Reply to Cleaning up excess reverb in a mix

Hey guys,

I have a confession to make: i'm a bit of a reverb junkie. For whatever reason i just tend to use a lot of it. The problem with this is i start to get "nickel and dimed" by the reverb for space in the mix as the amount of tracks im using increases. The result is things can start to sound muddy and individual sounds become harder and harder to pick out. Its not like things are a complete mess, i just find it tends to make for a less "tight" mix.

So i have a dilemma: I like the effect reverb gives of getting things to sit in the mix properly. I believe its pretty much essential to have in there. But if i dial back the reverb things just tend to sound too dry and not cohesive. Is there a way to clean up reverb after the fact using EQ or something, or some other trick I'm missing here to cut back on the amount of reverb that just stacks in the background? I'm already EQing each track to cut the unnecessary frequencies, but beyond that im not sure what the secret is.

Could this also be a problem with mixing on cans? I find I'm having a hard time accurately judging the depth of the sounds sometimes because everything is "right there" in my ears. Could this also be messing with my judgment of how muddy things actually are? Studio monitors are shipping as we speak, so maybe that will help some