Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge Question: How Do I Add Minimal Reverb in Audacity?

Hello. I have a question about using Audacity for recording...

Are there general settings that will add a little reverb / "wetness" to a "dry" piano recording?

I've tried playing with the settings a little in Audacity, but haven't come up with anything decent sounding yet. The "gverb" makes my piano sound like it's sitting in a 5 billion square foot concert hall made out of tin cans.

Can anyone help?

Jeanne W

You can fake a reverb by making a duplicate of the original track and shifting it a minuscule amount of time (a few milliseconds), then mixing the two tracks together. I don't know how well this works in Audacity, or how well it sounds with your piano. You can also run an equalizer on the duplicate track first to make it sound a little different than the original.

Alternatively, use a VST reverb plugin.

Thanks, mahlzeit. I tried this and it works very well in Audacity. The time shift tool can be used to drag and adjust tracks to get it in synch.

A tip for anyone who might try this: try zooming in for more control. If you "view normal" it may look like your 2nd track or tracks you added are right in synch (and in line) with the original, but they might not be and will sound too far out of synch for your liking. Zooming in lets you see greater detail down to milliseconds - its very helpful.

Still wondering how to make the gverb in Audacity sound less AUDACIOUS. If anyone knows how to make zverb sound less REVERBED, it will be greatly appreciated.

Jeanne W