JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques General Technical Forum Reverb on voice????

I was told that if you put reverb on the voice of a recording that the voice could be lost when played on AM radio,is this true?

Put too much reverb on, and they simply won't play it! LOL

There are a few problems and they all have to deal with being "in phase". Most modern reverbs are stereo, when you move these to mono, where am radio lives, a vibration on one side can "line up and cancel out" a vibration on the other side. This is called "phase cancellation".

Phase cancellation is so powerful that the Bose corporation uses this principal in their aviation earphones. The headphone captures the sound of the plane engines, then it analyzes and removes the sound using phase cancellation. A freind of mine said they are so effective, when he first listened with these headphones as the cancellation kicked in, he thought the engine had quit!

A simple way to test for stereo-mono phase cancellation: most studio headphone sets can be switched to mono, switch back and forth and hear if any thing loses volume.

Other sounds get lost because of the difference in size and number of speakers between the studio monitors and the average automobile speakers, listen on small cheap speakers and hear if anything gets lost. The reverb may be set in the frequency most or least available to these small speakers...more loss. And if that's not enough, the broadcast frequency may not match up with the mixes assets, or the broadcaster may somehow change the sound to their "norms", further messing with the mix

The key is, listen on a lot of different speakers and find out if your mix is working. Some mixes can be improved by simply pressing a phase reverse switch, some need more work.

------------------
Mike Dunbar Music

[This message has been edited by Mike Dunbar (edited 11-04-2002).]

AM radio has less high frequencies, which might result in the vocal not "cutting through" the reverb as well. In general, though, if you don't overdo the use of reverb in your mixes, you'll be fine.


------------------
Later,

Pat

Yes, and audio engineers for television use phase cancellation to cut crowd noise during televised speeches etc. You mic the crowd with two identical mics, one wired out of phase. Crowd noise drops right out.

The famous Thompson Vocal Eliminator, which magically clips the lead vocal right out of recordings, works on the same principal.

Thank you guys for the info.I guess I won't be able to use reverb to cover up the lack of quality in my voice.LOL

I use to use a lot of reverb on my voice for the same reason; I thought it made me sound better. A few people with good ears for mixes made me aware that I was over doing it. I use very little now, and I'm use to the way I sound. When I listen to older recordings, I wonder why I thought I ever needed it.

Hope my rambling makes sense.
Walter Farmer

Thanks Farmboy,I guess I am self-conscious when it comes to my voice,I compare myself to the great voices out there and realize I fall far short, but then I look at others that don't have great voices and are still making it,then I don't feel so bad.I guess beauty is in the ear of the listener,haha.

ECA333,
A little reverb is ok....and as for the quality of your voice...beauty is in the ears of the listener. We seldom like the sound of our own voice but if you listen to it long enough like Farmboy suggests, guess what, you end up liking it. I know I don't sound like Mama Cass Elliot ( although I have been told that who my voice most sounds like) darned if i could hear it, but anyways, I like my voice and I have gotten used to it. I ,like, Farmboy listen to older recordings and realize just how far I have come and how long it has taken me to get here...but I will never give up...

Thank you Melissa,I need all the encouragement I can get.I never wanted to be a singer,just a songwriter,but if you can sing and record them yourself it sure speeds up the process of getting them out there. Looking for others to record what you write is a slow and discouraging task.Thanks again for your friendly advice.Good luck with your career.

I think of reverb as space. A lot of modern mixes use stereo imaging, rather than reverb, to create the feeling of space. A good mix can make you feel like you are in a larger or smaller space than you are in (with headphones in a closet you can close your eyes and feel like you are on a moutain top.)

Generally, I like to make the voice sound like it is closest to the listener but is loud enough to create some kind of echo or reverberation in the space I have chosen. You can choose to let it be the space the listener is actually in by keeping it fairly "dry" and let it reverberate in the listener's real space. Stereo imaging, in this case, makes the speakers sound like they are closer together or further apart, panning with stereo imaging puts the sound either side or somewhere in between.



------------------
Mike Dunbar Music

ECA333,
I will keep encouraging you. We are in this all together and without eachothers encouraging words and support, some of us wouldn't get as far as we have gotten. I have not heard your voice, but I bet its far better than you think. Keep up the good work, it will payoff.

Musical Regards,
Melissa

Ahhh..reverb...the downfall of the 80s rock scene...lol

Anyway, a little reverb is a good thing, a lot is a horror....but using the RIGHT reverb is important too.

Reverb simulates a room with a specific size and 'echo'....you can simulate any room... from a stadium, to a cathedral, to ...whatever you want....

There are many many companies that make reverb units both digital plug-ins and outboard gear and they all have varying degrees of quality

In my studio experience, a good reverb makes a huge difference in the transparency of the final mix...how defined the sound is.

A bad reverb in the end will only muddy up a good tune.

Thanks Christine,that's what my engineer said too.A little is good,too much is bad, something like sweets I guess.Ha ha

Hello ECA,
I've heard of people using a short mono delay to thickin up the vocals, something like 10 to 20 miliseconds. as with anything using moderation it might be usefull, not as a replacement for reverb though. might work? trust your ears....... kenny holcomb

You need to ask people you trust about your voice. Ask quite a few. If it sounds that bad to others all the digital "tricks" in the book won't help.

If that is the case, you need to find a singer. If a local JPF chapter or other songwriting group is available, you may want to join that and by networking in the chapter find yourself a singer who is looking for songs. You might want to check at college Music Departments or at music stores and post some flyers on the bulletin boards.

Cher doesn't like how she sounds but it doesn't stop her from making a living at singing.

There are times when my own voice makes me cringe, but I am only focusing on the bad parts and most of the time others either don't notice what I notice or they weren't bothered by it.

Anyway, good luck to you. I feel and completely understand your pain.

JeanB

Thank you all for your help.We are getting down to putting the final touches on the CD and I must say I don't sound too bad,I'm no Tom Jones and I won't set the world on fire but I am 90-95% happy with how it turned out. Even my wife said she was surprised how good I sound.Praise the Lord.

Thought we should move this up for folks. = )

Here is a better solution than reverb which tends to muddy the sound and place the vocal back in the mix. Use delay instead. It gives a similar effect but like using flat wound strings on a guitar or bass provides better string separation and clarity by removing some of the undesirable over and undertones. Try these guidelines. You want the delay to be in the same tempo/bpm range as the vocal. Get a calculator. Punch in 60,000. Now divide that by the beats per minute/bpm of the music. That will give you the value of a quarter note. It can sound nice as a single slap back delay and enhance the vocal but if you don't keep the dry signal high and the wet signal correspondingly low it can be way to much. If you divide that number by two it become eighth notes. Divide in two again and you have 16ths. This is the range I find works best generally but each range depends qualitatively on the relation between the dry and wet settings. Anyway, the delay enhances the voice much like reverb but everything sounds crisper and clearer. The point is that everything is totally in sync with the bpm of the music and vocal so it has no random elements involved. You can also experiment with a short delay and add a slightly longer delay for good effect. It's all in the ears though so in the final analysis, experiment. You'll have fun with a new adventure as well.

Having used a variety of desks an fx processors there is no simple answer as to what is best. I agree too much is bad and too little can sound dry. As every voice is different and so is every processor it is best to experiment try different settings parameters and fx volumes then REMEMBER the settings that you like. "Experimentation causes discovery and invention"

Wow,
Back to the original questuon. Will the voice be lost if reverb is used on the voice when being played on AM Radio? Not unless it isn't on the recording to begin with. Whatever is on the record/CD will play as recorded. If I remember correctly the Bandwith of an AM channel is 10KC. They probably use about 6KC of it. If you have ever listened to a good AM Radio Station it sounds just as good as FM.

The basic differences between AM and FM are the type of modulation used. As the signal gets louder on an AM Station the farther it will reach in distance. At least to the limits of the watts of the station. At one time 500,000 watt stations were in existance. Later that was reduced to 50,000 watts. The Station in Del Rio, Texas, can't remember the call sign, was reputed to have been up to 650,000 watts.

FM of which has better sound quality only has a limited range of 50 or so miles. As the frequencys change on a recording the frequency of the signal changes. FM is usually limited to 15K of the bandwith to prevent overlapping with another station close to that frequency.

With tape recorders you could send a portion of the sound from the playback head back to the recording circuts and get a delay effect of which was used from time to time on various recordings.
I don't know if that is possible with hard drive recorders or not.

I have used sequencing programs on occasion to fight the sound loss with the vocals.
I get that problem sometimes just with an uploaded song.
I can only imagine what a radio would do.

All I can do is try to plan ahead and estimate how loud an overdub should be in a mix and check the white noise in a recording.
A stations signal would probably pick up everything.
I record by unconventional means, but have kicked up a couple that were meant for radio.

Pretty interesting hearing the change in someones recording on a radio.

Matt