Everything was huge the back in the 80’s:  huge drums, huge guitar solos, huge hair, and so…huge reverb.  I suppose the mix had to make room for the band’s big hair.  But, alas, gone are the days of expansive, cavernous ‘verb in favor of a more natural room sound, focusing more on early reflections rather than long decay times.  Today’s trend is to make the listener sense as though the band is right in his or her face.  But some novice engineers, as well as some of us more experienced ones, can unknowingly fall into the trap of adding too much reverb, simply because they don’t hear it yet.

Although mixing engineers resist the urge to crank the ‘verb in the mix stage, the dreaded Phantom Reverb rears its head during the mastering process.  Mastering engineers use compression and limiting to increase the perceived volume of a recording.  If you think of the dynamics of a song as a mountain range, limiting and compression “cut off” (or at least “push down”) the mountain peaks (loud moments) so that they are close to, or even level with, the valleys (quiet moments).  Then everything is then pushed up together as high as it will go.  In essence, this process makes the quiet moments of the song perceivably louder, and with it, the reverb.  In the mix process, the reverb was very subtly sitting in the mix, where it was psychoacoustically “felt” more so than actually heard.  Whereas now, in the mastering process, the reverb has swollen to where it is much more noticeable on a conscious level.  While this might not always be a big deal, sometimes it can adversely affect an otherwise good mix by making it sound dated.

The key to keeping the Phantom Reverb in check is to force yourself to mix in less reverb than you think you need, knowing that it will appear louder once the track is mastered.  Another trick that I use is to increase the output volume on my reverb unit, nudge up the effects return on the console, or increase the volume on the bus I’m using for reverb in my DAW somewhere between 3-5db.  Then, when it’s time to print the mix, I’ll pull it back down.  Just don’t forget to pull it back down!

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