Reverb for Drums

[Nitsuj]

Hi guys, what are the common methods that you employ to make drums sound like they belong in a room whilst retaining punchiness?

With reverb mix at 100%, do you apply

i) a send insert for entire drum buss,

ii) send insert for Snare buss alone,

or

iii) dial in individual send levels for every drum including hats, overheads and ambience?


Much appreciated.

 

[Ermz]

Individual levels for each element of the kit.

 

[Sinister Mephisto]

Individual levels for each element of the kit.

Same here.

 

[Nitsuj]

Individual levels for each element of the kit.

cheers mate.

 

[Unavailable]

Agreed, and I usually only use verb on the toms and snare.

 

[Nitsuj]

Agreed, and I usually only use verb on the toms and snare.

Would adding reverb to the kick be considered a no no?

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, I'd say so, except in really open, slow parts

 

[Ermz]

You normally get enough kick ambiance from the room mics and overheads. If you're doing a slow, phat, ballad or something you could try blending a sub-kick and external kick mic for added weight. I'd use verb on kick as a last resort.

 

[smy1]

Or you could put a long pre-delay on the Kick-verb ...

Different ways to skin a cat, as always!

 

[everybody's x]

start with predelay , mess with it until the transients poke through. I usually end up somewhere around 30-40ms
shelf the bottom off the verb to eliminate mud, sometimes you might want shelf the top to tone down the cymbals.

I usually have a bit on the drum buss and on the snare and toms

Parallel compression sometimes helps get you there without reverb

 

[Zack Uidl]

This what I have been doing

1-Reverb on just snare
2-Reverb on toms
3-Bus with Cymbals, Toms, and Snare (I only send a little signal from the snare and toms. Mainly for OH)
4-Slight reverb on entire kit (very slight)

 

[jason poulin]

I'm a big send/return fan for drums.


I usually setup 4 stereo rooms for this purpose with the Kurzweil KSP-8. I send in mono and come back in stereo to the console.


Maybe one short room, a gated rev, a real ambience studio room and then a long room for tails.


I'll set my return fader to 0 and adjust the send on each individual drum for the right amount of reverb.

This always works best for me and it can spread out to many tracks at one time.

Then, it's a blend of what I need from the KSP-8 to compliment each track.

Hope this helps.