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Just Currious do any of you ME's every add a small amount of verb to a track when mastering to soften up a song/add some ambience?

Justin

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Codemonkey Thu, 05/22/2008 - 21:33

You said that, my first thought...

"I've been here, before, a few times, and I'm quite, aware, we're dying, and your hands, they shake, the goodbyes, and I'll take you back if you'll have me...so here I am, I'm trying, so here I am, are you ready? Come on let me hold you, touch you, feel you, always..."
(Always - Blink 182)

multoc Thu, 05/22/2008 - 22:13

That would be negatory...you would never see a mastering engineer adding destructive effects to a mixdown. Unless say an artist wants that particular part of the song to go into a flange (there's a creed song that did that and was annoying), but you would most likely add that to your automation in the master channel strip

so no, don't add verb, i don't know where this idea came from, but its a bad one

anonymous Fri, 05/23/2008 - 05:34

Sorry, I am not a mastering engineer, so I probably shouldn't chime in, BUT.....

10-15 years ago it was somewhat common to add a Little bit of reverb at the mastering stage to "glue" a mix together.
This was in the days before everyone was a mastering engineer and there was a million opinions on the internet on how to do it. Please don't ask me for names or examples 'cause I don't wan't to have to go through years of Mix and EQ magazines to find them, but I do remember reading it.

I think this falls under a taste issue and not correct or incorrect procedure.

MarkG

anonymous Fri, 05/23/2008 - 09:04

Well, I decided to do a little research, and found that reverb is used very little by mastering houses currently.

When it was used, it was mostly for fixing something, not for every job.
I think most of the people here have mixes that need "fixing", so a little reverb at mastering might not be a bad idea.

MarkG

hueseph Fri, 05/23/2008 - 09:14

Please! Stop! At least three qualified engineers and at least one honest to goodness mastering engineer have already chimed in. Look up. These aren't your average home studio hacks like myself. These people actually do this for a living(and do better than most of us at our day jobs). Now if we can't trust the voice of experience, we're just deluding ourselves aren't we? Reverb is best left for the mixing stage.

bent Fri, 05/23/2008 - 20:40

I have to disagree...

Surprise!

I recorded a band back in '95 in a local studio - I've continued to record this band in a few different incarnations since - and on this (the second recording I ever did with them, and the only one we ever spent a significant amount of money on)... The lead dude now owns my old studio... Where was I?

Oh, I recorded this band in '95 in a local studio.
The recording is as flat and dead as you could ever imagine.

I added verb to the songs.
I added an assload of EQ to each channel...
Each and every one of the songs....

In my opinion (and the remaining band members'...) the newer masters (which themselves are about 8 years old) with verb on the mixes sounds a thousand times better than the original DAT could ever hope to.