when i mix music. i do not use reverb as a mix tool, only as a special effect.

so i went and stole this: (pls add your own tips)

1. Reverb creates the illusion of space, but in doing so it also 'smears' the stereo localisation of the original sound source, just as it does in real life. If you want to maintain a specific stereo placement for one or more sounds in a mix, consider using a mono reverb effect and panning the reverb to the same position as the original dry sound.

2. Reverb is very useful for making vocals sound more musical and for making them sit with the rest of the mix, but adding too much will have the effect of pushing the vocals back, rather than allowing them to take front position. Experiment with pre-delay values of 60-100mS to help counter this, and also try using a reverb patch that has a lot of early reflections, as these help reinforce the dry sound. You can learn a lot from listening carefully to records you like to see how much and what type of reverb is used. Often it's rather less than you think.



3. Bright reverbs can flatter vocals, but may exaggerate sibilance. As an alternative to de-essing the vocals, try instead de-essing the feed to the reverb unit, so that sibilance is removed before the reverb is applied.

4. Reverb is probably the most important effect in the studio, so don't compromise by using a low-quality software reverb plug-in just because you're short of processing power. Use a good external hardware reverb unit if you have one, otherwise choose a more powerful software plug-in to treat the vocal track in non-real time. This may involve off-line processing or doing a real-time 'bounce to disk' of the vocal track in isolation, via the plug-in.  

When using reverb, unless you want an extremely dramatic effect from it, put the reverb on an auxiliary channel in your mix, and set it to low in the mix mains, this way you dont drench your sound in reverb but gain the spacial effect from it with your sound.  

I disagree with number 1.
A good reverb should preserve spatial information.
Is it easier to locate a sound indoors, or outdoors?
Indoors, you should hear the sound first, then reflections off the closest walls, then schmear from farther and farther walls.
You rarely hear reverb from just one side of your head.... I'm not saying never pan your reverb, just realize it aint natural.

The golen rule with reverb: if you can hear the reverb, its too much reverb.

Again, a rule can easily be broken... but reverb is generally a psychoacoustic effect that your brain interprets as spatial information, instead of being a sound that you pick up on consciously and interpret as "a sound".  

GOOD MORE MORE MORE  

Awkard transistions in songs can be easily smoothed out by applying a reverse reverb to one of the main sounds.  

Large pre-Delay on reverbs can create cool polyrhythms when applied to percussion (OK, not a polyrhythm, but a cool technique, makes it sound like there's a smooshed out drum being played in rhythm)  

so, using jdg's little sidechain trick in the compression tips, could you not use the same method (duplicate track nudged forward in time) to send to a reverb, set it to 100% wet and slip it in under the track for a nice pre-verb? maybe give it enough buffer time to reverse the reverb and have a nice forward-moving reversed reverb? maybe this is just old news.  

LOL, Preverb. What a cool word.

Reverse reverb guitar pedals just take forward reverbs and give them a reverse ramp ADSR.  

omfg preverb!

i just made some preverb in my pants  

And, as was pointed out to me before: if you're trying to simulate the position of sounds using stereo trickery (including stereo reverb), the effect of localisation will only work properly if the listener is using headphones.

panned mono reverb might be artificial: but we're used to hearing it in recordings so it doesnt sound odd, and it might be the best choice if you want your track to play back well through PAs and mono systems. (im not 100% sure on this so correct me if its nonsense).