Can anyone explain to me why reverb makes a track sound so much better?

A tip with reverb, where do you want that sound to come from? The corner of the room, in front of your nose or in the house next door?
 
SoulMath said:
I think most beginners have a tendancy to drown their mixes in reverb. Not only gives depth but can also give a coating over the sound that make make half-assed sound better. (for an untrained ear)
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Yea I just started mixing my tracks in like august and when I listen back I used SO much Reverb because I thought it sounded good, Anyways I don't use reverb but it does make it sound better when I occasionally use it.
 
Instead of making a new thread with this simple question, ill bump this one.

Why add reverb to vocals? Wasnt the whole point of setting up a room acoustically so it doesnt echo? Why not just have a crappy room?
Almost sounds like a joke, but reverb=echos. Bad room=echos. ??
 
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there is a distinction between reverb - a wash of reflections that overlap each other - and echo which are discrete repetitions of the original sound.

You design your room/booth to eliminate both, or to enhance one (usually reverb by using ceramic tiling on the walls). The main design considerations in the design of a vocal booth/room are the elimination of standing waves - resonant points for a specific frequency - rather than the elimination of reverberation specifically, it generally comes as an add on in fighting the the first battle (standing waves).

So adding some reverb to vocals is intended to compensate for what couldn't be done at the recording stage.

As an aside, having the ability to precisely control how much reverb is on a vocal is a good thing, much easier than trying to tame a poorly designed room or a weak vocalist to reverb ratio in the mic signal
 
i usually only use early reflections to create depth and improve 'positioning'. i turn all tails off. early refections are very powerful. 99% of the beneficial psychologic and biologic effects are directly related to them. the tail itself doesn't contain much information and acts much like noise, it blurrs complex mixes. But it totally depends on the material. especially when it comes to hiphop reverb just sounds like cheese :
 
That's why some mix engineers prefer to use a short delay for a cleaner shorter sounding reverb.
 
Because reverb gives the sound a " room " to breath , it generates the illusion or the impression that the instrument is being played at a venue or a studio room , its use can go from very subtle and minimal to very exaggerated and " cathedral "- like effect
 
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