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How to maintain clarity of vocals while creating depth with reverb

On vocal tracks, sometimes it doesn’t matter quite how hard you try to set the right amount of reverb, it just doesn’t feel right. Adding in a tiny bit more and the vocals feel washed out, you take a bit off and it sounds too dry. It can seem impossible to find the right balance. When this happens, the perfect weapon can be sidechained reverb.

To do this, we add a compressor after the reverb device on a Return Track, or the “wet” chain inside an

Audio Effect Rack, and use the vocals as the trigger of the sidechain to ‘duck’ the reverb down.

Since you can control this ducking with the parameters of the compressor, this technique can be useful to allow the use of some longer reverb tails to fill out spaces in a mix and create extra depth without the reverb overpowering and washing out the vocals.

For this example, we are going to use this technique inside an Audio Effect Rack that is inserted on the vocal track.

01

Insert Hybrid Reverb onto the vocal track. Group the reverb device into an Audio Effect Rack. Open the Chain List in the rack and rename this chain to “Wet”.

02

Create an additional Chain that you can rename to “Dry”. This chain will have no time-based effects on it; however, you can use any other corrective effect devices on this chain that you would normally put onto the vocals (eg compressors, EQs, etc). If you have inserted these devices already in front of the Effect Rack, then this “Dry” chain can just stay empty.

03

On the “Wet” Chain, make sure you set the Reverb’s Dry/Wet control to 100% Wet to ensure proper separation between the two Chains. You can try experimenting setting up a bit more decay and diffuse than usual since the reverb will be sidechained.

04

Insert a Compressor after the Reverb on the “Wet” Chain. Open the Sidechain section on the Compressor and enable External Sidechain. Now, choose the vocal track as the external source and choose Pre-FX as the external tapping point so no other effects you may have inserted will become part of the sidechain trigger source. Then you can set up the compressor parameters to your taste.

05

To control the balance between the “Wet” and “Dry” Chains inside the Rack, you can either use the Chain Volume controller slides or go to the Chain Selector editor and set up the chains so that you can use the Chain Selector as the Dry/Wet control between the chains. You can also map the Chain Selector to a Macro so you have easy access to it.