A lot of stuff I like listening to has hefty reverb mostly on the background sounds. Ones that are in the foreground have generally just early reflections. That's the trend I've been hearing for about last two decades and I like it. It gives you the perfect image of the music you're listening to. Not everything should be drowned in reverb. Vocals are incredibly hard to produce these days because of that. In the old days mixers tended to drown the vocals in reverb, but the other sounds were also drowned in reverb.

These days vocals are generally autotuned, compressed to hell, and put through a short delay or just using early reflections from the reverb. Same with drums, and the bass is clean, compressed as hell, and no dynamics. I'm not too fond of that kind of production, but if done right it can sound incredibly encapsulating and great. It can give you really nice depth when you properly decide which sounds are background sounds and which ones are foreground sounds. So let's just say that modern production sounds better to me, because drowning everything in reverb sounds so 80s and ridiculous.

 

Hmm... I have probably 30-40% of the cases reverb on the bass. Mostly just a touch ER, sometimes even LR, if the bass should connect more with mix. And especially when it comes to club sound with heavy bass, when it really has to bang, I automate the dry transient phase or use an expander on the bass...

It's really funny sometimes when people think I did this or that, and in reality I did the opposite or nothing at all. Like "Oh my god, what did you do to the vocal? That sounds so incredible!The sparkling heights... have you boosted 16k? And the vocal reverb is awesome! The vocals sound so big! What plugin is this?" ...
"Um... Nothing? Well... Some level automation & de-essing. Other than that, it's the vocal as you gave it to me. There's no reverb on the vocal. It's reaverbate... and it is on the synth.."
I love it

 

Last edited: Aug 29, 2021

SP 2016