#What do yall use when mixing vocals?
1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)
- EQ to cut out the low end (Not to the point where you cut out low end from the vocal itself. I also cut out some of the low mids and if the vocal recording has resonant frequencies I make sure to cut them out too)
- De-esser
- A simple noise gate
- FET Compressor or any compressor with high attack speed to get rid of the peaks
- Optical Compressor to smooth out the dynamics
- Multiband compression for a balanced low end in the vocals
- I like to have some saturation but it really depends on what sound you're going for
- Fresh air for a more crispy vocal
- Potentially a chorus or something similar if you want a wider sound
Then I route it to another mixer channel where I firstly remove some of the highs and lows and only keep the mids. Then apply plate reverb with about 2 second decay and 100% Mix. Then adjust the volume.
NS1 to PreV76 (or Pre 1973) to autotune to RDeEsser to an 1176, LA 2A then ProQ3 to C6 to C2 (if needed) then finally L2 usually. It changes a lot depending on the style im doing and what im tryna achieve out of the vocal chain
Not sure why y’all are using a deesser first, literally defeats the purpose of it💀
Alright so with vocals it depends on what you’re going for but with mixing vocals it starts with the source itself being good
When you record your main goal is to not clip the recording and have some decent headroom aiming for around -18db on the meter average
From there you comp the multiple takes until you get a basically flawless take
Around this time if repairs to the recording are needed I’ll use RX if there somehow is something that needs to be fixed or have breaths reduced
This is also where you can cut the recording up and use clip gain to tame inconsistencies in volume so you’re not hitting the compressors hard, otherwise you’ll get a boxy sound that’s no good
From here I’ll use Melodyne for surgical tuning to clean up the comped take just for that flawless performance intonation wise
Then from there I’ll use Autotune and adjust the settings depending on the style and voice with retune speed, flextune, vibrato, etc
Now for the main chain, I tend to start with a gate, which goes to a channel strip which I adjust the comp and eq on it based on what I hear
Then it goes to another comp then EQ before it goes through saturation
Which a third comp, typically an opto is used to even slight variances in volume before using a de-esser
Note that with the comps and saturation the mix knob is adjusted so you have parallel processing
This allows you to get lively and present vocals that don’t sound smashed with compression