Reverse reverb for vocals

I've searched these forums and Googled stuff and I'm finding basically the same technique to add a reverse reverb effect to vocals. I'm unsuccessful at getting the reverse reverb effect to "stick" when I reverse the vocal track back to normal, the effect drops. What I'm doing: Creating a new track and inserting the lead vocal .wav file to the track. I recorded the track in a Zoom r8 but I didn't think that would matter. In this case I'm just trying to add reverse reverb to one section of the lead vocal track which I have copied and pasted (just one part of a verse) out of the original vocal track to the new track. Then I Reverse items as new take, the part of the vocal track I want to add reverse reverb to is now backwards. I'll add ReaVerb to the reversed track and crank the wet and dial back the dry to nothing. I can see the effects are attached to the track at this point, the little fx tab is green indicating there's effects on this item. Now I'll render the item: right click on "Render tracks to stereo stem tracks (and mute originals)" The track will split into 2 wavs at this point, and if I play it I can hear the reverse reverb and the vocals are in reverse. Then I'll reverse the track back to normal, but when I do this I lose the effect on the track. Somewhere here I'm missing something. All the youtube videos I've seen, when the track is reversed back, the reverse reverb effect sticks. Thanks in advance for any help on this.

You need to actually 'print' the reverb (either to the source track or as a new wet only track) then you can turn the fx off on the track, 'un-reverse' both the source and the reverb you printed from it. I think this video makes it fairly clear what's going on (albeit in protools)

the trick is to have that reverb from the reversed track only printed, as said before, and put that only reverb onto a new track and nudge that track more to the front until it fits. you can do a similar thing - which sounds more clear - with an unreversed vocal track by copying the normal vocal track and nudge the copy in front of the real vocal and of course mix that down to taste. as to hear in "whole lotta love" by led zeppelin, where that was a mistake but everyone thought that would have been an engineering trick. or: nudge the track with the vocals 1/2 to the front, put a delay onto it and set that delay to 85% wet and 15% wet. so the delayed vocals seem to be the main vocal whereas the real vocals seem to be predelay.

I think I understand. How do I "print" the reversed reverb effect (only) to a new track? (little bit of a noob here) That's definitely where I'm going wrong I think because I've tried to "glue" the reversed vocals with the reversed reverb effect, then reverse the track back again and that's when I lose the effect. I watched the above video and I think I'm doing pretty much everything the same but reversing the track back I lose the effect every time, sorry if I'm missing something there. I assume I'd print the reversed reverb effect to a new track then reverse the track back? I think I might try your other suggestion too, use an un-reversed vocal track and mix it down and slide it so it starts slightly before the original vocal track, if I understand correctly.

When I render the reversed track with the reverb effect, I'll playback the new track (I'm not playing the orginal muted track, playing the stem track) I can hear the reverse reverb and the vocals are in reverse but there's no effects on the track or the item, but I can still hear the reverse reverb and backwards vocals. It looks like the effect is "printed to the track. But as usual, when I reverse the newly created track back, the effect or reverse reverb disappears. Spit-balling, could it be an item option or a general option that I have turned off that I need to turn on or vise versa? Definitely at a loss.

Try this. -Reverse the dry source track. -Create a new track with the reverb in it and make a send from the source track to this reverb track -Set reverb to 100% wet and adjust length etc to taste -freeze or render the reverb track (this should make you a new audio item in the reverb track of just the reverb output) -shift click the reverb to disable it in the fx bin -unreverse the source track Like ashcat said, you're very close and it's hard to work out what's not working. There shouldn't be any particular settings needed as you're basically just reversing a file, generating a new file (the wet reverb output), unreversing the file and blending the 2 together. I've put the list above together off the top of my head but if I have a chance to tomorrow I'll do it myself and put up an easy to recreate recipe for you (if you've not already worked it out).

That pretty much nails it.

Just wanted to follow up on this thread and thank everyone for the input. What I concluded, the reason I couldn't get reverse reverb to work (or stick) on this specific vocal track was because I used a vocal effects processor (foot pedal) when I recorded the track originally. But I recorded it through a Zoom r8 recorder and not directly into Reaper, so I think reverb was part of the original .wav file when I imported it into Reaper. I can't change or tweak that reverb since it's part of the original .wav file. Long story short, I recorded another vocal track, dry this time, through the Zoom r8 again, and now the reverse reverb sticks when I render the track and reverse the vocal track back, forward. What I learned is record vocals dry and pile on the effects later with Reaper.