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Post by svart on Apr 18, 2016 9:39:22 GMT -6
So I feel like I have a handle on a lot of aspects of mixing, but one thing that constantly eludes my attempts at mastery is reverb.. I just can't seem to get reverb to sound professional when I mix. I either use too much, too little, or it just sounds "wrong". When listening to professional mixes, there is always tons of reverb, but layered in ways that it adds to the mix depth and width, but never sounds "too much". When I try, it sounds, well.. Pretty much the opposite. I don't think it's a matter of reverb quality, but of my knowledge of how to use reverb correctly. Anyone have any tips, suggestions or starting points? noah shain? Mainly I have tons of trouble with lead vocals and also that subtle reverb that most modern mixes have on the whole mix..
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Post by tasteliketape on Apr 18, 2016 9:56:30 GMT -6
This isn't your answer I have the same problem but recently I've added in a delay plugin with the reverb and that seemed to get me closer but I'm still not there . Also I get the fx where I like them then back off about a quarter turn
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Post by swurveman on Apr 18, 2016 10:44:11 GMT -6
When listening to professional mixes, there is always tons of reverb, but layered in ways that it adds to the mix depth and width, but never sounds "too much". Would you mind posting a song that you think effectively uses reverb? FWIW: I think there is a skill/art to EQ'ing reverb and you better have a room that is really translating the reverb vs the mix room's reverb sound and the mixe's reverbs. That's one thing that is not talked a lot about: What's the ideal reverb of a control room for mixing artificial reverb and previously recorded room reverb? One thing that surprised me about the CLA mix I bought was that he only used reverb on snare/vocals. Of course he used room mics for drums and his guitars could have been stems that had room sounds in them as well.
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Post by indiehouse on Apr 18, 2016 11:34:46 GMT -6
Funny, I was just going to start a reverb thread. I came across this video and it got me thinking about reverb techniques in a new way. I was going to ask to see if this a standard practice, or is this guy way off base?
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Post by NoFilterChuck on Apr 18, 2016 11:43:20 GMT -6
there's a great video on PureMix that details using 3 verbs together: an Office (pushes the sound away from right in front of your face to a few feet back), a plate (gives the sound front-to-back depth), and a hall (gives the sound height). Granted, I'm not a big fan of Fab's mixes (he definitely ain't a justin niebank or paul 'salvo' salveson), so ymmv.
Usually for the office, he'll pull up the UAD CS-1 set to the default setting (disable everything but the reflector engine). for the Plate, it's an EMT140 and for the hall, he went with some Sonnox verb.
It's effective if you can do it right.
I would really like to learn how those guys I named above make it sound like the dynamic range on every instrument has like 3db. Seriously, it's like even tho a drum fill might be performed super quiet (like brushes playing a cymbal roll), it's just as loud coming out of the speakers as another phrase that was played FFF by the drums. How do they do that? It's definitely not compression because it sounds like they just set the levels for each musical phrase (not each track) so they sit between -3 and -6 on an RMS meter or something... I don't know... I can't figure it out, but I want to know how they do it.
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Post by svart on Apr 18, 2016 13:25:22 GMT -6
Funny, I was just going to start a reverb thread. I came across this video and it got me thinking about reverb techniques in a new way. I was going to ask to see if this a standard practice, or is this guy way off base? I sat here listening to this whole thing while working.. Long story shortened: Short reverb, then 128th delay into longer reverb.
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Post by indiehouse on Apr 18, 2016 13:45:10 GMT -6
Funny, I was just going to start a reverb thread. I came across this video and it got me thinking about reverb techniques in a new way. I was going to ask to see if this a standard practice, or is this guy way off base? I sat here listening to this whole thing while working.. Long story shortened: Short reverb, then 128th delay into longer reverb. Yeah, basically he's layering reverbs. He starts with one that is nothing but early reflections, right? He describes it as pulling the lead vocal out in front of the speakers by using very short early reflections, no decay or predelay. Then, using second and third reverb sends to layer depth, rolling off highs and lows to achieve deeper layers. The way he was describing and visually representing layers made sense. Just wondering if this is the way it's done, or does this seem wacky? Hard to tell on the net these days. The vocal track he was using sounded very weird to me.
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Post by jazznoise on Apr 18, 2016 15:33:20 GMT -6
I think reverb choice is really heavily tied to the recording style, and while modern production has grown to fight it I don't think it has succeeded. There's always some of the original room on the kit, and putting some long digital reverb on all the drums just gives room sound + long verb, it doesn't change the space in as linear a manner as people thought would.
A good mix uses delay and reverb sounds that work well, but also provide some contrast. I'll often have a short mono verb (Plate or room), a longer stereo reverb (usually plate) and then one more coloured like a spring. I'll have a few delays running and they'll usually feed into those reverbs at different points. I like to change it up.
But I also like the option of plenty of the original room sound for the source recordings. I'll even take room mics for vocals.
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Post by mrholmes on Apr 18, 2016 17:13:50 GMT -6
So I feel like I have a handle on a lot of aspects of mixing, but one thing that constantly eludes my attempts at mastery is reverb.. I just can't seem to get reverb to sound professional when I mix. I either use too much, too little, or it just sounds "wrong". When listening to professional mixes, there is always tons of reverb, but layered in ways that it adds to the mix depth and width, but never sounds "too much". When I try, it sounds, well.. Pretty much the opposite. I don't think it's a matter of reverb quality, but of my knowledge of how to use reverb correctly. Anyone have any tips, suggestions or starting points? noah shain ? Mainly I have tons of trouble with lead vocals and also that subtle reverb that most modern mixes have on the whole mix.. Its a matter of all timing factors of a reverb unit. It starts with the pre-delay and all other factors which have to do with timing. Some Lexicon Plate-Algos have L <-> R delay times too, they sometimes have the option to choose the modulation time as well. To make a long story short. IMO good reverb programming makes the reverb sit in the mix because its in time with the music. It does not overlaps other events in the mix, nor does it wash out or starts to loosen the image; at least with the Lexicon I love to go beyond whats good, and it sounds 80s alike. Last week I did mix a pop ballad and they wanted to have tons of reverb on the LV. We did choose a full half note as pre-delay... and we all smiled because it was 80s alike... Anyway this app here is magic in doing all the math you need for reverb programming... I love it. itunes.apple.com/us/app/musicmath-touch-music-calculator/id381525762?mt=8Most people tend to use presets and this can sound, depending on the stile of music, not so great. A reverb is not always set and forget, it needs some work before you start to forget it.
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Post by swurveman on Apr 18, 2016 18:54:29 GMT -6
I sat here listening to this whole thing while working.. Long story shortened: Short reverb, then 128th delay into longer reverb. Yeah, basically he's layering reverbs. He starts with one that is nothing but early reflections, right? He describes it as pulling the lead vocal out in front of the speakers by using very short early reflections, no decay or predelay. Then, using second and third reverb sends to layer depth, rolling off highs and lows to achieve deeper layers. The way he was describing and visually representing layers made sense. Just wondering if this is the way it's done, or does this seem wacky? Hard to tell on the net these days. The vocal track he was using sounded very weird to me. I thought it was interesting how he used the slapback and longer pingpong delay feeding the plate, frequency band limiting and pan narrowing both delays and using compression to control them. However, I agree the vocal sounded like it was a completely different space from the electric piano and it didn't seem like there was a congealed "sound" at all.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2016 23:08:19 GMT -6
FWIW
I find I can get verbs to sit a lot better when I put distortion on the return. VTM, VCC, VMP and Waves MPX in more extreme settings seem to really do this for me, as does filtering the return but that can really depend what it's for. The distortion gives the verb some life and helps park it right where it needs to be.
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Post by zsarbomba on Apr 19, 2016 1:44:51 GMT -6
Is not recording with some real reflection the key? Then enhance with artificial reverb to luster up the real ambiance captured?
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Post by svart on Apr 19, 2016 9:03:58 GMT -6
Is not recording with some real reflection the key? Then enhance with artificial reverb to luster up the real ambiance captured? I think it depends on the general tone of the real reflections. Case in point: About a month ago I was contracted to record a band in an all-at-once fashion in my studio. Time was taken to balance baffling between the amps and drums so that no bleed was too great into any mic, but still maintained a somewhat cohesiveness. When it came time to do vocals, the producer informed me that vocals would be done elsewhere. And by elsewhere I mean a room in his house. An untreated room, without soundproofing. The vocal tracks I got were so full of comb filtering from the room being small and untreated, some bleed from the headphones, and from the monitors that the producer were using in the same room.. Plus the added leafblower in the background, and cars honking.. But I digress.. The vocal tracks were an absolute mess of noise and bleed, hollow sounding, and overall sounded like they were recorded in a closet, and nothing like the rest of the tracks at all. Completely different and incompatible levels of recording quality. When I brought these issues to his attention, I was told that I was being too uptight and that the room tone was intentional.. (A very common excuse I hear when I point out problems in tracks) So there you have it.. A case of real reflection not being useful at all. Had these vocals been done in a real, tuned studio environment, they would have been great I'm sure. In any case, I contacted the band, who also voiced their disappointment with the vocal quality (and direction of the whole process), and we scheduled time to redo the vocals at my place. So I think wanting reflections is relative to the quality of the reflections, the tone, and the general direction of the production.
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Post by svart on Apr 19, 2016 9:10:30 GMT -6
Overall, I think the thread has veered into a 30,000 foot view, when I really wanted more nuts-n-bolts discussion.. More like the video Indiehouse posted.
Anyone have more opinions on how to choose verbs and delays for their qualities, and then how to layer them appropriately?
One of my issues is that I believe that we have too many options to choose from. I, personally, have a hard time choosing a long plate over a short room, etc. I hear the differences, but when you add some delay, they start sounding similar to my ears, etc.
Overall, I hear very similar types of reverb/ambience/delay on most radio songs, but very little in the way of information on how to obtain these tones, other than the generic "layers" description.
It seems that most forums/posts go into great detail about the gear, arguments about which preamp is right, etc, but reverb usage is still black magic to most people.
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Post by svart on Apr 19, 2016 9:13:23 GMT -6
When listening to professional mixes, there is always tons of reverb, but layered in ways that it adds to the mix depth and width, but never sounds "too much". Would you mind posting a song that you think effectively uses reverb? FWIW: I think there is a skill/art to EQ'ing reverb and you better have a room that is really translating the reverb vs the mix room's reverb sound and the mixe's reverbs. That's one thing that is not talked a lot about: What's the ideal reverb of a control room for mixing artificial reverb and previously recorded room reverb? One thing that surprised me about the CLA mix I bought was that he only used reverb on snare/vocals. Of course he used room mics for drums and his guitars could have been stems that had room sounds in them as well. I don't have a specific one in mind, but pretty much any song on the pop stations has this type of tone going on. It's a lush and deep reverb/delay/ambience, but still clear enough that everything else works. I imagine a very fluffy pillow with a cat sleeping on it. The pillow is so fluffy that the cat has sunk into it, and is all warm with the pillow cradling it and forming around the cat. The cat is the instrumentation/vocals, and the pillow is the reverb sort-of enveloping it.
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Post by joseph on Apr 19, 2016 11:02:47 GMT -6
Read thethrillfactor's posts on GS. He is fx guru, and very specific.
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Post by noah shain on Apr 19, 2016 11:11:59 GMT -6
So I feel like I have a handle on a lot of aspects of mixing, but one thing that constantly eludes my attempts at mastery is reverb.. I just can't seem to get reverb to sound professional when I mix. I either use too much, too little, or it just sounds "wrong". When listening to professional mixes, there is always tons of reverb, but layered in ways that it adds to the mix depth and width, but never sounds "too much". When I try, it sounds, well.. Pretty much the opposite. I don't think it's a matter of reverb quality, but of my knowledge of how to use reverb correctly. Anyone have any tips, suggestions or starting points? noah shain? Mainly I have tons of trouble with lead vocals and also that subtle reverb that most modern mixes have on the whole mix.. Man, reverb is funny. I don't have a lot of theories about it. I don't even think about it much. For my big showcase lead vocal verb I use either altiverb or Valhalla vintage. I always use a stereo delay plug before it with the mix set to somewhere around 50% and delay I set to taste. I kinda just cycle through the presets I've saved but it's like, "plate? Nah...Lexicon 480. That don't sound right, let's try AMS. It needs a little mod. Cool, that's right. Kill a little low...roll off the top...wait, I like the top, lets filter the source and let the reverb have air. Good. Next." I'll always have a really short thing with lots of early reflections. I like RVerb for that. My preset is called My Small Room. Lately I've been fooling with Valhalla Room for that one. I also always have some gigantic modulated thing open and ride the send to it to lengthen or enhance certain notes or note transitions. Sometimes that big one has an 8th or 1/4 note delay before it set at 10% with lots of feedback. If it's a dense mix I probably take lots of low end out of the reverb. Some of the Valhalla room spaces are cool for small early reflection stuff but I have a few altiverb rooms I like too. All my reverb plugs have my saved presets in em and usually one of those will work. I also have a few cruddy springs and Tandy/sansui stuff I use. Color stuff. Hardware. I don't know if there's anything helpful there...
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Post by noah shain on Apr 19, 2016 11:20:10 GMT -6
Probably worth adding that I ALWAYS have a few delays going too. They're as big a part of the reverb as the reverb is. 1. dark 1/4 note mono delay with long feedback. 2. Thin, filtered 1/8 note delay with long repeats. 3. Big stereo 1/8 note delay with feedback 4. Big stereo 1/4 note delay with feedback and some kind of mod or evolving filter 5. Classic mono slap 6. Super short, super wide delay, no feedback. Like 1/32 note or 1/64 note. 7. Stereo spreader thing like little microshift or doubler 4. One side pitched up a couple cents, the other side down. Gentle mod. The old eventide trick. Only lead vocals here. 8. Another spreader thing. Thinner. For BG Vox and other stuff I wanna push outside the speakers.
All my mixes have some amount of those time based effects on things to varying degrees. I think that stuff may play a role in getting big bad ass reverb sounds.
2 cents
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Post by NoFilterChuck on Apr 19, 2016 11:57:08 GMT -6
Is not recording with some real reflection the key? Then enhance with artificial reverb to luster up the real ambiance captured? When it came time to do vocals, the producer informed me that vocals would be done elsewhere. And by elsewhere I mean a room in his house. An untreated room, without soundproofing. The vocal tracks I got were so full of comb filtering from the room being small and untreated, some bleed from the headphones, and from the monitors that the producer were using in the same room.. Plus the added leafblower in the background, and cars honking.. But I digress.. In any case, I contacted the band, who also voiced their disappointment with the vocal quality (and direction of the whole process), and we scheduled time to redo the vocals at my place. When you get contracted like this, can't you just say "cut the vocals here or I'm not going to engineer the record"? And then if they complain, show them some recordings of vocals recorded in poor acoustic settings compared to vocals recorded at your spot. If I were in your shoes, I would definitely say that I wasn't interested in the project if they weren't going to cut everything at my studio. If they start whining about the added price, you can tell them it's not about the money, it's about quality control and saving money by not having to redo parts that are cut in sub-par conditions. Sorry if my post sounds naive. I don't know what your studio is like, only that you have a day job and don't depend solely on studio work to keep the lights on. Sorry if my post sounds naive. I don't know what your studio is like, only that you have a day job and don't depend solely on studio work to keep the lights on. So, it seems like you can kinda pick and choose the projects choose to work on from my view...
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Post by svart on Apr 19, 2016 12:11:51 GMT -6
When it came time to do vocals, the producer informed me that vocals would be done elsewhere. And by elsewhere I mean a room in his house. An untreated room, without soundproofing. The vocal tracks I got were so full of comb filtering from the room being small and untreated, some bleed from the headphones, and from the monitors that the producer were using in the same room.. Plus the added leafblower in the background, and cars honking.. But I digress.. In any case, I contacted the band, who also voiced their disappointment with the vocal quality (and direction of the whole process), and we scheduled time to redo the vocals at my place. When you get contracted like this, can't you just say "cut the vocals here or I'm not going to engineer the record"? And then if they complain, show them some recordings of vocals recorded in poor acoustic settings compared to vocals recorded at your spot. If I were in your shoes, I would definitely say that I wasn't interested in the project if they weren't going to cut everything at my studio. If they start whining about the added price, you can tell them it's not about the money, it's about quality control and saving money by not having to redo parts that are cut in sub-par conditions. Sorry if my post sounds naive. I don't know what your studio is like, only that you have a day job and don't depend solely on studio work to keep the lights on. Sorry if my post sounds naive. I don't know what your studio is like, only that you have a day job and don't depend solely on studio work to keep the lights on. So, it seems like you can kinda pick and choose the projects choose to work on from my view... Very true. The short story was that when I accepted the project, it was supposed to be done completely at my place, and doing the vocals elsewhere was a decision the producer made in secret, and didn't mention until the rest was done. I'm not sure why it was chosen to do it this way, and I didn't really ask. Honestly, if they had turned out OK, then it would have been less for me to do for the money. Since I ended up doing them in the end, I only really came full circle. I just thought the blurb about how the producer either couldn't hear or refused to hear the room reflections trashing the vocals was relevant.
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Post by swurveman on Apr 19, 2016 12:52:04 GMT -6
Would you mind posting a song that you think effectively uses reverb? FWIW: I think there is a skill/art to EQ'ing reverb and you better have a room that is really translating the reverb vs the mix room's reverb sound and the mixe's reverbs. That's one thing that is not talked a lot about: What's the ideal reverb of a control room for mixing artificial reverb and previously recorded room reverb? One thing that surprised me about the CLA mix I bought was that he only used reverb on snare/vocals. Of course he used room mics for drums and his guitars could have been stems that had room sounds in them as well. I don't have a specific one in mind, but pretty much any song on the pop stations has this type of tone going on. It's a lush and deep reverb/delay/ambience, but still clear enough that everything else works. I imagine a very fluffy pillow with a cat sleeping on it. The pillow is so fluffy that the cat has sunk into it, and is all warm with the pillow cradling it and forming around the cat. The cat is the instrumentation/vocals, and the pillow is the reverb sort-of enveloping it. Good analogy. I look at all the reverbs (plates/rooms/halls) and delays (slapback/.....th note/modulated/feedback etc.) being used today and wonder how good engineers create that pillow/integrated "tone". "Out of Time" has a "tone" and I doubt that they did near what people are doing today. Today, it is much more complex and I don't think many people do it very well, including me.
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Post by jazznoise on Apr 19, 2016 14:48:00 GMT -6
Small note on what Noah was saying - how do you not hate the shit out of Microshifters? Every time I do it I turn it down so low I can't hear it or I turn it off. It always sounds bad to me.
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Post by joseph on Apr 19, 2016 16:08:11 GMT -6
A good i.e. eventide style microshifter will let you tweak the cents detuning and/or highpass the wet signal (like soundtoys microshift does) so you can avoid too much of the obvious chorusing effect.
Mixed in barely perceptibly with other stereo or panned delays can be nice to push a vocal back and make it less stuck down the middle, without resorting to reverb. You just have to be careful. But I personally don't usually use pitched delays on acoustic guitar, for example, nor do I like chorused reverbs for most things.
Pitch shifters can sound pretty awesome on drums and room mics though.
See Back in Black, Low, or one of Barresi's Melvins records.
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ericn
Temp
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Post by ericn on Apr 19, 2016 18:54:03 GMT -6
So I feel like I have a handle on a lot of aspects of mixing, but one thing that constantly eludes my attempts at mastery is reverb.. I just can't seem to get reverb to sound professional when I mix. I either use too much, too little, or it just sounds "wrong". When listening to professional mixes, there is always tons of reverb, but layered in ways that it adds to the mix depth and width, but never sounds "too much". When I try, it sounds, well.. Pretty much the opposite. I don't think it's a matter of reverb quality, but of my knowledge of how to use reverb correctly. Anyone have any tips, suggestions or starting points? noah shain? Mainly I have tons of trouble with lead vocals and also that subtle reverb that most modern mixes have on the whole mix.. Man, reverb is funny. I don't have a lot of theories about it. I don't even think about it much. For my big showcase lead vocal verb I use either altiverb or Valhalla vintage. I always use a stereo delay plug before it with the mix set to somewhere around 50% and delay I set to taste. I kinda just cycle through the presets I've saved but it's like, "plate? Nah...Lexicon 480. That don't sound right, let's try AMS. It needs a little mod. Cool, that's right. Kill a little low...roll off the top...wait, I like the top, lets filter the source and let the reverb have air. Good. Next." I'll always have a really short thing with lots of early reflections. I like RVerb for that. My preset is called My Small Room. Lately I've been fooling with Valhalla Room for that one. I also always have some gigantic modulated thing open and ride the send to it to lengthen or enhance certain notes or note transitions. Sometimes that big one has an 8th or 1/4 note delay before it set at 10% with lots of feedback. If it's a dense mix I probably take lots of low end out of the reverb. Some of the Valhalla room spaces are cool for small early reflection stuff but I have a few altiverb rooms I like too. All my reverb plugs have my saved presets in em and usually one of those will work. I also have a few cruddy springs and Tandy/sansui stuff I use. Color stuff. Hardware. I don't know if there's anything helpful there... [ And I was going to say , I page through my favorites and see what fits! But you put it so much better.
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Post by longscale on Apr 19, 2016 19:01:28 GMT -6
noah shain had a bunch of specific info, a few things that stuck out as items that I found helped me. I'll admit however this is something I still puzzle over and struggle with to do what I want and get sounds like what I hear from other people.
First was EQ. Once I figured out I could heavily EQ my returns I started to make more progress. With EQ I'm able to get the reverb to disappear a bit more and become more of a pillow than a rock canyon. The other EQ trick noah mentioned is to EQ/filter the source and let the reverb run full spectrum. Depends on the sound you are after. But I was much happier with my reverbs when I started doing simple things to them with EQ. I tend to roll off quite a bit of lows and highs if I want something to just form a bit of room around the vocal and not actually stick out as a reverb.
I also tend to layer two or three reverbs. I nearly always run a plate on the vocal. Unless I'm going for a very live plate sound I typically use the plate to thicken things a bit. Usually you can't really hear it much but it adds some tone and weight. Next I'll pick a room, I lean toward small to medium room sizes, but obviously if I want a vocal in a giant space that can change. I'll use the room to help set the environment. I'll tend to also send a few key melody elements (usually acoustic guitars, upright bass in what I'm doing) to this same room. I tend to EQ both the plate and the room a bit - dropping low end and depending if I want light or dark I'll be heavy handed on the highs as well. I'll also layer a hall into this mixture as well occasionally.
As for level of all of this - that is to taste. Typically if I don't want to hate it later I'll do the bring it up until I can hear it and then drop it back a bit trick. I'll also put on some headphones and listen. For me I hear reverb better in the headphones, so I typically use them to help set my levels at the start and then quickly switch to my monitors once I've established my rough baseline of what I know is not too loud. Using other references (car, friends stereo...) is another way to check your levels. If you do that enough you quickly get the hang of what is too much and what is just right at least to your own personal preference. If you are trying to sound match some other recording then I'll bring that up and listen, and compare my results, usually I do that by just focusing on one small section of a piece.
I'll also skip through presets and find something close and tweak it from there to make it work. However I have spent considerable time messing around with a few reverb plugin's trying to wrap my head around what is going on with all the controls. For me the plugin that seemed to click was the Exponential Audio stuff. I like and use both R2 and Phoenix quite a bit. I like their sounds, and I like the UI. I especially enjoy messing around with the early reflections, and to be able to visually see the representation just clicked in my head for some reason.
Now Delays - man I struggle with them and I know many people use them all the time and they do it very well. noah had quite the list of delays in his post. I struggle with anything past the odd slap. ;-)
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