Reverb on Vocals in FL Studio: How to Set Up a Send

Your vocal sounds dry and disconnected from the beat, so you throw some reverb on it. Two seconds later you sound like you're rapping in a bathroom. Sound familiar? In FL Studio, the fix is mostly about how you add the reverb. In this guide you'll set up a reverb send step by step with Fruity Reeverb 2, FL Studio's stock reverb, and learn which knobs actually matter.

Quick answer

Don't put reverb directly on your vocal track. Put it on a separate mixer track (a send). Route your vocal there with the send switch, set DRY to 0% and WET to 100% in Fruity Reeverb 2, and use the send knob to decide how much space your vocal gets. Your voice stays clear, and you can adjust the amount of reverb at any time.

Insert or send: what's the difference?

An insert is an effect that sits directly in the FX slots of your vocal track. Everything that passes through gets that effect. With reverb, you end up hunting for the right balance with a dry/wet knob, and that balance shifts as soon as you change something else in your chain.

A send is a separate mixer track with only reverb on it. Your vocal keeps going dry to the master, and you send a copy of it to the reverb track. Benefits:

• Your dry vocal stays tight and easy to understand.
• You control the amount of space with one knob.
• You can send your lead, doubles and ad-libs to the same reverb, so everything sounds like it's in the same room.
• You can EQ the reverb itself without touching your vocal.

Image-Line's own manual for Fruity Reeverb 2 also recommends setting DRY to minimum and WET to maximum when the plugin sits on a send track. That's exactly the setup below.

How to make a reverb send in FL Studio, step by step

1. Pick an empty mixer track. Open the mixer (F9) and grab an empty track next to your vocals. Give it a clear name, like "Vocal Reverb".
2. Load Fruity Reeverb 2. Click an empty FX slot on that track and choose Fruity Reeverb 2.
3. DRY to 0%, WET to 100%. This track should only play the reverb tail. The dry sound already comes from your vocal track.
4. Select your vocal track. Click the mixer track your vocal is recorded on.
5. Click the send switch on the reverb track. At the bottom of every mixer track there's a small switch (the arrow). Left-click that switch on your reverb track. Your vocal still goes to the master, and now it also sends signal to the reverb.
6. Set the send level. A small knob appears on the reverb track: that's how much vocal goes into the reverb. Start low and turn it up until you can just hear the space.
7. Repeat for doubles and ad-libs. Select each vocal track and click the same send switch. Every track has its own send level, so your ad-libs can be wetter than your lead.

The Fruity Reeverb 2 knobs that matter

Fruity Reeverb 2 has a lot of knobs, but for rap and singing these do most of the work:

DEC (decay): how long the tail rings out

This has the biggest impact on how your vocal feels. A short decay gives a small room that mainly makes your vocal feel thicker. A long decay gives a big hall: great in a quiet outro or on a held note, but in a fast verse everything starts to blur together. The key thing to listen for: is the tail of one line still ringing when the next line starts?

SIZE: how big the room is

According to Image-Line, reverb sounds most natural when room size and decay match. Small room, short decay. Big room, longer decay.

DELAY (pre-delay): space between your voice and the reverb

Pre-delay is the time between your dry voice and the moment the reverb kicks in. With a bit of pre-delay you hear the consonants of your voice clearly first, and the space follows. That's often the difference between "lots of reverb but still clear" and "everything is mush". Fruity Reeverb 2 has a tempo sync option for this knob, so you can lock the pre-delay to your beat.

L.CUT and H.CUT: EQ for the reverb itself

L.CUT removes low frequencies from the reverb. Low end in a reverb quickly makes a mix muddy, especially over a beat with a heavy 808. H.CUT and DAMP make the reverb less harsh, so your S sounds don't leave a hissy tail behind your voice.

ER and SEP

ER sets the early reflections, the first bounces off the walls. SEP sets how wide the reverb sounds in stereo. A wide reverb around a dry, centered vocal is a popular combination: the voice stays in the middle and the space wraps around it.

How to calculate pre-delay from your beat's tempo

If you'd rather set pre-delay in milliseconds yourself, you need your beat's BPM. The math is simple: 60,000 divided by the BPM is the length of one beat in milliseconds. Divide that by 4 and you have a sixteenth note.

Example: a beat at 140 BPM. 60,000 / 140 = about 429 ms per beat. A sixteenth is then about 107 ms, a thirty-second about 54 ms. Those are handy starting points to test with.

Don't know the BPM of your beat? Drop the file into the free Beat Lab and you'll see the tempo and key right away.

5 reverb mistakes on vocals

1. Judging reverb with the vocal soloed. Soloed, a little reverb easily sounds like too little. Always set your send while the beat is playing.
2. Same amount on lead and ad-libs. Your lead usually needs to stay drier and closer. Ad-libs and backing vocals can sit further back.
3. Leaving the low end in the reverb. Reverb in the low end clashes with your 808 and kick. Use L.CUT.
4. Using reverb to hide a bad recording. Reverb won't fix a take with lots of room noise or a recording that's too quiet. Fix that at the recording stage first.
5. Never switching it off. Mute the send every now and then and switch it back on. If you miss the space right away, you're in a good spot. If you barely hear a difference, it might not be doing anything useful. If the vocal suddenly sounds much clearer without it, it was too much.

Want a starting point that's ready to go?

Want to know where reverb sits in a full vocal chain, and what order to put the rest of your plugins in? Grab the free vocal chain cheat sheet: a PDF with the chain layout for FL Studio and Logic Pro, using stock plugins only.

Want to record straight into a chain that's already set up? The Frenna-Inspired Vocal Preset for FL Studio is built with FL Studio Signature stock plugins, so you don't need any extra plugins. It's a "type" preset inspired by the vocal mix style of Dutch artist Frenna, not an official product of the artist. The final sound depends on your voice and recording, so dial in the reverb for your own track there too.

FAQ

Should reverb go on an insert or a send in FL Studio?

For vocals, usually a send. Your dry voice stays clear, you can send several vocals to the same space, and you control the amount with one knob.

Why does my vocal sound twice as loud after I set up a reverb send?

Most likely DRY in Fruity Reeverb 2 isn't set to 0%. That sends a second dry copy of your vocal to the master. Set DRY to 0% and WET to 100%.

Can I do delay on a send too?

Yes, it works the same way: its own mixer track with a delay on it, dry turned off, and a send level per vocal track.

Do I need an expensive reverb plugin?

No. Fruity Reeverb 2 is a stock FL Studio plugin and has every knob you need to give your vocal space. How you set it up makes more difference than which plugin you use.