Invisible Reverb

Invisible Reverb 08 Dec 2016 Blending overdubbed vocals with live ensembles using Eventides 2016 Stereo Room

Words: Mike Senior

One of the effects Eventides new 2016 Stereo Room is particularly good at is something I call invisible reverb'. By this I mean a stereo ambience treatment that can glue a separately overdubbed part into a live ensemble recording, giving the impression that everything was recorded at the same time in such a surreptitious way that it avoids sounding like youve added anything artificial at mixdown. This kind of patch is so useful that Id like to explain in detail how you can create it in 2016 Stereo Room, as well as demonstrating arguably its most common application: blending an overdubbed lead vocal with a live band take (check out the audio examples at the bottom of this page).

An Eventide 2016 Stereo Room patch for generating invisible vocal reverb.

The first important aspect of the effect is that its based primarily around simulated Early Reflections and has a very short decay tail, so straight away you can pull the plugins Position and Decay (RT60) controls to their minimum values. I also like to keep the Predelay under about 10ms, which minimises the danger that the reverb will give away its presence by flamming on transients. This will also pull the dry sound subtly backwards so that it sits more convincing amongst the other instruments of the ensemble. In rare cases you may find that the reverb then appears to adversely affect the timbre of the dry sound itself, on account of comb-filtering caused by the initial Early Reflections. If this happens, small adjustments to the Predelay setting can finesse this into a more appealing form. (In practice, the reverb level used in an invisible reverb scenario is so low that comb-filtering side-effects like these rarely constitute a major concern for me.)

The last bit of setup to do is dial in a fairly high Diffusion (try 80% as a starting point) and reset both the High and Low EQ Gain controls to 0dB. Once thats sorted, try adding some of the reverb to the track you want to glue. How much? Well, a good rule of thumb is that you should only really notice it when you switch it off! As such, its useful to keep toggling the reverb returns Mute button while youre deciding on the right effect level.

If you find you cant get enough mix cohesion without the 2016 Stereo Rooms effect become unacceptably audible, however, never fear; theres more you can do to disguise it. Firstly, try experimenting with the Diffusion knob, because this can improve the match between the plug-ins simulated acoustic signature and that of the real-world space the rest of the ensemble were recorded in. The EQ controls frequently play a crucial role here too, because they let you focus the synthesised ambience into less noticeable spectral areas. So, for instance, with vocals its often sensible to pull back both EQ Gain controls so that the effect is more prevalent in the midrange, a frequency region where the effect more easily hides behind the vocal itself.

Heres an acoustic jazz production where the band have all been recorded in the same room, and therefore have a natural acoustic cohesion -- theres no artificial reverb in the mix at all, its all coming through the mics. The lead vocal, on the other hand, was overdubbed, so sounds like its sitting on top of the mix, rather than properly within the ensemble.

For this example, Ive added invisible reverb to the vocal part using Eventides 2016 Stereo Room patch, as shown in the screenshot. Notice how the singer now blends much better with the backing instruments, so that they all form a coherent ensemble, but without the reverb drawing attention to itself as an added effect.

So you can hear more clearly how the plug-in parameters have shaped the sound of the effect, heres the reverb effect soloed, without the dry source sound.

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