Reverb in the monitor mix
Some people want to hear their voice over the headphones while recording vocals. But nobody likes hearing his own voice without reverb, so they want hear reverb on it as well.
If you're using an ASIO soundcard driver (*) you can do this using the Tape Type Monitoring feature. Just load a Reverb in the vocal track and switch on the "Mon" button at the top of the screen.
A downside of this approach is that the vocals in the cans are delayed slightly because of the ASIO latency.
If you're lucky your soundcard supports direct monitoring, which means it can route the vocals to the cans without going through the software. That's cool since you now can hear the vocals without a delay.
In this scenario you can still use a Reverb effect in the track, combined with Tape Type Monitoring. The only difference is that you should turn the Reverb's Mix button all the way up, in order to avoid hearing the vocals twice.
The reverb is still delayed slightly, but that's no problem. You can turn down the Pre Delay knob a bit to compensate for this if you like.
The Reverb effect can be removed when you're finished recording.
Giel Bremmers
(*) The VistaSound driverset can do it too, but requires Windows Vista.