I’m on W7 and running v 2.1.1 of Audacity - which I accept is probably a very old version now, but it suits my needs and does everything I want.
Only today, I don’t appear to be able to get any affect from the reverb option. The audio is of a man speaking. It’s nice and clear and was recorded direct into Audacity from a youtube clip. When I apply the reverb effect I do see the profile of the recording change slightly, but when I play it there’s absolutely no audible change at all. Even if I use the ‘repeat reverb’ option, there’s still no change. I have room size set to max.
I’ve used the effect dozens of times in the last week or so, and it’s always worked up until now.
Am I missing something? Are only certain types of audio suitable for a reverb effect?
What other settings are you using? Try some “higher” settings.
Are only certain types of audio suitable for a reverb effect?
No, reverb works on everything. The only time you might not notice it is if there is already some reverb and/or if you use a very small amount of reverb.
running v 2.1.1 of Audacity
It’s easier to get help if you keep up to date. Your reverb effect may be different from the current version… I don’t know…
I don’t think other settings or not being up to date was the problem. I continued to experiment with other recording in the same session and was able to get the reverb effect as you’d expect.
Oddly, it was just with this one recording I couldn’t detect any difference.
I know, this was a long time ago. But I believe I have the answer to your problem. It’s quite simple, really. It all comes down to what type of microphone was used to record the audio. In your case, what happened is that the microphone used outputs a mono channel, but the audio interface used during recording took that mono channel, inverted it, and made a stereo track using both the original and inverted mono channels. The only problem with this is that when you import this data into a DAW, such as Audacity, reverb cannot possibly have any effect on it unless your stereo width is set to zero. Most people keep the stereo width of their reverb effect on 100%, because it usually sounds best that way, depending on the application. However, this does NOT work with a scenario such as I just described, when the stereo channel is made up of an audio track and its inverted counterpart. I bet you dollars to donuts, you can test my theory one of two ways: Either split the track from stereo to mono, and then try the reverb effect on either one of the mono tracks, OR put the stereo width of the reverb all the way down to zero (even if you turn it down to 1%, nothing will happen still, it has to be at zero). I guarantee you will immediately get results. So, the ultimate fix? Well, there are several things you could do to get the desired effect, but probably the easiest would be to simply split the track to mono, add one millisecond to one of the tracks, remake the stereo track, and then adjust the left/right pan to make up for the inevitable ‘lean’ to one side or the other as a result of the added time. This always works for me, and I’m sure it will also work for you.