Depth is often times created by a little space. Like a chamber, or a medium to large room. To me digital reverbs, particulary within PT don't add depth. Is your recording room small?

Mixerman

Originally posted by planet red:
I'm getting to where I'm starting to get comfortable with how all my invidual sounds sound in my mix, but for some reason I cant get a lot of depth out of the individual instruments. Is it because I dont have any high end mic pre's (YET!) and im mixing all in the box within PTLE, or is there anything I can do to add depth. I normally use delays and pan stuff around, but it SOUNDS like I use delays and panning, it doesnt FEEL deeper and thicker. I'm having a hard time describing what's wrong but it comes down to my mixes sounding good, but not feeling good. Suggestions are greatly appreciated.
-Andreas

Mixerman's right. Depth comes at the tracking time, not the added FX. But if you're NOTICING your FX, then back off of them. I'm a firm believer that if you hear reverb, other than a direct FX you want to hear, you've got too much. In some cases there's not much you can do about it. A vocal that goes from quiet to extremely loud will have more 'verb on the louder part at any given reverb setting, so unless you're going to ride reverb gains, it's what you get. But you could do some things like mic a guitar amp with two mics, one close and one a few feet away. Same thing with drums. Close miking is fine, but remember to throw up an ambient mic or two.

On the tracks you already have, say a guitar, you could re-amp it to get a little larger sound, fooling with mic placement/choices and mix the two for THE sound.

But mostly I think the DEPTH of a recording comes at the tracking stage moreso than at the mixing stage. Even small rooms can appear to have a bit more depth to them than you'd expect, depending on just how you can mic it.

However, having both parts with some depth and in your face parts can cause the perception of an even larger space due to the dichotomy.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of digital reverb, it just seems to sound fake. I've been afraid to try too much ambient micing because of phase, but I guess I'll start trying. For some reason though everything I mix sounds dry and one dimensional, but when I try adding effects it just sounds like effects and doesnt add space. I just really want a large in your face sound that feels deep. Right now it sounds like it came out of a computer.

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That one went into some depth on the subject. Hope it helps.

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