Reverb Subtleties

Hello. I am attempting to get a more subtle sense of reverberation on my tracks. I love the spring emulation here but sometimes I want something much subtle. I have had some success getting to what I would like to achieve using the spring as a master fx and playing around the with the master/compressor but like a lot on the op-1 it’s a lot trial and error that can be replicated later on; I never what exactly I am doing. I just want something lighter with less character of the spring. I remember getting somewhere with Grid delay oddly enough but maybe it was my imagination.

Anyone. have any ideas or tips for reverb on the op-1 generally speaking?


You may try to tweak a classical delay to get close…


One of the characteristic of the reverb is to give some space, i.e. to diffuse the sound in the stereo.
As OP-1 tracks are pure mono, it’s rather complicated to get close to an acceptable reverb to one track only…

I find the Grid isn’t so bad, maybe a bit dependant of the sound you inject in input :slight_smile:

Grid and Phone effects still kind of baffle me, though not as much so as DNA synth. I find it tough to get anything usable from them, but I’m probably just doing it wrong.

I think it would be great to have a “recipe” thread where folks break down synth engines, effects, maybe even LFO and compressor parameters for their favorite sounds :wink:

Well, they have their own use. Maybe not to play some piano-like melodies, it’s all :slight_smile:

DNA is a good start to create some hats or some wind.
Phone is such a killer FX on a drum pattern ! I really like this. Take the time to learn what each knob does and you’ll get some really nice discoveries.
Grid is noiser, kind of a comb filter delay, but you can achieve some unique material for percussion as well, with clear harmonics, or just totally deform a nice piano sequence :smiley:

Turn all the reverb settings down to zero. turn orange up a little and start tweaking. the initial Reverb patch is very wide open.

@lyingdalai totally agree.


grid makes some wonderful noise/percussion.
I like how phone can sometimes be coaxed into spitting out bass lines. Ill have to try DNA for hats and noise.
I mostly just ignore it.

Another option for Reverb is Delay. Set time to very fast and use it as tune. feedback as decay and you have a pseudo reverb.

I’ll have to try DNA for hats. I’ve seen a video where Thomas White coaxes some subtler tones out of it, but in all my tweaking I can’t find anything pleasant. It’s supposedly slightly different on each device… maybe my DNA is only capable of flat out noise :wink:

Ahah right, it was said somewhere that each DNA synth is unique because based on the serial number of the OP-1 !

I so like this idea :smiley:

Anyway… Noise is noise ^^

BTW… Never tried the LFO on DNA ! Should give some unexpected result !!
But Tombola is rather interesting as you can get some off-grid bleeps out of it :slight_smile:

You can have nice reverbs with CWO filter too, but shorter ones

Since you can “fake” reverb with a short delay, you can make one with CWO, Phone, Grid and Delay in addition to Spring itself. Part of the trick is to find the delay parameter, turn it all the way down and slowly increase the delay until you get the right “space”. Another part of the trick is to make effects non-destructive.

For CWO, you probably want to dial frequency (IIRC blue knob) all the way down and put frequency decay (IIRC red knob) square in the middle. The remaining two knobs would be used to control the “size” of the reverb.

For Prone, you have to tune the effect to be in the same octave as your sound (blue knob, middle of the second quadrant on the dial) and set mixer (red) to around 21-25, then probably dial the bit crusher (white) all the way up. Green knob controls the delay.

For Grid, you will need to dial the input/mixer (red) all the way down to 2 or 4 bars. It’s a very harsh effect, so the only way (I found) to make a reverb out of it is to make it almost imperceptible. Dial feedback (white) to something in the range of 60-90. Now turn delay (green) and tone+delay (blue) all the way down and increase them to change the tone and space. But honestly, I’m still struggling to find really good usages for Grid in general.

For Delay, dial space/delay parameter (blue) all the way down, set input (red) to 30-50, then dial speed (green) to something around 60. Feedback (white) will control the sense of spaciousness and subtle changed in speed (green) will drastically affect the character of the reverb. I think that happens because the delayed sound interfered with the original one. If you want to make it more spacey and interesting, connect Value LFO to speed param (green) and vary it by couple of points with very low speed. It produces a kind of flanger sound. Similar effects can be produced by animating other… uh, effects either by LFO or by their dedicated params.

Finally, longer decays always help to create the sense of spaciousness and mask the harshness of all those fake delays.

You could also “manually” create a reverb by copying sound form other tracks, offsetting by a little and making it quieter.

PS: On my OP-1 DNA has some really nice melodic sounds in the uppermost octave.

Nice tips everyone!


To get more out of spring itself, I would heartily recommend experimenting with the hard panned tracks set up. Eg, pan track 3 hard left and track 4 hard right. One might think it’s a sacrifice, but it opens up gazillions possibilities too. Then record the same sound to each hard panned track with subtly different spring settings - possibly my most overused trick ever :wink:

For Spring I turn up mix and turns(green&red) to start off with ,then listen as tone and damp are turned down.Find a nice sound ,then knock back turns(green) to a really short early reflection type verb time.
Then lower mix level to quiet.
Turn off and on effect ,to get a sense of subtle contribution ,while setting mix.

Super helpful info all around!

@Gambler - I finally managed to dial in some goods with DNA because of your tip :slight_smile:

@Gambler I spent hours (literally) playing with the CWO yesterday and you’re to blame!

if you turn down delay and turn the rate to its slowest settings. cwo is a pretty beefy phaser.

Good advice here. I will add that you may experiment with the tape speed. If you record the reverb (and notes fed into it) at higher or lower tape speeds, you are essentially tuning it up or down when returning the tape speed to normal. You’ll of course have to transpose any notes up or down to be in tune with the music already recorded on tape. The endless sequencer transposes up or down the same number of keys as the +/- on the tape screen.
Also, on the topic of stereo width, you may also try detuning a synth being recorded as a mirror of one already on tape by several cents.