Mixing: Space
Your ear has no distance meter. It infers distance from a handful of cues, and those cues are exactly the controls you have in a mix. Once you know them, you stop adding reverb and start placing things.
- 4 distance cues
- width is not depth
- sends, not inserts
Where you run into this
- Mixing
- Production
- Film sound
- Live
In short
The cues are the ratio of direct to reflected sound, the loss of high frequencies over distance, the delay before the first reflections arrive, and level. A sound that is quieter, duller and arrives with early reflections reads as further away, whatever the reverb setting says.
Width and depth are different axes, and confusing them is why so many mixes are wide and flat at the same time.
How it works
Width comes from panning and stereo information. Depth comes from the distance cues. You can have a mix that is enormously wide and completely flat, with everything sitting at the same apparent distance, and it will sound impressive for five seconds and tiring after that.
Where you run into this
- A vocal that sits in front without being louder
- A wide mix where nothing is behind anything
- A reverb that made everything more distant instead of one thing
In practice
Put reverb and delay on a send rather than an insert. One shared space that several sources feed into is what makes them sound like they are in the same room, which is the actual point, and it costs less processing than a reverb on every channel.