issue with reverb

[greg54]

All of a sudden I'm having issues with reverb.  I have it on a bus, and I use Sends on each track that I want to add reverb to.  But today when I was recording vocals, reverb is on even when I turn it off on the track.  I turned reverb off on my vocal track, and I still hear it through my headphones when I sing.  I finally found that it was coming from the Reverb bus.  I muted that, and there was no reverb.

But that shouldn't happen.  If I have reverb off on my vocal track, I shouldn't hear it.  Added to that, when I record vocals, everything sounds very harsh.  This is out of the blue.   I have the reverb plugin maxed out in my Reverb bus.  But when I turn the reverb knob up in my vocal track, I barely hear it, even when it's up 100%.  And when I turn the reverb knob off on my vocal track, I still hear it through my headphones when recording vocals.

Echo is not on in the vocal track (or anywhere else).  So I don't know what's causing the reverb to be on all the time, even if the knob is off.  And I don't know why vocals are all of a sudden harsh when I record them.  

[Herky Acuff]

Check to see if the Post button on the track's send is off. That means the reverb is on no matter the track's fader or even the mute button (I think).

[greg54]

That round orange button is on by default.  It's lit up.

Edited May 28, 2023 by greg54

[Starship Krupa]

I once had a weird routing issue that seemed to have to do with a plug-in that communicated with another instance of itself.

What cleared it was removing the suspect plug-in, then doing a Save As under another name. I even put the same plug-in back on (in an effort to create a bug report) but it behaved the second time around.

So that's my suggestion: pull any track plug-ins off your vocal track, Save As, then open the renamed project and see if the issue persists.

[greg54]

That's weird, because today I installed a new plugin right before I noticed the problem.

I'm going to uninstall the plugin and see if it resolves the issue.

Did you do Save As under a new name for the whole project?

Thanks!

Edited May 28, 2023 by greg54

[Will.]

6 hours ago, greg54 said:

All of a sudden I'm having issues with reverb.  I have it on a bus, and I use Sends on each track that I want to add reverb to.  But today when I was recording vocals, reverb is on even when I turn it off on the track.  I turned reverb off on my vocal track, and I still hear it through my headphones when I sing.  I finally found that it was coming from the Reverb bus.  I muted that, and there was no reverb.

But that shouldn't happen.  If I have reverb off on my vocal track, I shouldn't hear it.  Added to that, when I record vocals, everything sounds very harsh.  This is out of the blue.   I have the reverb plugin maxed out in my Reverb bus.  But when I turn the reverb knob up in my vocal track, I barely hear it, even when it's up 100%.  And when I turn the reverb knob off on my vocal track, I still hear it through my headphones when recording vocals.

Echo is not on in the vocal track (or anywhere else).  So I don't know what's causing the reverb to be on all the time, even if the knob is off.  And I don't know why vocals are all of a sudden harsh when I record them.  

Check if your "Dim Solo" option is enabled. 

[John Vere]

20 hours ago, greg54 said:

That round orange button is on by default.  It's lit up.

Yes that's the default. 

Just for clarification: The following is representing a standard reverb bus scenario. 

You have a Reverb plug in the FX Rack of a dedicated bus. 

You put on 100% wet and leave the fader at unity. 

You add a Send in a Vocal track or the Vocal bus. 

You turn this send up until the desired amount of reverb is added to the Vocal track. This is normally around 12 o clock. 

If the send is on the Track it will stop sending when your either turn it all the way down,  the the fader is turned down or the mute is engaged. 

So if you still hear the reverb  in the headphones  it could be a few possibilities. 

You are hearing a hidden vocal track. 

You have the Pre Fader send on ( seems you don't) 

You have an additional send ( From an effect in the tracks bin? ) Aux track.  

Then seeing that you say you are recording a new vocal track it is not clear what the set up is for that. 

 I turned reverb off on my vocal track,    When you say this are you turning the send on the track right off?  

Do you have input echo on? You shouldn't hear any effects if you use direct monitoring and keep input echo off. 

Edited May 29, 2023 by John Vere

[greg54]

I've been playing with it for a while this morning and found the issue.   For whatever reason, Breverb is the problem.  No matter what setting I have it on, reverb is just way too much and causes the problem I described.  I took it off and put Sonitus Reverb on the bus, and now everything works fine.  

Thanks for everyone's input!  I always appreciate it.

[greg54]

After I thought the issue was fixed, I turned off the computer.

Later when I turned it on again to do more work, the problem persists.  It's within the reverb bus.  For now I have a reverb plugin on my vocal track.  Don't know what to do about the reverb bus issue at this point.

[Lord Tim]

OK, let's check to see if there's anything wacky going on (and apologies if you've tried this already or it sounds like common sense, but sometimes it's easy to miss stuff when a project has gone rogue on you):

First, go to Tracks > Track Manager and have a look in there to see if there's anything hidden.

Next, make sure you're seeing every control in the Track View by changing the Track Control Manager dropdown menu (the one that's under where it says Region FX) to "All"  and then have a look through your tracks to see if you have any sends set up anywhere odd, including sends on any busses.

Next (and it's been mentioned here, but double check anyway), see if any tracks are set to PRE rather than POST, and set them to POST if so.

Next, check your track I/Os. I've had a few occasions where I've had an output of some track going to an incorrect bus or aux track. So rather than, say, a guitar master bus having the input as "GUITARS - S" it's actually getting the send from the reverb instead, so you're hearing a big wash instead of the actual guitar master. The same for outputs - check to see if everything is going to your masters rather than sending directly to the reverb bus.

If this all looks good and there's nothing going on with dim/exclusive solo, then it could be some tangle somewhere in your project.

Delete the Reverb bus entirely and make a new one, and insert a new Reverb plugin on there (try something other than Breverb first just to rule that out), and then make sure its output is going to your master, and any tracks you need to feed to it have their sends set up.

At this point, it should all be working. If so, save it, then save it under a new name so you have a baseline backup for testing.

Then delete that other reverb plugin and put Breverb back in and see if it plays nice.

Projects do get tangled sometimes, especially with lots of sends and patch points, etc.  I personally haven't come across this issue, but it's certainly possible to happen. Good luck!  

[henkejs]

22 hours ago, John Vere said:

Do you have input echo on? You shouldn't hear any effects if you use direct monitoring and keep input echo off. 

Did you verify input echo is off?

[greg54]

24 minutes ago, henkejs said:

Did you verify input echo is off?

Yes, sorry if I did not make that clear.  

[greg54]

43 minutes ago, Lord Tim said:

OK, let's check to see if there's anything wacky going on (and apologies if you've tried this already or it sounds like common sense, but sometimes it's easy to miss stuff when a project has gone rogue on you):

First, go to Tracks > Track Manager and have a look in there to see if there's anything hidden.

Next, make sure you're seeing every control in the Track View by changing the Track Control Manager dropdown menu (the one that's under where it says Region FX) to "All"  and then have a look through your tracks to see if you have any sends set up anywhere odd, including sends on any busses.

Next (and it's been mentioned here, but double check anyway), see if any tracks are set to PRE rather than POST, and set them to POST if so.

Next, check your track I/Os. I've had a few occasions where I've had an output of some track going to an incorrect bus or aux track. So rather than, say, a guitar master bus having the input as "GUITARS - S" it's actually getting the send from the reverb instead, so you're hearing a big wash instead of the actual guitar master. The same for outputs - check to see if everything is going to your masters rather than sending directly to the reverb bus.

If this all looks good and there's nothing going on with dim/exclusive solo, then it could be some tangle somewhere in your project.

Delete the Reverb bus entirely and make a new one, and insert a new Reverb plugin on there (try something other than Breverb first just to rule that out), and then make sure its output is going to your master, and any tracks you need to feed to it have their sends set up.

At this point, it should all be working. If so, save it, then save it under a new name so you have a baseline backup for testing.

Then delete that other reverb plugin and put Breverb back in and see if it plays nice.

Projects do get tangled sometimes, especially with lots of sends and patch points, etc.  I personally haven't come across this issue, but it's certainly possible to happen. Good luck!  

I have gone over pretty much everything.  But I will delete the reverb bus and create a new one, as you suggested.  Thanks!

[Lord Tim]

One other slightly out-there suggestion is, what interface are you using and are you doing any specific routing for your headphone sends?

I have outputs 1/2 on my interface going to my studio monitors and outputs 3/4 going to a headphone send, and then I set up various sends to go to each place, so I have a unique mix for what I want to hear when I'm tracking vocals, etc.

I've found on occasion that I have dust in my mixing desk and I get weird crosstalk between channels so I'll get some of the headphone send going to my studio mains, etc.  Could there be something funky going on with your hardware at all? Have you checked to see if your interface's mixer application isn't sending somewhere odd?

It sounds a bit unlikely going by your descriptions so far, but it's worth a thought.  

[greg54]

5 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

It sounds a bit unlikely going by your descriptions so far, but it's worth a thought.  

Yeah, anything can be the issue.  You never know.  I use a Focusrite 18i20 interface.  And I have the headphones going into a headphone preamp, and I use a Warm Audio mic pre.   Dust is a big issue here, so I will look into that.  Thanks!

[greg54]

I think the reverb issue is fixed.  I deleted the old reverb bus and added a new one.  So far it seems fine.

But when I record vocals they record hotter than normal and are more harsh.

I haven't touched anything regarding the vocals - not the interface, mic pre, mic, or anything within CbB that I would think affect the vocals like that.

[greg54]

Discovered the problem with recording vocals.  I was using a track that I thought was clean, but it was routed to the Vox bus.  When I recorded, it had eq and compression on it.

Made a new track, recorded, and it's fine.  So that was my stupidity of not paying attention.

[John Vere]

This could not have been the issue other than possibly you were monitoring the output instead of the input.  

Audio is recorded directly from your interface to the Hard drive. The input level of the recording are 100% controlled by your audio interface. You can turn all the levels right off in Cakewalk and the audio will stay the same level set at the input of the interface. 

You should be using your interfaces direct monitoring so you will be able to critically hear what is being recorded. You do not turn on input echo while recording most audio. The exception is using a Guitar Sim where you want to hear the results. 

You said you didn't have input echo on but there's no way you can hear any Reverb or Compression in the headphones while recording unless you do. All you should hear is the playback from already recorded material and the direct/ dry sound of your mike. 

Which brings up the question which audio interface are you using and does it have a software mixer? 

Edited June 1, 2023 by John Vere