Glossary → Audio engineering
Audio engineering

Reverb

Reverb is the persistence of sound as it reflects around a space — added intentionally for music, fought constantly in speech recording.

Roomy speech sounds amateur and transcribes worse; treatment (soft furnishings, close miking) prevents what dereverberation tools can only partially remove. If you can clearly hear the room when you clap, the mic can too.

Related terms

DereverberationDereverberation removes room echo from recordings, estimating and subtracting the reflected sound to bring the… Room toneRoom tone is the 'silence' of a recording space — its constant ambient character — deliberately recorded so ed… Proximity effectProximity effect is the bass boost directional microphones add as the source gets close — the 'radio voice' of…

Frequently asked

What is Reverb?

Reverb is the persistence of sound as it reflects around a space — added intentionally for music, fought constantly in speech recording.

Why does Reverb matter?

Roomy speech sounds amateur and transcribes worse; treatment (soft furnishings, close miking) prevents what dereverberation tools can only partially remove. If you can clearly hear the room when you clap, the mic can too.

What terms are related to Reverb?

Closely related concepts: Dereverberation, Room tone, Proximity effect — each has its own entry in this glossary.