So I’m recording someone who’s doing standup comedy in our studio, and he wants us to add crowd noise and ambience to his vocals to simulate what it would sound like if it were a genuine live comedy album. I’m curious as to what reverb settings would yield the best results as far as coloring the talking, and what kind of delays I could use. I’m gonna use an SM-58 Beta because those are pretty standard in those types of scenarios, but I’d like an opinion on how exactly to fake this. I’ve been playing around with Valhalla and the most convincing thing I can come up with is if I turn the depth down pretty low and the predelay is really short.
This would be a good time to use a good room impulse. An actual room impulse would work better than a standalone hardware unit or general plug-in.
Create one myself?
Well if you can, then sure, but there is no shortage of great room reverb impulses out there in internet land. And since they’re made from real rooms, they almost always sound better than a bunch of 1s and 0s.
Cool, I wasn’t sure what you meant at first, but I got you. I’ll have to find a theatre one, maybe 400 people max capacity?
I’m sure you can find something about the size you’d want. But then you can fine tune it with the parameters of the convolution host. Like if you use the old standard SIR plug, you can fine tune the impulse file to suit your needs.
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If you (DTJ) are using Reaper, ReaVerb could work too (as a convolution host) if you don’t have SIR.
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I assume this is audio recorded and not video recorded?
I’ve done a few of these…one was for an local improv theater promo commercial, a couple others were short samples for radio adds. I wouldn’t go overkill trying to get this reverb perfect, because the audience samples that you insert are a lot more important. Probably best to mimic an intimate club vs a large arena…or everyone’s gonna know its fake. To answer your question about the verb settings, I’d pay close attention to the low pass roll-off, and keep the tail times about proportionate to any tails on your applause/laughter samples. If you want to simulate someone sitting right in the middle a medium size club, getting the pre-delay correct will help.
Yeah, he wants to circumvent performing in the brutal clubs and go straight to fame from the an album. It’s unlikely.
My feelings exactly. It’s not going to be believable if it sounds like an unknown is performing at a football stadium.
Problem with room convolution verbs is they represent an empty room.
Don’t know but my guess is the reverb would be different if the room they’d used had been packed with relatively soft and sound absorbent people.
But, go the way you go, and good luck. 
That’s true. I need to find a bar and tell everyone to shut up, and then get an impulse.
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Honestly I doubt you’d need to put a huge amount of effort into this… in comedy, there’s noplace to hide from the material. If it’s good material and the listener is laughing, anything close reverb-wise won’t kill the immersion. But if the material is lousy, no amount of reverb tweaking will matter! 
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Never seen that one before. But you’re right, the general public will probably be easily fooled by most anything.
Does it really? I learn something new about reaper every day.
Yes it does. Reverbs, cab impulses, anything.
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Check out the Bricasti impulses for use in ReaVerb - really very cool:
http://www.samplicity.com/bricasti-m7-impulse-responses/
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I’m going to have to. Nice.
Got to play with it, finally dialing in a sound that I really like. Hey, @Jonathan. Do you know where I can get surplus audience laughing/applauding samples?
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Ha ha ha ha. Ho ho ho ho. He he he he.
For best results, get a small group into your recording spot and make them. Then bill the guy for the time.