Talk:Gated reverb

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This article was nominated for deletion on June 13, 2006. The result of the discussion was Keep.

Removed "by Peter Gabriel, Hugh Padgham and Phil Collins". This needs to be sourced. If someone can add a WP:V source for this it can certainly be added back into the article.--Isotope23 14:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

"it's hard to reproduce such effect when playing live" Don't you mean "impossible" the whole point is to artificially cut off the reverb. If you're playing drums in a live area the reflections will be audiable to the audiance. You'd have to have the processed drum sound going through a very loud PA to drown out the raw drum sound - which would then feed back through the highly compressed ambience mikes... Not an expert, just into home recording back in the 1980s but I thought it would be worth raising the question so it's thought about Megamanic 02:36, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, you're right. However, it's kind of possible to play "live", while isolating drummer in a separate room and just playing back the processed sound to audience through PA. Whether it should be considered "playing live" or not is debatable, though, so I'd stick to existing phrasing. --GreyCat 09:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Maybe that's the reason I've seen drummers on stage in plexiglass boxes. I thought it was purely for sound isolation 'cause you'd not get great reverb inside a small plexiglass box ;) - You'd reckon it would be more practical to close mike the drums & run them through a gated reverb patch at the mixing desk if you absolutely, positively HAVE to sound like Phil Collins Megamanic 02:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misuse of words "analogue" and "digital"

Within the "Methods of creation" part of the article, two different procedures are described as:

""Classic" analogue method"", involving room reverb, that may be natural or artificial as well (consider caves and echo chambers for instance), and

"Modern digital method", that may be succeded through some effect unit, that may be analogue or digital as well (consider a spring reverb device and a digital reverb emulator).

As you see there is a lack of coherence. Please consider a correction of this problem.

LS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.184.20.170 (talk) 03:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The essential difference of these two methods are just how reverberation is applied: naturally or artificially. First is called "analogue" because it clearly requires nothing besides pure analogue recording equipment. Second is called "digital" because it revolves around reverb FX unit - and these units are almost exclusively digital (i.e. involve digital sampling of signal, some sort of delay/processing buffer(s) and mixing of this buffer(s) with dry sound). Usage of "Spring reverb" and other emulation devices, such as echo chambers, etc, fits in 1st method, as they all (AFAIK) require additional mic (and, subsequentially, isolation environemnt). Besides, devices such as "spring reverbs" give a very specific sound and I don't know of any sources that cite applications of these devices for gated reverb. --GreyCat (talk) 18:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

This stuff sounds like confusion to me. Doepfer produces a module with spring reverb that can be used exactly as a digital unit. You need just one mike, not one close to the snare and one or more for ambience (room sound, I am not sure about the way you call it.) In order to obtain gated reverb you only need to treat the signal within a certain circuit that you create depending on your needs. A classic example of natural reverb used in pop music is David Bowie's recording of Heroes. Read the whole story in the feature classic tracks of soundonsound. I think that the drums played by Lol Tolhurst in the album 17seconds may have received the kind of treatment that I am talking about (I don't think they had any digital algorithms for reverb emulation back in 1980 for such kind of use, but here may I be wrong): they used c-ducer microphones (no spilling, no room sound) and made all of the space and reverb of the drums with effects. You can read it in the article featured in the classic tracks section of soundonsound. I hope that I am not wrong, but you can have mechanical reverb using just one microphone -unless you want to count the ones that are placed INSIDE the mechanical reverb unit.

LS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.190.99.44 (talk) 17:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)