Reverb is notoriously easy to mess up in your mix. Crank up the decay time, dial up the wet knob and you go from having a dry, bland, boring vocal to this immersive all-consuming vocal that just calls out into the abyss.
Today we’re going to talk about the concept of a spatial punch-out bus and how I use it to maintain the level of ambience in my reverbs that make the vocal feel like it opens up (without losing the clarity and definition that the vocal needs to cut through a dense mix).
See, the problem was never how much reverb we use.
The problem is the inevitable masking between the wet and the dry signal.
The masking only takes place when the vocal and the reverb are playing at the same time. All caused by the reverb tail and the bleeding effect of longer decay times that can create a feeling of smearing buildup and mud that makes the vocals hard to distinguish and sit up front in the mix.
We can fix this issue using a concept taught to me called the “punch-in and punch-out” bus.
In plain words, a punch-in bus is an aux created to route all of the sounds that you want to sit in the front of your mix. Think lead vocals, guitar solos, anything that needs to be at the center of attention in the mix.
This is your focus bus.
A punch-out bus is an aux for routing all of the sounds that you want to be ducked out of the way to make room for the punch-in bus. Think supporting elements like pads, chords, backing vocals and ambient layers.
This is your support bus.
You then use any of the following processes applied to the punch-out bus, sidechained to the punch-in bus:
Sidechain compression
Sidechain dynamic EQ (Trackspacer)
Sidechain resonance suppression (soothe3)
This is a really good way to control focus and depth in the mix. When I learned this technique, I immediately wanted to start experimenting with its effects on spatial processing, which led to the idea of creating a “spatial punch-out” bus.
The idea is simple.
1. Create the Bus
Create an auxiliary track. Name it Spatial Punch-Out.
2. Route the Sends
Route every reverb and delay’s return output to it.
3. Duck the Bus
Put either a compressor, a smart eq (trackspacer), a dynamic EQ, or a resonant suppression tool on the spatial punch-out bus. Set its sidechain input to the vocal or, to take it to the next level, a punch-in bus.
4. Tweak the Ducking
Press play and listen to the way that the reverb swells back in the gaps of silence. Raise or lower the threshold. Play with attack and release times or with ducking different parts of the frequency spectrum to get the right flavor of the effect that you’re looking for.
Used subtly, this can create clarity, intelligibility, and let you get away with much more wet effects than you previously could.
Used aggressively, this can create a really cool sidechain reverb effect where the reverb pumps and swells up dramatically after the signal goes silent.
This gives you ultimate flexibility in the mix, letting you apply more drastic wet effects while still retaining intelligibility.
Try this out for yourself. Set up the routing on a vocal. Crank up the wet reverb and see how you can create more space while retaining clarity with a spatial punch-out bus.
