It all depends on where you stand on

Reverb is one of those things that you instinctually know as you experience it all day with all the sounds you listen to. Some of the sounds, being voices, instruments, weirds noises or others have a particular characteristic: Depending on the place they are generated and where you're actually hearing them from, they will sound very different, having more presence as you get closer and less as you get farther from It, while also "remaining" for shorter or longer times. in this article I'll talk about Reverb, what It exactly can be defined as and the main dials that you'll surely find in equipment dedicated to the application of reverb to any sound. let's begin by defining what Reverb is.

What Reverb Is?

Reverb is a characteristic of any sound in space, where It keeps playing and being perceived by the listener even If the source of It has already stopped playing It, and slowly fading away to levels volume not perceivable till it disappears . This effects has to do with the fact that sound has two ways of travelling to our ears, in a direct way our through reflexion in nearby surfaces, at the end of the day the sound produced by both means are added to the perceived message and It results in a modification of the original soundwave due to this. One example of this is taking a closed space, like a church and hearing an instrument such as a piano as you step in It. You'll hear the sound farther and It will sound like the notes have that acoustic quality of slowly fading.

Most common dials in any Reverb Interface:

Dry/Wet:

Also common in pretty much other effect that is added to a sound. Dry lets us decide how much of the original sound we want to listen in our output and wet the amount of the modified sound.

Early reflections:

Like Its name says, It will control how much you will hear the early reflections (Being the first reflections that bounce in any surface before getting to you ear) Making It sound like adding a little more drier version of the overall reverb.

Decay:

Simply put, It will control how long the reverberated sound will play before fading out, either going to a long decay, where the sound just takes more time to disappear and a short decay, where It fades almost instantly.

Delay:

In some might appear and in some not, as It can stand as Its own effect. What It will do is that It will create an "echo" effect of the sound affected by Reverb, making It repeat with less intensity after a certain period of time, that can be linked either to the tempo (Amount of steps) or time (usually in ms).

Size:

It will emulate the size of different spaces as you move the knob, going from a reduced space, such as a bathroom, to an extensive room, such as a theather, and bringing the acoustic characteristics of these spaces with the time It takes for the reflections to travel to our ear.

Diffusion:

It controls the shape of the surface where the reflections bounce of. For example, a sound in a dome shaped room will play differently from what the same sound would sound if It was being played in a square shaped room, all due to the trajectories that the reflection have to follow due to different curvatures in the surfaces.

Filters:

Also common in many effects, filters in this case will control what specific frequencies you want to apply or not apply the reverb to. Usually, they are used provide a cleaner sound, as the original content of It will be left as It is (Without change) and the reverb will be applied at free frequency spaces that the sound doesn't reach.

I hope that with the presented article you can understand a phenomenon of any sound played in space, reverb, how the signal travels not only directly to us, though also through reflections and how they affect the quality of the sound. Also, I expect that you can learn a little more about the common buttons, knobs and dials that are found normally in equipment dedicated to applying reverb to a particular sound. I wish you the bests of lucks and thank you for your support!