We understand that the above method is a bit tedious and a sure way to kill your creative workflow in its tracks if you are in the middle of writing a track. Using The Studio Slave Reverb Pre-delay Calculator When inputting values into your device parameters, remember that 1000ms = 1 second. Things to be aware of is that this is assuming the music is written in a 4/4 time signature.
60,000 divided by your song BPM (in my case this is (120Bpm).Using this value of 1 beat allows us to double or half this value to find out the values for a 1/2 note, or 1/8th note etc. Using The FormulaĦ0000 / project tempo = value of 1 beat (ms) The first is the old-skool way using a calculator and simple formula, and the second is using the useful bpm calculation tool on this page. There are two ways we can calculate our reverb values. Care and attention have to be paid to the subjective content of the project as well as whether you want the groove to ‘push’ or ‘pull’.įinally, don’t forget that your millisecond values are for a given tempo only, so if you decide to change your project tempo later on in the production process, you will have to re-calculate your reverb pre-delay and decay times. In most cases, this is almost unnoticeable and pleasant effect on the groove, but it is something we thought was worth mentioning just so it’s very clear that this is not a ‘set and forget’ method. This disparity between the real RT60 and the one we perceive will actually throw our reverb decays ever so slightly off. If we had nothing but a metronome and a reverb, then our calculations would be perfect for syncing our groove, In a typical case where we have a busy project with a high RMS, our reverb decays will get lost (masked) in the mix significantly earlier than their actual RT60 times which we have set to be in sync with the project tempo. As a bit of background, a reverbs length is measured as the time taken till it’s level drops below -60dBs. The RMS is important because this along with a few other factors is going to dictate when our reverb decays can no longer be heard. from the dynamics, to the tempo, feel, instrumentation, and most importantly in this scenario, the noise floor & RMS (‘root mean square’ or average level of our music). The reason for this is simple, everyone’s music is different. It is always advised to adjust your reverb values by ear once you have calculated your tempo and beat divisions. Useful Information for Beat Synced Reverbs
Why you should use this technique on your reverb pre-delays & decays Locking our reverb tails and other ambient noises in time with the beat adds life and additional groove into your music on an almost subconscious level and is much better than setting values randomly. This concept of synchronized parameter values can get really interesting when we apply it to our reverb pre-delay and decay times. So from here, we can figure out that 1/16th note is 125ms, (more on the maths and simpler ways to calculate bpm beat divisions later).
To do this for parameters with millisecond values, we need to first calculate the beat divisions and their millisecond values for our projects bpm.įor example, 120 beats per minute can be divided down into 500ms per beat (1/4 note).
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How to Sync reverb pre-delay & decay times Of course, we don’t have to sync things to every downbeat or bar, we could also sync sounds to 16th notes or similar, such as a typical 3/16 note delay. This is a process nearly all of us inadvertently tweak so it pumps in time with the project tempo. Sidechain compression is a common type of processing that most producers are familiar with. but there are a whole host of other devices and parameters that benefit from being synced to the beat, which only allows us to adjust in milliseconds (ms). BPM Syncing is something that we usually associate with delays, where we can easily switch between note values such as 1/4 note or 1/8 note delays.