What Is Reverb? The Six Types and How to Use Them in a Mix

A reverb is the wash of reflections you hear after a sound stops, as it bounces off walls, floors and ceilings and slowly dies away. A reverb plugin recreates that effect, so a dry recording sounds like it was played in a small room, a concert hall or a space that could never physically exist.

Every vocal, snare and synth you hear on a finished record has some kind of space around it, even if you can't pick it out. Knowing which type of reverb to reach for, and which few settings matter, is most of the skill.

How does reverb work?

Clap once in a stairwell and three things reach your ears. First comes the direct sound, straight from your hands. Then the early reflections, the first distinct bounces off the nearest surfaces. Last comes the late reverb or tail: so many reflections arriving so close together that they merge into one decaying wash.

Your brain reads all three without trying. The timing of the early reflections tells you how big the space is and how far away the source sits. The tail tells you what the surfaces are made of. Tile and concrete reflect high frequencies and ring for a long time. Carpet, curtains and people soak up the top end and kill the tail quickly.

Engineers describe tail length as RT60: the time it takes the reverb to fall 60 dB below its starting level. On a plugin, that's the Decay or Time control.

Which reverb settings actually matter?

Reverb plugins can look intimidating, but nearly all of them share the same core controls. Learn these and you can drive any reverb.

• Decay (time): how long the tail lasts. Short decays (under a second) add space without blur. Long decays (three seconds and up) push a sound into the background.
• Pre-delay: the gap before the reverb starts. 20 to 40 ms keeps a vocal's consonants clear of the wash, so the singer stays up front while the space sits behind.
• Size: the apparent size of the space. It mostly changes the spacing of the early reflections and how quickly the tail builds.
• Damping: how fast the high frequencies die compared with the lows. More damping sounds darker and further away, like a room full of soft furnishings.
• Low cut: removes low end from the reverb only. On vocals, cutting the reverb below 200 to 300 Hz stops it from clouding the bass and kick.
• Mix (wet/dry): the balance of dry and reverb signal. On a send, set it to 100% wet and control the amount with the send level.
• Modulation: slow pitch movement inside the tail. A little smooths out metallic ringing; a lot gives a chorused, dreamy tail.

What are the different types of reverb?

Reverb types are named after the spaces and hardware they imitate. Each has a character that suits some sources better than others.

Room reverb

A room reverb models a small to medium space: a live room, a bedroom, a garage. The early reflections arrive fast and the tail is short, often under a second. Rooms make a close-miked, dead-sounding recording feel like it was played by real people in a real space. Use them on drums and acoustic instruments when you want depth without obvious reverb.

Hall reverb

Halls imitate concert halls and large venues. The reflections take longer to arrive and the tail is long and smooth, usually two seconds or more. A hall pushes things back and glues sustained parts together. It's lovely on strings and slow vocals and too much for anything busy, where the tails stack up into a blur.

Plate reverb

Before digital reverb, studios built plates: a large, thin steel sheet suspended in a frame, with a driver to vibrate it and pickups to capture the result. A plate has no walls, so there are no distinct early reflections, just an instant, dense, bright wash. That's why it became the default for vocals and snares. It adds sheen and sustain without suggesting a particular room.

Listen to the example below. Lumen's Vocal Plate preset uses a 1.6-second decay, 35 ms of pre-delay and a 250 Hz low cut. The voice stays clear at the front while a smooth, bright tail fills in behind it.

Spring reverb

A spring reverb sends the signal through one or more metal springs in a small tank, the same kind built into many guitar amps. It sounds twangy and a little unstable, with a distinctive drip on transients. Springs are a character effect. They are great on surf guitar, dub snares and organ, and rarely the right call when you want a natural space.

Convolution reverb

Convolution reverb uses an impulse response, a recording of how a real space or device responds to a short burst of sound. The plugin applies that response to your audio, so you hear your track in that exact cathedral, car interior or vintage hardware unit. It's the most realistic option, but you can only reshape a captured space so far, and it tends to use more CPU than an algorithmic reverb.

Shimmer reverb

A shimmer reverb puts a pitch shifter inside the reverb's feedback loop. Each time the sound recirculates, it moves up in pitch, usually by an octave, so the tail rises and sparkles. Feed it a few chords and you get a pad that seems to float above the track.

In the example below, Lumen's Heaven Shimmer preset combines a 9-second decay with the shimmer stage set an octave up. Play a single note and listen to the upper octave bloom out of the tail a moment later.

Algorithmic vs convolution reverb

Every type above except convolution is usually built as an algorithmic reverb: a network of delay lines and filters that generates reflections mathematically. Algorithmic reverbs are flexible. You can stretch the decay to 20 seconds, modulate the tail or add shimmer, and nothing about that has to be physically possible. Lumen is algorithmic, built on an eight-line feedback delay network.

Convolution gives you realism and specific spaces. Algorithmic gives you control and character. Most engineers use both: a convolution room for realistic depth, an algorithmic plate or hall for the obvious, musical reverb.

How to use reverb in a mix

1. Put it on a send. Create a return track, load the reverb at 100% wet and send instruments to it. Shared reverbs make parts sound like they were played in the same place.
2. Cut the lows and tame the highs. A low cut on the reverb is the fastest way to clean up a muddy mix. Pull some top end out too if the tail sounds splashy.
3. Use pre-delay on vocals. It separates the dry voice from the tail, so you can use more reverb before the words get lost.
4. Match decay to tempo. Fast songs want shorter tails. If the tail from one snare hit is still ringing at the next, it's probably too long.
5. Automate throws. Instead of a constant wash, push the send up on the last word of a phrase and pull it back down after.

One more trick from dance music: put a tempo-synced volume ducker on the reverb return so the tail dips on every beat and swells back between them. The free Pump plugin does that without any routing, and a sidechain compressor keyed from the kick does the same job with a little more setup.

Delay or reverb first?

If you run both on the same send chain, delay into reverb is the more common choice. The echoes get reverberated, so they sit in the same space as everything else and fade naturally. Reverb into delay echoes the entire wash, which gets washy quickly but can be a great special effect on a single throw. Neither is wrong; it's a sound choice, so try both and listen.

Common reverb mistakes

• Judging reverb in solo. It always sounds right on its own. Set levels with the full mix playing, then pull the send back a little.
• Full-range reverb on everything. Low-end reverb builds up across tracks into a cloudy mix. Low cut every return.
• Too many different spaces. Five reverbs with five characters make a mix sound scattered. Two or three shared returns are usually plenty.
• Forgetting the vocal EQ. Reverb exaggerates harshness and sibilance. Fix those on the dry vocal first; our vocal EQ guide shows where they live.

If you want to hear more reverbs before spending anything, start with our list of the best free reverb plugins. Every type in this article shows up there.