Shorter reverb times create a sense of closeness by increasing a signal’s amplitude.
Whereas with a plate reverb, although the sound can seem more metallic, the speed of sound is much faster in metal than in air, causing plates to have a higher initial “echo density”. Reverb can be used to create depth by using reverberation times greater than 1 second, and by using pre-delay times to establish a sense of distance from the original source and the walls that create reverberation.
In a real space, these echoes are more discrete at the beginning of the reverb and as the reverb decays, the echo density increases. This is where differences become apparent between a room and a plate… The reverb created depends on how the sound is affected by a room’s various surfaces, including the walls, ceiling, floor, windows, furniture, etc…). When a sound is projected into a real space, it reflects back off the various surfaces, creating sound echoes, or reverberations (reverb for short). This vibration gets picked up by a contact microphone and sent back to the mixer.īut since it’s not technically a “real space”, a plate reverb has some interesting and unique qualities that distinguish it from other types of reverb. Plate reverb comes from a steel plate, under tension by springs, vibrated by a signal sent to it from the mixer via a transducer.