverb the mix will start to get muddy and I see what they mean.

Any advice?

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for getting a cleaner mix when you use a lot of reverb and delay in your music.

It's part of my style and I don't want to have to compromise it all that much by cutting down the reverb/delay tails or making the sounds more dry, but then a lot of people tend to say that if you use to much reverb the mix will start to get muddy and I see what they mean.

Any advice?

Bounce to audio every instrument with reverb and/or automate the delay/reverb volume. So you'll cut it when you don't need it, and put it back on when you need it.

Quote from: BorderCity on January 09, 2016, 01:27:52 pm

I was just wondering if anyone had any tips for getting a cleaner mix when you use a lot of reverb and delay in your music.

It's part of my style and I don't want to have to compromise it all that much by cutting down the reverb/delay tails or making the sounds more dry, but then a lot of people tend to say that if you use to much reverb the mix will start to get muddy and I see what they mean.

Any advice?

Bounce to audio every instrument with reverb and/or automate the delay/reverb volume. So you'll cut it when you don't need it, and put it back on when you need it.

I've not tried automating the reverb/delay, i'll give that a go. Thanks

EQ/compression...

run an EQ after your reverb so you can see what frequencies the reverb/delay is filling up

running a compressor after the reverb will help control is a bit too

Awesome, i've never tried that either; thanks

Seven Lions explained on a video once, that he bounced all the time his Supersaw and cut the tail of it. So it's super wet in the middle, but when the supersaws stops, it's dry again and there's no left over.

this guy. I use this technique and it's great especially if you're going for very dynamic switches in songs much like Seven Lions or Xilent or really any melodic dub producer. I really bounce everything to audio for final mixing/mastering. Just super helpful visually.

I listened to some tracks on your SoundCloud with an X-Y Plot & Phase Analysis onscreen... have you considered running a parallel-reverb channel and doing a separate MB-EQ / MB-Comp / MB-Limit treatment on it? I'd even go as far as to audition a third reverb channel, with a mid/side split EQ ... and/or a widener plugin, w/ a channel delayed a few ms (for a little psycho-acoustic separation, not flange). In short, if the suggestion to EQ & Compress (from JamesSweeneyy) is new, separate the reverb and go crazy.

In general, in using reverb... having the same type of reverb on a group of elements is going to place them an identical environment, so with multiple groups, have an organization in mind of what voices are placed where in which environment (and the track's overall environment). It sounds like you're doing that to some degree. Maybe go further with organizing and isolating the stereo position of the reverb for groups of instruments. On the opposite end of that idea, with a general reverb engine, the wet sound is going to inherit most of the stereo position of the dry sound... so working to isolate and place instruments in the stereo field may allow the reverb of each instrument (or group) to be more apparent.

Also, I noticed a lot of multi-tap delays on arpeggiators frolicking around in the stereo field, where the 16th note run is in one spot, then the delay taps are R-L or L-R... have you experimented with placing each note of the arpeggiator in the stereo field?