Mono Reverb

Hi, I just started using Ardour last night and I’m super impressed!

I was wondering one thing, however, that I cant seem to figure out.

I want to add reverb to a mono track, which of course it wont let me do, because the track is stereo and I guess Gverb is mono. (One input) and my track has two outputs.

How do I overcome this? Is it a matter of getting a different reverb plugin?

Thanks much!
-T

Connect as:

MONO TRACK > STEREO BUS > MASTER

You would disconnect outputs of the MONO TRACK and connect them to the STEREO BUS and then add your reverb to that bus.

If you leave your MONO TRACK connected also to the MASTER you can fool around with the mix signal to the reverbed STEREO BUS and the dry signal to the MASTER.

Anything is possible and valid, as long as it sounds good.

Hope that explains.

The old-school approach is to create a post-fader send on your mono track, then patch it to the input of a mono bus which has GVerb as a pre-fader plugin. The outputs of the mono track and the GVerb bus go to the master channel. Use the fader on the bus to mix in the desired amount of reverb.

Oh, and be sure to set GVerb to 100% “wet”,

Using this method, the panner on the mono track still determines the apparent position of the channel on your sound stage. The send level and the bus fader determine how “wet” or “dry” the mix is. You can patch sends from multiple tracks to the same bus, if you want those sounds to appear to exist in the same space.

If you don’t want to use a send, you can just patch both of the outputs from the mono track to the input of the GVerb bus.

There are other ways to accomplish this, including the method Joe suggested; but this (send to bus) is what I do 99% of the time.

Don

Great, thanks guys! I’ll give both ideas a whirl.

-T

Hi

I think a mono Reverb is a very overlooked plugin need, I realize the usual rationale is to use one Reverb on everything to simulate a single unified room space but I find many times Reverb is handy to ‘wetten up’ a mono track (ie Vocals, Snare drum or Guitar) within the context of creating a mood within a song.

I’m also guilty of using Leatus Penguin’s solution but with so many mono compressor/dynamics and eq’s available I think it a bit remiss to not have some mono Reverbs and Delays available as well…

The truth is that anything is valid as long as it sounds good, but a real reverb “should” output to stereo (not a must), because after all it’s a simulation of your two ears (even if they are two natural mono devices) hearing reflections coming from different spots in space. So don’t question too much how you output it, you can do by routing to a stereo bus, or two mono buses and hard pan them or even experiment with the panning, like sending the dry signal to one side and the reverb to the other, inserting a stereo splitter plugin, or whatever comes to mind, as long as it works.

And GMaq is right in a way that maybe reverb should be used almost unified, too many different types of reverb in a song can create a certain confusion, and even make things sound a bit “muddy”. Maybe just experiment with different reverbations in vocals.

@GMaq: There was a plan to include a reverb as part of the linuxDSP guitar effects bundle:

http://www.linuxdsp.co.uk/download/lv2/download_guitar_fx/index.html

It would have been more like a spring reverb unit in a guitar amp (but also therefore, mono) - however, regrettably, there have been very few downloads of these (very fine) plugins so not much more development happened. That may change if we can get more people interested in them, along with the addition of more effects. Its worth mentioning that all the guitar effects can of course be used for anything, not just guitar.

Hmm, time for a focus article on linuxdsp… :slight_smile:

I’m with Joe re: “If it sounds good…”. I avoid using reverb on individual tracks, things get awfully messy in the mix, but when I use one on a mono track it’s typically on a vocal track and the plugin is the CAPS Versatile Plate, the mono version.

Edit: Btw, this is merely to say that the CAPS plate is a nice mono reverb. I don’t know if it addresses the OP’s situation.

Best,

dp