Adding reverb to hi-fi

Has anybody tried using a studio reverb unit, or other processors,
with a hi-fi system? I have found some recordings, especially

Yes. It turns the hi-fi into my-fi.

Perhaps overstated I agree, but my overstatement complements
the understatement that preceded it. My point is, too often
many people search for sonic reality in a very unbalanced way,
heavy on the equipment and light on acoustics. Had I met just
one person in the past who would have impressed the importance
of acoustics on me I would have spent a lot less money chasing
sonic nirvana purchasing equipment and more time enjoying the
equipment I already had for the last 30 years.

I want to be that voice crying in the wind for some people
chasing sonic nirvana here today. Perhaps even some of those
who are or will be mixing music I want to hear over and over
in the future.

peace
dawg

I guess what I really want to say is that; I have found
through 35 years of fooling with stereo, PA, playing bass,
recording and listening to the best equipment I could get my
ears in front of, listening in an acoustically optimized
listening environment is essential to hearing what is in the
recording. That being said, the reverb (natural or added) in
recordings, being low level in nature and most audible when
the music program stops, is the first sonic component to
become masked by the reproduction rooms own sound.

Unless the room is unusually -- or pathologically -- reverberant, this is
not so. The average room's decay time is considerably shorter than the
reverb time of most recordings, and is incapable of masking it.

In terms of pure decibel levels, yes, but I think this is an area where
the brains's perception mechanism plays an important part. If the room's
acoustic is superimposed on the recording's reverb, the brain's auditory
processing get a confused muddle of sound that it knows cannot
coprrespond to a real physical space. Remove the listening room sound,
and if the recorded sound included the natural reverb of a real room,
suddenly you can hear the "shape" of that room and everything becomes
more realistic.

Just a theory, to try to explain DDD's observation.

The improvement you hear is to better imaging, and the resulting ability to
better appreciate the recording's ambience.

Conversely since I feel the reverb in recordings is first to
be lost in the blowback of an acoustically untreated room it
is only logical to assume that reverb will be one of the first
"WOW sounds" that a listener will benefit from when he
adequately acoustically optimizes his reproduction system.
Listeners can be quoted as saying " I heard this a million
times and I never heard xxxxxxxx before" They will describe
hearing individual sounds that were always there just masked
by the acoustics of the listening room.

This same experience can be obtained in the bass once the room
treatment reaches critical mass, bass instruments become more
tame and musical playing individual notes in there own space.
Impossible in a room with room modes overhanging and
overpowering what is coming out of the speakers.

A professional bass player who listened to Led Zep II a
million times heard it on my system in a treated room and said
about one of the songs " oh that's how it goes". And he heard
it here before treatment.

I hope this helps some people to peruse treating your
listening rooms and perhaps stop wasting time with equipment
upgrades until you get your listening room optimized.

peace
dawg

classical ones, are a bit dry, which is why I'm thinking of trying it.

Don't particularly know what the "average room" is but now
that I have become aware of what a rooms early reflections
bearing down on me sound like and what a room that does not do
this sounds like. Now I can easily hear and clearly
distinguish the room sound in untreated rooms. Not only in
playback but I can hear my friends room affecting his voice on
recordings he makes in his studio.

If this is what you mean by better appreciating the
recording's ambience then we agree 100%

I dont care to argue semantics with you but I know that to my
ears I can tell the difference in the reverb, bass, inner
detail of imaging and timbre of instruments and effects used
(what type effect, settings of it, where it is returned in the
soundstage) easily in my treated room where before treatment
they were never audible to me in the same way before.

So again I stress that room treatment be addressed by anyone
serious about really hearing what is in the recordings you
play. Make acoustic treatment your next upgrade quest and
don't futz around with adding reverb to recordings that
already have it.

peace
dawg

Mission accomplished in the best of ways.

Many of the Joyce Hatto recordings had artificial reverb added. They got
good reviews. According to reviewers they sounded "more realistic".

IMHO the best way to get a good classical recording is to use a good hall
to make the recording and put the microphones on the right place.

Yes, but how do you do that with existing, commercial recordings, which is
what the OP was asking about?

The simple solution is: If it ain't good, don't buy it! "Remastering" a
bad recording won't give you a good recording, remastering a good
recording will often give you a bad recording.

How do you replace a poor recording of a great performance with a good
recording of the same performance? I don't think even Albus Dumbledore can
do that.

By looking for Bob Fine's name in the credits?

I couldn't agree more. I'd also like to start a campaign against the
complete swamping of almost every recording of 'early' music with
reverberation, as if (a) we'd not realise it was early music unless this
big audio sign was up saying 'this is early music, listen to the reverb'
and (b) all pre-baroque music was played and listened to in vast
cathedrals and caverns...

Again, this is off-topic, but it needs a response.

It's not just the "early music" that's swamped in reverb -- most recordings
of the music of any era has added reverb.

I've felt for some years that we're not hearing early (and Baroque) music
properly, because this added reverb audibly "contradicts" the acoustics of
the relatively small spaces in which these works were performed. (I'm not
talking about the Vespers of 1610, okay?)

I have NEVER seen a review in stereophile saying the recording was too

I haven't reviewed for Stereophile in 15 years. And what does that have to
do with my observation, one way or another?

It presents the possibility that Stereophile reviewers might be more
interested in reveling in the rich, creamy reproduction of reverb than

Ummm... Creamy reverb...

in considering whether it ought to be there at all :-)

reverberant. Interpret this as you like

I've always had the impression that when a recording is swamped with
reverb either the playing wasn't very good or the producer/engineer
didn't really understand what he was recording.

Not only early music. What about piano recitals in a symphony hall with a

With two-channel audio the engineer, no matter how good he
is, has to make a compromise. With live music, most of the
reverb one hears comes from places other than the soundstage
area. However, with two-channel recordings, all of that hall
reverb comes from up front. The home listening room adds
reverb, of course, but it is much different from what the
hall would deliver. The engineer is stuck with that
situation when making two-channel recordings.

Using a home-based reverb synthesizer (which may take the
mono attribute of a recording and reverberate it to surround
speakers) or a reverb extractor (which may take the L minus
R part of the recorded source material and send it directly
to the surround speakers, usually after applying some delay
and maybe additional reverb) helps to overcome this problem.
This is the case if either technology is well engineered and
the levels are not goosed too much and the room is decent
and the speakers are located properly. The result will get
some ersatz reverb out into the room and help to make a bad
situation a bit better. No system can properly duplicate a
real-world hall, but extracted or synthesize reverb in
combination with two or three channels up front is a much
better approach than basic two-channel stereo.

Well, if one's main speakers are solid bass producers a
subwoofer may not be required, particularly with lighter
weight musical source materials. However, a really good,
really well integrated subwoofer can do several things
better than full-range speakers operating alone.

First, it takes pressure off of the satellite amps. They no
longer have to deal with low bass.

Second, it takes pressure off of the satellite woofer
sections. They no longer have to deal with low bass, which
can be very important if those woofers in the satellites are
not particularly potent.

Third, set up right (close to two or more room boundaries) a
subwoofer helps to eliminate boundary-related suckout
artifacts that one gets with typically set-up satellite
speakers that are positioned well out into the open. With
the proper crossover frequency, the sub operates below its
suckout cancellation point and the satellites operate above
theirs.

Fourth, good subs will get the bottom octave better than
most full-range speakers. Yes, most music does not go down
to 20 Hz, but in many cases hall ambiance does go that low,
or even lower, and so a good subwoofer will do a better job
of simulating the subjective "space" of a good hall better
than most full-range speakers.

As for the center channel, look at it this way. During a
live performance a centered soloist will be generating two
arrival clues: one for each ear. However, with two-channel
reproduction and a "phantom" center a centered soloist
generates four arrival clues: one from each speaker for each
ear. This is abnormal, both in terms of inter-system
frequency-response cancellations and also in terms of focus,
particularly when listening from anywhere but the sweet
spot, and has only been lauded by traditionalists because
they are not aware of just what a centered soloist sounds
like in a real-world hall. Going to a center channel (even
one that involves "deriving" a steered center feed from the
L+R part of a stereo source) gives the listener the more
realistic two arrival clues.

Yes, you still get cancellations and other artifacts between
the center channel speaker and the left and right mains, but
having an additional channel reduces their impact compared
to what they sound like with only two channels.

But not lectured in a nasty way, at least by me.

Howard Ferstler

reverb time of 2.5s. I think symphony halls are for symphony orchestras.

This was very popular in the sixties and seventies, and there used to be
lots of commercial boxes like the Fisher Spacexpander that were designed
for the job back then. They all.. sounded pretty awful.

have a selection at reasonable prices, which units has anyone used
here?

Some models have a digital input, which could be used with a CD
player's digital output.

I would tend to recommend something like the Sony DPS V-77, if your goal
is to have digital ins and outs and reproduce a realistic room sound. But
I suspect that you will be apt to go overboard on the effect if you are not
very, very careful. And I fear that you won't be fulfilling the wishes of
the original producers either. If they made the recordings very dry, they
must have done it for a reason, and that may tell you something about what
the artist was aiming for.

Maybe the OP was thinking about a dry sound in basic two-speaker stereo,
and have a carefully crafted limited reverberated sound from the back
speakers only, attempting to (try to) reproduce some room/ambiance.

Wonder just how many NG's need to know about this, though...

I think the op is a shill for the linked dealer

Oh well, maybe, so used to vendor/dealer links I missed it.
Whatever, sometimes some useful knowlege comes out of such posts.

if you'd like it more wet then why not. From Studiospares offerings I'd
pick TC M One.

I added reverb to a recording once. Then I got well and never did it

There is a difference to adding to the recording, and playing it through
additional speakers. A huge difference.

again