Originally Posted by: bbzswa777That makes perfect sense! Thanks.

That's why some of my reverb options are called Large Hall Reverb or Small Room Reverb. And I had already realized it made the amp sound more "live," I just couldn't tell why.

But if someone is actually playing in a large concert hall, wouldn't there be enough natural reverb? Or does it still sound better to actually have reverb coming out of the speakers first?

This is where reverb takes a more complicated turn down "engineer" alley. In a room while, you're practicing, you're using those reverb settings to simulate the sound of a larger room. In a recording setting, producers will use various methods to capture reverb. They will use several room mic's to capture a rooms natural reverb or... if the room doesn't have that, they will use a combination of room mics and reverb units or just use stand alone reverb units. Depending on the tone they're looking for.

For live performances though, it all depends on what the artist is going for. Obviously they'r trying to get a tone similar to something that was recroded in the studio... So dependent on that, they may have to use reverb units to overstate the size of even a concert hall. Take John Mayer for example. His Continuum album has a lot of hall reverb used throughout it... he still needs to use a reverb unit live to get the overstated tone that he is looking for... Despite the size of the venue that he is playing.

It all comes down to what your ears are hearing in that regard. You can hear the size of an empty room - Fill it up with people and it becomes harder to really hear that. It's hard to capture the tone of a single room and recreate that in any place you go... that's why we need reverb units.