The case for delay after reverb for studio recording. Please add your experiences.

[Orvillain]

Lot of cats and ways to skin them.

 

[Mongillo19]

Look what you've done @JiveTurkey

 

[DLC86]

An FDN isn't inherently an LTI. It would not be an LTI if the feedback matrix or gains are modulated over time; which is common in reverb design, and you probably would struggle to find an FDN based reverb that didn't do that.

As I said I don't know how those work exactly, but what time are you referring to when saying "modulated over time"? Absolute time (so like an lfo attached to the level of each delay line) or the time over which the gain/feedback of each delay line is attenuated for each sample to create a given decay time? Cuz the latter would be still LTI and no different than what happens in the time domain of an IR... unless that gets changed in each sample somehow.

You should probably checkout some reverb algorithm designs, because more or less, your assertion is kind of laboratory test conditions. But in the real world, a lot of your assumptions fall apart instantly.

Do you know if Fractal reverbs use FDN? Cuz, as I said, they null perfectly when turning off distortion/modulation/compander/pitch shifting.
And what you mean exactly by "real world"?

I hear significant differences in your clips. As to whether I could specifically tell you what the order was in each of them, I can't. There is not enough context. Much in the same way I can tell you that a real amp versus Kemper profile has differences in the sonics, but I might not be able to tell you which is which.

The fact that differences are observable is enough to show that the differences are important.

There are "significant" differences but you're not able to tell which is which? This is not a comparison between some arbitrary amp profiles you know nothing about, @MirrorProfiles described quite accurately what happens when the modulation is applied after the reverb and it is quite evident in his sample.
So if these differences are "significant" to you, you should be able to tell which is which pretty easily just like in his sample, otherwise the difference is negligible and you've been arguing over my statement just for the sake of grinding my glans.

 

[riffy]

I will usually use either a multi tap delay or at least a ping-pong delay. To my ears, it does make a difference if it is before or after reverb. I prefer it before reverb when I decide to use reverb.

I tend to go a little overboard with reverb, and I’ve really had to cut back on it lately because it just muddies up the solo sounds, at least in my ears. It seems like my low mids and mid range just get Tubby and have no definition.

 

[DLC86]

IMO the modulation was more than wide enough in your examples but the reverb tail needs to be sufficiently long and/or loud to hear the modulation affecting it.

The reverb was set with mix at 50% and input gain at 50%, so roughly 6dB lower than dry signal, louder than what I'd tipically use if I'm not looking for an ambient tone.
Length was set to 3 seconds, so not very long but not short either... I'd say a good middle ground.
It seems you need specific settings to be able to discern it?

Here we go with the sweeping generalisations again. I think again, it just depends. I’d imagine more often than not the results they get and use are as a result of putting the pedals in a specific order. I’d imagine most people do pay attention to it, even if it doesn’t always make a noticeable difference.

I'd imagine most people put the reverb after instead cuz that's always been considered the "right" order and they imagine there's a difference even when there's none. Not everyone is obsessed with little details in their tone (and I'm saying it as someone who IS obsessed).

Similarly, IR’s might be good enough or even indistinguishable for a lot of reverb uses (at certain settings), but that doesn’t mean they don’t usually sound like ass. and similarly, I want delay to have non linear behaviours, and not to be reduced down to something without quirks. Quite often the reason we like particular bits of gear is because of what they do when they’re pushed near their limits and they show off some kind of unique/distinctive character.

Either way - I’m not seeing a strong case for the benefit of being indifferent to the order of reverb and delay. It matters, it makes a difference (even if you can’t always hear it).

You're telling that to someone who loves modulation and dirt in delays and usually even prefers to run them before the amp for that reason. But that has little to do with the perceivability of the difference between pre or post reverb, and aknowledging when the difference is minuscule doesn't mean one should be indifferent to the order either, quite the opposite actually. Here's a little background story:

I decided to make that video cuz, during a live stream with Marco, I said that in some cases it's better to run the delay after the reverb, for example when using a ping pong or panning delay, cuz reverbs are "mono in" on the Fractal and you'll always hear the reverb on the repeats in the center if you put the delay before it.
Another example is the 2290 which has L and R channels out of phase and the repeats won't produce any reverb if it is placed before, it's just like running them in parallel.

A lot of people in the chat simply could not accept this statement and wrote that putting the delay after the reverb is unnatural and sounds bad, so I wanted to prove them that in most cases the difference in tone given by the order is negligible and putting them the other way around can have far more important advantages in those cases.

After I made the video a bunch of those people wrote me to tell me they tried for the first time to invert the order and that I was right, with their typical setting they couldn't hear the difference but finally could make the reverb follow a ping pong delay or work properly with a 2290.
Other people instead (probably the majority) still insisted on saying they heard a difference even in cases where both blocks were LTI and nulled perfectly.
You just can't win against the power of suggestion