Reverb Calculator — FX1/FX2 Setup by Genre and BPM

Calibrate with fresh ears, early in the session. On the lead part raise the FX1 send until the reverb just becomes audible — that’s your 0, the reference; find FX2’s own point separately. Then give every other source a level relative to that 0: plus = more present than the lead, minus = drier, OFF = no send (bass and kick stay dry). Tempo and vocal type move the tail length and predelay: ballads bloom longer, fast tracks tighten; an intimate vocal sits close and dry, an epic one dissolves into a big space. Write the numbers down and trust them over a tired ear: if half an hour later you want "a bit more reverb" — that’s adaptation talking, take a break.

First set the “0” for the lead part (vocal, lead guitar, sax…) — separately on each bus:

Everything else is computed relative to these two zeros.

The lead part is the reference. I measure everything from the lead. I keep backing vocals behind it — drier and/or shorter so they don’t crowd the words. The vocal type sets the space: intimate — close and dry (short predelay, short tail); ballad/80s — the vocal floats in a big lush hall (long predelay and tail); epic — dissolves into the space entirely. The snare can match the lead in presence — a short reverb makes it "snap" in 3D — but I never make it louder than the lead.

Guitars. I keep rhythm guitars dry, distortion especially: the wall of distortion fills the space on its own, a long reverb only muddies it — in metal I don’t send it at all. Clean and acoustic guitars — a touch of room is fine. The solo is wetter than the rhythm, it has its own space, but by default not louder than the vocal (if the solo plays without a vocal, I lift it in the break).

The low end stays dry, always. I don’t send kick and bass to the shared reverb: low end smears and clouds in a reverb bus. If you really must — a separate, hard-filtered room, and very quiet.

Pads and keys smear the lead easily — I keep them behind. In electronic and ambient a long reverb on the pads is a deliberate move: there it should be lush, that’s the "air" of the track.

If the drums come on one stereo bus (Addictive Drums, Superior, etc.) and you can’t split kick/snare across sends — no problem. I turn off the VI’s own reverb (room/overhead inside the plugin) so the kit is dry, and send the whole bus to the short FX1 at −3…−6 dB from the vocal. I don’t send the drums to the long FX2 — a long tail on a full kit muddies instantly. That way the whole kit sits in the same room as the vocal — the mix sounds cohesive.

One risk — the kick and low toms cloud the low end of the reverb. Fix it with a hard HPF on the send drums→reverb (~300–500 Hz). In Cubase you can’t put an EQ on the send itself, so two paths:

If you do split the kick to its own channel — I keep it dry (OFF), and the rest of the bus (snare/toms/cymbals) can go bolder, almost like the snare. I treat toms like the snare. The "Drums" toggle in the table above gathers exactly these cases.

Made by a band, for people who make music. Don’t know your track’s tempo? The BPM Finder fills this page in one click — and the Delay Calculator turns the same tempo into delay times.