Cool Reverb Trick, Bro!

Let's go right to the audio examples, because they're worth a thousand words.

The problem: You want a big, lush reverb on drums. But that overpowers the drums, and turns them into a reverby mess like this.

https://blog.presonus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Mixdown-without-XTrem.mp3 So sadly, you turn down the reverb, and give up your dream. But wait! Here's the solution.

https://blog.presonus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Mixdown-with-XTrem.mp3 We haven't changed the reverb settings at all, so there's still plenty of reverb. But now it sounds tight, instead of like a reverby mess. The secret is creating a bus, and inserting X-Trem before the reverb (fig. 1).

Figure 1: Setup for cool reverb drums.

You can ignore the Pro EQ, it's there only because I usually insert a low-frequency rolloff prior to drum reverb (this prevents the kick drum from misbehaving). Fig. 2 shows the X-Trem settings. Make sure X-Trem and the drums are synced to the tempo.

Figure 2: The X-Trem is using sine wave modulation, set for 1/4 note sync. 1/8 note sync can also work well for faster tempos, and 1/4 for slower tempos.

If you have other tracks feeding the Reverb bus, you might not want them subjected to the X-Trem (or you might). If not, then see fig. 3.

Figure 3: How to apply this effect only to drums, when you want other tracks to feed the reverb bus.

Use a pre-fader send from the drums to a bus, insert the X-Trem in that bus and turn down its fader, then create a pre-fader send from the X-Trem bus to the Reverb bus. Now you can feed other tracks directly into the Reverb bus.

Cool reverb trick, eh?

LINK:	https://blog.presonus.com/index.php/2022/01/28/cool-reverb-trick-bro/...
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