RexRed
 
 Eqing, and compression, meh, they seem cut and dry after about a week of study on youtube...  

Wow, you'll have to post the links for those videos..

It works for me. I just clicked on it and it went to it. Its SoundBytes try Googleing it. http://soundbytesmag.net/

jb101

RexRed
 
 Eqing, and compression, meh, they seem cut and dry after about a week of study on youtube...  

Wow, you'll have to post the links for those videos..

I was about to say the same. I've seen professional engineers shout at their gear in frustration because they couldn't get the mix right and it had nothing to do with reverb.
Knowing which button does what does not equal mastery.

Joking aside, I am guessing that your mixes are probably over compressed and over EQ-ed, and that is what is causing the problem.
 
Don't compress or EQ a track, just because you can.
 
Maybe try to get a static fader mix.  Then play the project back, and if one of the tracks makes you reach for the fader, then think about compressing it.
 
Sometimes a track may not need any EQ, if it is recorded well, apart from maybe a HPF or LPF.  Use EQ to carve out a space for each track, but there is no need to overdo it.  If a track sits well in a mix without EQ, then leave it alone.

sharke
I high pass and low pass the snot out of the signal before it goes into the reverb, around 500-600Hz for the high pass filter and around 10-12kHz for the low pass. I find in my case anyway that allowing frequencies outside of that band into the reverb return just adds mud and brittleness to the mix and adds clutter. Having said that, if it's a solo part then I may widen that band for effect.

I'm also heading towards using less reverb in my mixes. A careful use of delay can add space to a mix without the need for reverb. You can get a more upfront sound like this. Try it for the instruments you want to position at the front of the mix. Add a delay to each one and pan it to the opposite side of the stereo field. For instance, if you have a guitar panned at 60L then add a delay at 60R. Try rolling the highs (or the lows) off the delayed signal to make it sound different. And experiment with different reverb times.

For the instruments at the back, add a little stereo reverb to blend them. Don't be afraid to use two different reverbs on an instrument - sometimes I'll send a little to a shared room or hall reverb, and a little to a mono reverb that's panned the same as or a little to the side of the instrument. But experiment with panning a mono reverb to the opposite side. Above all, use a little bit less than you normally would. It's surprising how little you need. Sometimes a good gauge is to add reverb at a level at which you think you can't hear it, but when you turn it off you sense the difference.

 
You have all been a BIG help and this time John the link worked for me. Gonna read it in a few. Maybe they were updating the site.
As for the compression and eqing remarks I made. For years compression and eqing were a mystery to me, a lot of guess work and lots of trial and even more error. But now that you can visualize with wave analysis you can see what the eq and compressor is doing to a large extent but how do you visualize depth? Well raising the mid-range and lowering it is one way but reverb adds a different kind of depth that in my opinion still takes an ear to measure.

I am going to quote this whole post because it seems to me quite thought proving.  I am not sure if i completely understand it Sharke.
 
I think this post helped me figured out what I was doing wrong. 
 
I don't confuse high pass and low pass thought they are inherently confusing terms. I think meant on purpose to confuse. :)
 
It seems what you are saying is my background instruments are too hot on the upper end and drowning out my vocals and solo instruments and their subsequent reverbs. So I put a low pass shelf filter on each of the background instruments and left the vocals with a tiny high pass boost.
 
This lowered the "widening effect" you mentioned. The awesome sounds that come with Dimension Pro, I love that these Dimension sounds are so vibrant and hot but they are stealing all the vital upper end where most of the vocal info is. THIS WORKED!
 
 
I cannot believe it was that simple. 
 
Now my reverbs have room to be heard. Before it seemed impossible the idea of eqing a reverb effect, I thought right, i could barely even hear them above my mix at all let alone think of finely tuning them. 
 
Taming down the high frequencies of my pads and the snare and other background instrument fills opened that vital area where most of the solo instrument frequency info resides.
 
So i guess this was an eq problem and not necessarily a reverb problem.
 
I find hundreds of echos a bit more complicated to get a grip on than compression and equalization.
 
It is funny that I spent years dickering around with eq's and never even knew what a "Q" was... The internet has been such a great resource for learning and I may have progressed much further with my music had I not spent so many years simply going aimlessly round in circles. :)
 
Please elaborate here on any eqing, compressor and reverb effects.
 
I will repeat that I do not find eqing and compression as enigmatic as reverb, doubling, flanges, phase, delays etc... Eqing and compression seem more, though not completely, linear where reverb seems to be a bit more 3d.

RexRed
You have all been a BIG help and this time John the link worked for me. Gonna read it in a few. Maybe they were updating the site.
As for the compression and eqing remarks I made. For years compression and eqing were a mystery to me, a lot of guess work and lots of trial and even more error. But now that you can visualize with wave analysis you can see what the eq and compressor is doing to a large extent but how do you visualize depth? Well raising the mid-range and lowering it is one way but reverb adds a different kind of depth that in my opinion still takes an ear to measure.

I am going to quote this whole post because it seems to me quite thought proving.  I am not sure if i completely understand it Sharke.
 
I think this post helped me figured out what I was doing wrong. 
 
I don't confuse high pass and low pass thought they are inherently confusing terms. I think meant on purpose to confuse. :)
 
It seems what you are saying is my background instruments are too hot on the upper end and drowning out my vocals and solo instruments and their subsequent reverbs. So I put a low pass shelf filter on each of the background instruments and left the vocals with a tiny high pass boost.
 
This lowered the "widening effect" you mentioned. The awesome sounds that come with Dimension Pro, I love that these Dimension sounds are so vibrant and hot but they are stealing all the vital upper end where most of the vocal info is. THIS WORKED!
 
 
I cannot believe it was that simple. 
 
Now my reverbs have room to be heard. Before it seemed impossible the idea of eqing a reverb effect, I thought right, i could barely even hear them above my mix at all let alone think of finely tuning them. 
 
Taming down the high frequencies of my pads and the snare and other background instrument fills opened that vital area where most of the solo instrument frequency info resides.
 
So i guess this was an eq problem and not necessarily a reverb problem.
 
I find hundreds of echos a bit more complicated to get a grip on than compression and equalization.
 
It is funny that I spent years dickering around with eq's and never even knew what a "Q" was... The internet has been such a great resource for learning and I may have progressed much further with my music had I not spent so many years simply going aimlessly round in circles. :)
 
Please elaborate here on any eqing, compressor and reverb effects.
 
I will repeat that I do not find eqing and compression as enigmatic as reverb, doubling, flanges, phase, delays etc... Eqing and compression seem more, though not completely, linear where reverb seems to be a bit more 3d.

I think you might have misinterpreted what I said a little, but that doesn't matter because what you did makes sense too - high frequencies add clarity and air and we associate them with an upfront sound, whereas instruments that are further back lose some of their high frequencies. If everything in a mix sounds sparkly and upfront then nothing does, if that makes sense - you have to have that contrast between bright and dark. 
 
What I was trying to say about reverb was that the signal you send to the reverb effect often needs to be processed before going into the effect. To this end, as has been mentioned before, it's best to set the reverbs up on aux buses as a send, with the wet control set to 100%, so that you can process the reverb independently from the dry signal. This means you can EQ the signal on the bus before it goes into the reverb. I've heard of people EQ'ing the signal after the reverb, but I think it makes more sense the other way around. Just cut off those highs and lows before it goes into the reverb. At the Abbey Road studios, they would roll off everything below 600Hz and above 10kHz before sending it to the chamber or the plate. I learned this from Bobby Owsinski. Of course you're not cutting out those frequencies on the dry signal, just the wet. 
 
Many reverb effects have low and high pass filters built in, but I tend to ignore these and use whatever filters I feel more comfortable with using. Sonar's Quadcurve EQ works great for it. You can also process the reverb in other ways for effect. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You could, for example, use Channel Tools to narrow the stereo width of the reverb. You don't always want it to spread out across the whole mix. Let's say you have a nice stereo plate reverb on the vocal. It sounds great, but it's overpowering everything else in the mix. Try halving the width, or even narrower. With Channel Tools you could even narrow it and pan it off to one side a little, if it's masking something on the other side. Why not try a little distortion or chorus on the reverb? Doesn't always work, but it might just add a bit of quirk to a track in some situations. 
 
I would highly recommend getting a month's subscription to Groove3 and watching Eli Krantzberg's excellent course on reverb. You'll learn so much from it. He opened my eyes to a lot of reverb ideas that I would have never otherwise considered. 

Rex, listen to Sander, Shark and JB. They are giving you some priceless advice. 

sharke

RexRed
You have all been a BIG help and this time John the link worked for me. Gonna read it in a few. Maybe they were updating the site.
As for the compression and eqing remarks I made. For years compression and eqing were a mystery to me, a lot of guess work and lots of trial and even more error. But now that you can visualize with wave analysis you can see what the eq and compressor is doing to a large extent but how do you visualize depth? Well raising the mid-range and lowering it is one way but reverb adds a different kind of depth that in my opinion still takes an ear to measure.

I am going to quote this whole post because it seems to me quite thought proving.  I am not sure if i completely understand it Sharke.
 
I think this post helped me figured out what I was doing wrong. 
 
I don't confuse high pass and low pass thought they are inherently confusing terms. I think meant on purpose to confuse. :)
 
It seems what you are saying is my background instruments are too hot on the upper end and drowning out my vocals and solo instruments and their subsequent reverbs. So I put a low pass shelf filter on each of the background instruments and left the vocals with a tiny high pass boost.
 
This lowered the "widening effect" you mentioned. The awesome sounds that come with Dimension Pro, I love that these Dimension sounds are so vibrant and hot but they are stealing all the vital upper end where most of the vocal info is. THIS WORKED!
 
 
I cannot believe it was that simple. 
 
Now my reverbs have room to be heard. Before it seemed impossible the idea of eqing a reverb effect, I thought right, i could barely even hear them above my mix at all let alone think of finely tuning them. 
 
Taming down the high frequencies of my pads and the snare and other background instrument fills opened that vital area where most of the solo instrument frequency info resides.
 
So i guess this was an eq problem and not necessarily a reverb problem.
 
I find hundreds of echos a bit more complicated to get a grip on than compression and equalization.
 
It is funny that I spent years dickering around with eq's and never even knew what a "Q" was... The internet has been such a great resource for learning and I may have progressed much further with my music had I not spent so many years simply going aimlessly round in circles. :)
 
Please elaborate here on any eqing, compressor and reverb effects.
 
I will repeat that I do not find eqing and compression as enigmatic as reverb, doubling, flanges, phase, delays etc... Eqing and compression seem more, though not completely, linear where reverb seems to be a bit more 3d.

I think you might have misinterpreted what I said a little, but that doesn't matter because what you did makes sense too - high frequencies add clarity and air and we associate them with an upfront sound, whereas instruments that are further back lose some of their high frequencies. If everything in a mix sounds sparkly and upfront then nothing does, if that makes sense - you have to have that contrast between bright and dark. 
 
What I was trying to say about reverb was that the signal you send to the reverb effect often needs to be processed before going into the effect. To this end, as has been mentioned before, it's best to set the reverbs up on aux buses as a send, with the wet control set to 100%, so that you can process the reverb independently from the dry signal. This means you can EQ the signal on the bus before it goes into the reverb. I've heard of people EQ'ing the signal after the reverb, but I think it makes more sense the other way around. Just cut off those highs and lows before it goes into the reverb. At the Abbey Road studios, they would roll off everything below 600Hz and above 10kHz before sending it to the chamber or the plate. I learned this from Bobby Owsinski. Of course you're not cutting out those frequencies on the dry signal, just the wet. 
 
Many reverb effects have low and high pass filters built in, but I tend to ignore these and use whatever filters I feel more comfortable with using. Sonar's Quadcurve EQ works great for it. You can also process the reverb in other ways for effect. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You could, for example, use Channel Tools to narrow the stereo width of the reverb. You don't always want it to spread out across the whole mix. Let's say you have a nice stereo plate reverb on the vocal. It sounds great, but it's overpowering everything else in the mix. Try halving the width, or even narrower. With Channel Tools you could even narrow it and pan it off to one side a little, if it's masking something on the other side. Why not try a little distortion or chorus on the reverb? Doesn't always work, but it might just add a bit of quirk to a track in some situations. 
 
I would highly recommend getting a month's subscription to Groove3 and watching Eli Krantzberg's excellent course on reverb. You'll learn so much from it. He opened my eyes to a lot of reverb ideas that I would have never otherwise considered. 

WOW this and the other posts are SOOOoooo awesome!!!! I LOVE THIS FORUM!
 
Moving the sparkle of my background instruments into the back of the mix by using the low pass shelf gave my song such a boost i am still recovering from it.
 
What you are talking about using the bus and setting the wet to 100% and dry off is a great tip I have tried that before. Having everything sparkle as you said nothing sparkles TRUE!
 
I have never tried making a more midrangy parallel reverb tracks. And also manipulating the reverb to distinguish left and right is also a great tip! That requires lots of thought. Sure cuts away on reverb cancellation in the open air environment and also seems it would add a nice texture/groove to the sound if done well.
 
What you are talking about here is that extra mile that turns a good mix into a million dollar mix. THAT IS WHAT I WANT!
 
I will also check out the tutorial and magazine you suggested. Very interested thanks!  

 
Great thread guys - a good read. Thanks for the tips all.
 
 I'm only a year into my discovery, learning and enjoyment of the DAW/Mixing world. I'm yet to check out the Groove3 Reverb Explained video - I know there's plenty of positive press but gotta say ... whilst you're at Groove3 check out Compression Explained and EQ Explained videos too. Both have been a great help to my understanding of the fundamentals ... dare I say, early in my development. I think they'd solidify what you may have learnt via a longer route @RexRed :) ... and likely add some more to your arsenal.
 
@jb101 - your tagline, an Anderton quote ... not lost on me and worthy of a giggle.
@Anderton - very quotable :)

Not to be annoying, but I have never heard the term "low pass shelf", I can understand what is meant but in my experience "low pass" and "high pass" are used for cut filters. A low pass shelf is a high shelf.

Glad to hear you got this song figured out! Turns out it was an EQ thing after all ;)