My mix sounds good and clean when it’s dry, but the moment I add reverb it turns dull and messy. I’m already using sends, EQ’ing the reverb, and even trying different types (room + plate/hall), but it still kills the clarity. What am I messing up here? Can someone please help me?

Hey, guys. I mix my beats. The vocals I work with are usually vocals that I bake into the beat Kanye style, but this beat I sampled some vocals from a song I want to use in the hook so I'm treating them like actual "headliner" vocals. I watch Dylan's reverb tutorial which has a section about using a gate and after freaking two hours, I finally got that mug. It literally took about 15 min. The rest of the time was me trying to do mine the way Dylan did his when in actuality, mine works different from the way his did. Anyway, my beat is still gradually getting quiet when the hook comes and then gradually going back to normal volume. And it only does it on the first hook. Will adding my compression on the master bus even out that imperfection or do I need to go back to the drawing board in my gate? And problem number 2: could someone PLEASE tell me what I need to do to these two vocals? They're background vocals I bake into the beat. I've never struggled this much with the vocals I bake into the beat, but these are really giving me problems. I've been at it literally for days. Could someone give a quick listen and tell me what they hear according to Dylan's Balance Chart? I've uploaded the two separate files as well as the sound I'm going for when they play at the same time.

Hey, guys. I've watched Dylan's tutorial on compressors. I even went back and looked at the module where he explains hold, range, and the knee. He never really went into depth about range, because it's less common than the knee. Hold is pretty audible as you listen to the playback, and God showed me the knee pretty fast, too. I can't seem to get range, though. I'm stuck trying random settings until I try one where the volume stays the same throughout the whole song. Then I realized most of the time I can get by without even using that parameter, but I want to learn my plugins in their entirety. How do I use the range parameter with intention? One of my bus compressors and my master compressor both have it. One thing I really don't get is that it says Max GR db is i.e. 36db. How is that possible when according to the number on the mix bus or master bus, it's actually like 2 or 3 db? What's the connection? What indicator(s) am I looking at when I go to set the range and what is the end goal I'm looking to achieve by using it at all? A visible demostration would be ideal. I'm descent at mixing, but I'm no pro, so if you could simplify your explanation to a student level engineer, it would really help.

Hey, guys. In the words of Belo Zero (from Do Or Die - IYKYK), ain't this some shhhh..... I didn't originally update to Tahoe the regular way. I was scared of losing everything, so after backing up my Mac, I started the whole operation from scratch and loaded from my backup disk. Doing some tech support, I got a view of that beautiful beach scene from a regular Tahoe update, I wanted that instead of just a plain blue screen from Sequoia. So I wiped it clean again and redownloaded all my plugins. I had a discontinued plugin called OCS-45 from a company called Spectral. A dope tape emulation with some dope parameters. I have the plugin in my backup disk still. I can see all the files that have anything to do with it. Is there any way I can get it back with that disk? I already tried copying the AAX file to my Pro Tools plugin folder to no avail.

Hey, guys. Waves is giving away a free masking correction plugin called Curves Resolve for 48 HRS! So act fast if you want that mug.