We all use and love reverbs. And sometimes we over-use it and the sound becomes muddy and it is hard to separate instruments from each other.
There are some tricks
Try less and shorter reverb. On lead instruments a thing I discovered very recently is that a little delay (no feedback or minimal - just single delay) with a tiny delay (often called slap delay) in combination with a short low reverb gives a much clearer definition of each note while still maintaining the ambience we all love.
To make that work you create two bus channels. One for the delay. One for the reverb. And then you feed the instruments to both. The delay/reverb is then set to 100% wet. You then control the direct sound on the volume fader of the instrument. And you use the volume faders for the effects to set the amount you want of delay and reverb. If you want to control how much of each instrument you control that on the send volume.
Another advantage of this is that you can reuse the effects for multiple instruments making only one place to set the effects. And you save a lot of CPU as the delay or reverb use the same CPU if it process one or 5 instruments.
You can also use the trick with short and a long reverb instead of a delay. Delay in my oppinion is best for vocals and instruments that play melody similar to vocals.
You should not try to put a delay and a reverb or two reverbs in series on the channel strip. It becomes a mess and you reverb the reverb. If you only have one effect on one instrument - it is OK to put it on the instrument channel strip and use the mix of wet/dry knob in the plugin. But if you want multiple reverbs/delays always have them in parallel in busses.
Another trick with reverbs is to set the pre-delay to around 10-100 milliseconds. On a stage the sound of an instrument in the front reach your ears a little before the room sound. Your brain percieve this as being close. So using reverb with pre-delay for a front instrument, and no pre-delay for background instruments helps the listener to better hear the notes of melody or the words of a singer.
Last thing. Reverbs - especially if they are strong - tend to mud up the sound in the lower mid range (above the bass but below the instruments). Having a reverb on a bus also enables putting an EQ on that buss and filter off the low and low mids only for the reverb.
I already do much of what you write about here EXCEPT for the last two paragraphs. Those tips will certainly come in handy in future recordings or in remixes of older stuff.
Whenever I use a longer delay -- like one that lands a quarter note later -- I feel it can be a bit jarring if it's dry. So I'll have the delay on one bus and the reverb on another. What I'll do is run a send from the delay to the reverb. That way the delays are not so much in your face. They're softened up a bit. By the way, these longer delays are usually for lead things, like lead vocals or lead guitar or sax. Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
