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Reverb Type ID

Plate, hall, room, or spring?

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Reverb Type ID

Plate, hall, room, or spring?

6 rounds, about two minutes. Headphones help. Nothing is saved until you choose to.

What you are training

Reverb types are not interchangeable, and choosing by preset name is how a vocal ends up sounding like it was recorded in a car park. A plate is dense and bright and sits behind a vocal without pushing it back; a hall is long and diffuse and belongs on a string pad; a room is short and tells the ear where the instrument is; a spring twangs and is a sound of its own. Once you can hear the type, you can choose it on purpose and set the pre-delay to keep the source forward. This drill applies one of the four to a dry phrase and asks you to name it. Six rounds cover each type more than once, and the answer explains what gave it away: the early reflections, the density of the tail, the brightness of the decay.

After this drill, the plan: The daily plan drills plate versus room on vocals first, because that choice decides whether a vocal sits in the track or floats above it.

The concepts behind this drill

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