If you had to guess on a reverb...

"Reverb" is such a ubiquitous term. There are so many types out there...plate, spring, room, etc, all of which are most certainly overused by the rank amateur (I'm no exception), especially when it comes to vocals. What might be helpful is to know how the vocal tracks of popular songs might've been treated during recording/mixing. Just to keep it simple, how about:

Yesterday
Oh Darling! (This isn't strictly a Beatles thing, I promise.)
Slip Sliding Away (Paul Simon)

There's obviously a million more, but I specifically chose these because of how uncluttered the arrangements are. It's easy to focus on the vocals with these. So, if you had to guess (or maybe you might have some trivia socked away somewhere), how'd they do these?

I would tend to choose a plate reverb for a 70's sound and some kind of chamber or room for a 60's sound where many of the studios had their own echo chambers. I prefer to use a reverb that can be edited quickly so my favourite hardware reverbs are an old Ibanez SDR1000 or an Eventide H3000. My current favourite plug-in is Epicverb (for plates) or Silverspike's Room Machine. While I may start out with a preset, I will always modify it depending upon the feel of the song that I am working on.

James.

Nice Question Dawgman,

I myself has a question about reverbs too. Mainly what reverb do they use in order to produce those of classical recording. I know they go to a Moorish Castle and enormous cathedrals just to get that sound. But is there any reverb there that could replicate this effect? Just askin.

Paul Adrian

Any classical recording worth its salt has no reverb added; the acoustic space is considered part of the "instrument," or source sound, and is engineered in as such.  The recording venue (such as your Moorish castle) would be considered specifically for its acoustic properties.

However, I have created some pretty wonderful (if I do say so myself) reverbs within Audition by carefully matching settings to what I expect a space to sound like, with meticulous listening and adjustment.  You won't find better reverb for the price.  Likely for a greater price, too.

The finest reverbs around are convolution-based, using samples of real acoustic spaces.  Expect $$$$ for this done right. 

Audition's can sound really, really good.  But no digital reverb can replace the subtleties and beauty of a great recording space.