Best type of reverb on vocal ?

[type]

I'm always puzzled when it comes to adding reverb to the main voices on my recordings (rock, folk), and most of the time it is not satisfying. The Reverb FX has lot of settings to tweak, but also a lot of types to choose from (spring, plate, hall, etc.). I can play with the settings, no problem. But I'd like to know if there is a type of reverb that is specifically used for vocals ? Put it this way : what is the most frequently used type of reverb on commercial CDs (rock, pop, folk), is it spring, plate, hall, or others ?  And also, is it applied in mono or stereo, and why (I guess the answer is mono, since main vocals should be centered in the stereo field)?

Your thoughts/experiences on this would be appreciated. Thanks!

By and large, the last thing you want on a vocal is centred mono reverb!

There have been all sorts of approaches to this over the years, and to an extent, it's gone in phases. Generally, these days they tend to be shorter and more 'natural' sounding, unless a specific effect is required. One particular  type that was very popular for a long time was plate reverb, but this has a very 'dense' sound to it - all the early reflections were bunched up together, and they coloured the vocal sound a lot. The usual fix for this was to delay it - usually by feeding the reverb return through a tape machine, using the record-play heads to provide the delay. It's much easier to do this now, of course, by having the reverb on a track of its own, and simply sliding it along the timeline.

But generally, you need space around a vocal to keep it clear, so having a lot of early reflections (which defines the 'sound' of the reverb) isn't particularly helpful, and having them too early isn't, either. And to sound like reverb, the final decay at least has to be positioned away from the centre, otherwise it sounds completely unnatural. That's why in most reverbs, there's an option to combine the sources to be a mono feed, but never the returns.

And avoid spring reverbs like the proverbial plague!

Yeah, vocals in pop music right now are very dry. A pretty short "hall" type thing would probably do it if you're going for that pop/rock sound. Probably one of those things where you can't exactly hear the verb when it's there, but when you take it away, you notice the difference.

And rolling off everything above around 4k is often a good idea.

Chris

By and large, the last thing you want on a vocal is centred mono reverb!

Sometimes narrowing the stereo image on the reverb return helps to focus things. I've certainly heard mono vocal reverb on a few well known records.

And avoid spring reverbs like the proverbial plague!

Unless you're into dub reggae or surf guitar...

Cheers

James.

By and large, the last thing you want on a vocal is centred mono reverb!

Sometimes narrowing the stereo image on the reverb return helps to focus things. I've certainly heard mono vocal reverb on a few well known records.

I have to say that I have never ever heard an example of narrowing a reverb ever doing any more than focussing attention on the reverb, not the original signal. Mind you, I can see that with some singers, this might be a good idea...