Insert or auxiliary reverb
Examples of both insert and auxiliary reverb treatments have been used in our walk-throughs but it’s worth shining a more focused light on this topic; it’s a crucial one in any discussion about glueing mixes together. We all know that there are two ways of adding reverberation to a sound within your mix. First, you can add your effect to the insert channel of a sound and adjust its parameters. The advantage here is a dedicated, bespoke spatial treatment entirely contoured to the ‘needs’ of that one sound. Alternatively, you can set up a reverb effect on an auxiliary track. The advantage of this approach is that many sounds can ‘feed into’ that same space, creating a single, shared acoustic from which many sounds can benefit.
So which is the better approach, if you’re trying to ‘glue’ your mix together? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, as each mix is different, as are the acoustic properties of each sound you work with. However, it is worth considering this; if you go and hear a solo violinist playing in a concert hall, the sound which reaches your ears isn’t a dry sound plus an entirely reverberant ‘second’ signal. The space is interacting with the source sound from the moment the room begins to vibrate in sympathy with the sound bouncing from its floor, walls and ceiling. In this context, ‘live sound’ is always a balance between the instruments playing and the space in which they’re played. Because adding an insert reverb onto a channel when a mix has already started often has implications for the volume level of that part (it will almost always get quieter), it’s usually more time-efficient to set up an auxiliary and add effects that way. But consider whether you want to ‘set a sound back’ into a reverberant space or create a space ‘on top’ of a dry sound. The answer to that – in the context of your mix – should help you decide whether to use insert or auxiliary effects. We’ve devoted one of our videos to this topic, so you can compare and contrast the two approaches.