In this article Steve DeMott shows how using a delay feeding into a reverb gives a classic sound you might recognise and how it’s different from using a reverb’s predelay

The Backstory

I had the honor of hanging out with William Wittman one afternoon at my studio as we did some promo shoots for a couple different plugin manufacturers. Obviously, we talked shop, and I was treated to some great stories (my stories are fewer, and decidedly less impressive).

One of the topics we discussed was reverb, since some of the plugins we were doing the promotional videos for were reverb plugins. In that discussion William hit me with this tidbit: he always feeds his reverb from a mono delay (source -> mono delay AUX -> reverb AUX). He was explaining that, initially, reverbs were fed off the tape decks, which introduced delay, and he kept doing it as a matter of course. Of course I asked why he didn’t just use a pre-delay setting on the reverb, but he explained that the delay was a different sound than the typical pre-delay would yield. The added bonus is that you have the option to also include the delay in the mix, or only have it feed the reverb.

Of course, I tried this technique the very next day on a mix I was starting, and I immediately exclaimed, “That’s the sound!” I instantly knew I had heard this countless times on albums, and there it was in one of my mixes.

The Setup

Going on what I had learned, and how I understood what William was doing, I used 3 tracks to make this work for me. Track #1 is your source, to which you want to add reverb. Track #2 is a mono delay aux, and track #3 is your reverb aux, with your reverb plugin of choice. I had these all feeding my “Returns” bus, because it’s just how I work. It isn’t necessary to have them coming back to a separate bus for this technique to work They could feed your vocal bus, or go right out of your master 2-bus.

You start by inserting a send on your source (in my case, the lead vocal) to the mono delay aux. From the mono delay, you want to send pre-fader to the reverb aux. By making this send pre-fader you can adjust the amount of delay that gets into your mix without altering the send to the reverb. Start with the fader all the way down so you just get reverb.

Here is an image of the routing setup:

Notice the mono delay aux fader is all the way down, and the send from that aux to the reverb is pre-fader, and set to unity.

Because the delay is on an aux bus, set the mix to 100% so there is only delayed signal, and no dry signal heading to the reverb. I set the feedback very low, about 6%. I didn’t want to get a series of echoes, but I found I liked at least one repeat. The delay time was set to about 2.5 times the song’s BPM. There was so much space in the vocals, I found I was able to push that out, and it felt good there. Obviously, you’ll want to adjust your delay time to suit your source. I also dialled in a touch of tape saturation on the delay, just for fun.

For reverb I’m basically using the Stone Chamber preset in Seventh Heaven. The only change I made was to add a rolloff at around 90Hz, and to remove the pre-delay.

Audio Examples

So, let’s take a listen to this, and compare it to a typical reverb send, with and without a pre-delay.

What I’m Hearing

To me, the delayed reverb keeps the reverb at bay better than the pre-delay. It feels less “messy”. It also makes the reverb a little less up front, but still very much “there”. Especially when you start to add more mix elements. As I said at the start of this article, the first time I tried this I instantly recognized the sound. It felt familiar.

Try it out on your next mix, and let me know how you like it.