Vocal Plugins

Cirrus

fretmeister said:

I remember the good old days...

walk into studio. Sing.
Come back later when the engineer has done his thing.

You know you can still do that today? it even costs less after inflation for the same standard of studio! 

fretmeister

It’s still an option!

I’ve got about 15 tunes to record and about 4 hours per week to work on them. I’ve paid for a session drummer so my plan is to record all the instruments over the next 6-12 months while at the same time practicing the vocals.

Then record the vocals when I’m ready. At that point I may well just book a studio and sing.
Depending on how it all goes I might even pay someone to do the mix. Certainly for the mastering process.

Cirrus

Edit: Forgot how shitty forums can be

Stuckfast

Cirrus said:

 that chain I described above is a sort of "analogue" (haha) of the things that'd happen in a decent studio recording.

IMO if you end up with a 'chain' like that, you are over-thinking things. A 'decent studio recording' would use far less processing. If you have a good room and a good mic, you really don't need all that shit to get a good vocal sound. And if you don't have those things, you're on a hiding to nothing.

Get a good basic sound from the mic, maybe apply a little bit of EQ and compression if it's needed, then use fader moves to sit the vocal at the right level. For me the type and character of any reverb or delay you apply is going to make a much bigger difference than whether you use a Neve or API EQ, or what order you chain your tape emulations in.

One of the most common causes of bad vocal sounds is miking too close (which, in turn, is often the result of recording in bad-sounding rooms). Give yourself a foot or so between the vocalist and the mic, and take the time to treat the room properly.

Cirrus

.

stratology

Stuckfast said:

Cirrus said:

 that chain I described above is a sort of "analogue" (haha) of the things that'd happen in a decent studio recording.

IMO if you end up with a 'chain' like that, you are over-thinking things. A 'decent studio recording' would use far less processing. If you have a good room and a good mic, you really don't need all that shit to get a good vocal sound. And if you don't have those things, you're on a hiding to nothing.

Get a good basic sound from the mic, maybe apply a little bit of EQ and compression if it's needed, then use fader moves to sit the vocal at the right level. For me the type and character of any reverb or delay you apply is going to make a much bigger difference than whether you use a Neve or API EQ, or what order you chain your tape emulations in.

One of the most common causes of bad vocal sounds is miking too close (which, in turn, is often the result of recording in bad-sounding rooms). Give yourself a foot or so between the vocalist and the mic, and take the time to treat the room properly.

Yes and no. You can get a great vocal sound with a simple set up, but you can also get a great vocal sound with a super complex, Michael Brauer type set up - IIRC, he splits vocals into three busses, and processes each one with a different compressor.

Same for reverb and delay busses. It's common to have 3 vocal reverb busses with long, middle and short reverbs, and mix them. I recently listened to an interview with a top engineer (don't remember which one) who mixed 7 different reverbs for a voice, to get the sound he was looking for. For some artists/productions, an almost completely dry sound works best, for others, it's the opposite - the layered reverb spaces on Lana Del Rey's voice are a work of art in itself..



If you have a singer with a quiet voice, being close to the mic may actually be better than a foot away, to get some additional warmth from the proximity effect. 

Cirrus

Thanks @stratology , that's a good way of expressing it. I've been moved by a vocal from my personal musical hero Daniel Lanois, where it's just been a good mic into 3dB compression and that's that, song ready for release. I've also been moved by a vocal mixed by CLA, where it was recorded through compression, been sweetened in the box, gone out through an SSL desk, and been compressed with 15dB gain reduction from a 1176 plus who knows what else.

Nothing's too much or too little as long as you know why you're doing it. It's easy to be dogmatic about the process.

Stuckfast

@Cirrus apologies, I wasn't intending to be either dogmatic or shitty.

Let me put it a different way. Yes there are some pro mixing engineers who sometimes use a ton of plug-ins on a vocal, and some of them produce good mixes. But it doesn't follow that you should expect do to so, or that using lots of plug-ins just is 'how you get a good vocal sound'. Still less that there's a single long plug-in chain you can apply to all vocals and expect it to always work.

As you say, the key is knowing why you're doing it, and, above all, listening.

All too often I find people can't really hear that they are actually not getting a good sound. They're mixing by appeal to authority -- CLA does this, so it must be right -- rather than by listening. Or they get tempted into adding plug-in after plug-in because each one actually just makes the vocal a tiny bit louder, rather than improving the sound. Or they are focusing on the minutiae of EQ or preamp emulation or whatever, but overlooking the more important issues that are making it hard to get the vocal to sit in the mix.

I'm not saying you should never apply lots of processing to a vocal, but I don't think it's necessarily great advice to tell people that that's what they should be doing, or that it's the usual way of getting a vocal sound. For me, if you find yourself continually adding more and more plug-ins, it should actually set off some warning bells, either about the vocal recording or about the mix as a whole. If you want a deliberately effected / processed sound, that's a slightly different kettle of fish, but again it ought to be possible with just a couple of plug-ins.

octatonic

Stuckfast said:

@Cirrus apologies, I wasn't intending to be either dogmatic or shitty.

Let me put it a different way. Yes there are some pro mixing engineers who sometimes use a ton of plug-ins on a vocal, and some of them produce good mixes. But it doesn't follow that you should expect do to so, or that using lots of plug-ins just is 'how you get a good vocal sound'. Still less that there's a single long plug-in chain you can apply to all vocals and expect it to always work.

As you say, the key is knowing why you're doing it, and, above all, listening.

and most people here are not at the level of CLA.
If people here are trying to LEARN how to mix vocals then approaching it from the basics is the way to do it.

When I teach audio mixing to people, as I sometimes do, the number of people who want to bypass the basics and go straight into Brauerizing, side chain compression and all the advanced stuff is nearly 100%.
No one wants to learn how to do the basics.

None of the pro guys who developed and use these advanced techniques did so without learning the basics.
Walk before you run.

Stuckfast

octatonic said:

If people here are trying to LEARN how to mix vocals then approaching it from the basics is the way to do it.

When I teach audio mixing to people, as I sometimes do, the number of people who want to bypass the basics and go straight into Brauerizing, side chain compression and all the advanced stuff is nearly 100%.
No one wants to learn how to do the basics.

None of the pro guys who developed and use these advanced techniques did so without learning the basics.
Walk before you run.

Exactly.

A lot of people draw analogies between audio recording and photography. Pro photographers these days probably have a large collection of Photoshop filters and know how to use them. Maybe some have even developed a signature look by using filters in a particular way. But if you ask great photographers what the key to a great portrait is, how many of them will list the filters they use as the most important things?

Cirrus

I don't think I really understand what's happening in this thread.

I haven't advocated over complexity as the correct way to do things. I just offered my experience as an alternative to an all-in-one vocal chain plugin. A lot of what's being offered as a counter to that feels like it's an argument against stuff I didn't say. I'm not the one who told someone else their way was a sign that something was wrong, and trying to make a moral stance on the number of plugins someone once used in a chain to get the sound they wanted doesn't help anyone.

My advice to anyone starting out is to dive in and make mistakes. Loads of mistakes. Over compress things, undercompress things, make things too bright, muddy, boomy, scooped, boosted. Drown vocals in reverb. Try everything.

Nobody will die. The mistakes will teach you in a way production tips on a guitar forum never could. And maybe in a year you'll start to understand when to use the 1176 emulation, or the La2a, or the built in compressor on the vocal channel strip.

With that, I will bow out and look forward to hearing what @fretmeister puts together! 

fretmeister

Cirrus said:

I don't think I really understand what's happening in this thread.

I haven't advocated over complexity as the correct way to do things. I just offered my experience as an alternative to an all-in-one vocal chain plugin. A lot of what's being offered as a counter to that feels like it's an argument against stuff I didn't say. I'm not the one who told someone else their way was a sign that something was wrong, and trying to make a moral stance on the number of plugins someone once used in a chain to get the sound they wanted doesn't help anyone.

My advice to anyone starting out is to dive in and make mistakes. Loads of mistakes. Over compress things, undercompress things, make things too bright, muddy, boomy, scooped, boosted. Drown vocals in reverb. Try everything.

Nobody will die. The mistakes will teach you in a way production tips on a guitar forum never could. And maybe in a year you'll start to understand when to use the 1176 emulation, or the La2a, or the built in compressor on the vocal channel strip.

With that, I will bow out and look forward to hearing what @fretmeister puts together! 

There will be many mistakes!

In fact I discovered one that I really should not have made.

I got my drum track and stuck it in Reaper. Recorded guitars and bass to it, not as a final cut or anything but as part of guitar tone testing. Was very happy with the results as a first pass. But as I started to play with it more...


Now.... did I, or did I not set the DAW BPM to match the drum track? Did I or did I not get increasingly frustrated because I couldn't work out why the waveforms didn't appear to be landing on the right beat...

PolarityMan

Has anyone mentioned JST Gain Reduction yet? That things total magic!

Bezzer

@Cirrus I wish you hadn't deleted your comments, I'd like to have read them.  From what I'm putting together (2 + 2 = whatever the hell I like fashion) is that you are advocating series of single plugins over a "everything in one job".  I hope I've not over stepped the mark there.

FWIW ... I absolutely agree with this and it's how I work now.

I think there is a place for all in ones however from a learning point of view.  Having everything there so you can see SORT of what you'll need and turn on and off at will to judge what will happen I think is really helpful.  When I started I had no clue!  So opening (my old favourite, the Butch Vig vocal plugin) I could see "ok, de-esser ... some EQs, compression, ooooh saturation" it gave me a feel for what I liked and new what to go for to reach that later.

But yeah ... once I understood what was needed at a "standard" level I could then explore other options to more accurately control the sound to my taste.  And then add crazy shit no one else wanted, ever.

Do still occasionally use these tools though as they do have a sound of their own, and that's no bad thing if it's the sound you're after.

stratology

Bezzer said:

I think there is a place for all in ones however from a learning point of view. 

There's also a sonic reason to use all in one channel strips: if you use something like a PA brainworx Focusrite console across all tracks, you emulate a mixing board, including the small inconsistencies in sound from channel to channel that you get on a real console, or with analog summing. I find that channels strips and things like Waves NLS work with some material, but not with other tracks. As expected 

Channel strips are just another tool in the box, not inherently better or worse than separate EQ/Compression/Saturation plug ins. You may even mix and match - use a surgical, neutral, subtractive EQ, followed by only the compressor from an SSL channel strip, followed by a Fairchild emulation compressor, followed by tape emulation from Goodhertz Wow control. 

That's just an example, not a 'real' suggestion.. I find that a good approach is to listen to the uneffected track, and imagine what I'd like it to sound like, then work towards that sonic image.


It also depends on the source material. If you have a great sounding track, and just want to sprinkle some gold dust on it, minimal processing may be the best approach. If the source track sounds like crap, excessive, creative processing may turn it into something salvageable and interesting.


As Andrew Scheps says - the only thing that matters is what's coming out of the speakers...

WiresDreamDisasters

The golden rule: AS LONG AS IT SOUNDS GOOD.

Danny1969

I actually learnt a look looking at the presets built into the protools plugins .... loading up presets and just looking at the what it was doing. That was a good learning tool and a good starting point for fiddling, same as starting on a patch that's near to what you want on an effects processor. 

Some people say just use your ears but you need to be aware a lot of the time you need to cut stuff your ears can't hear because your speakers can't reproduce it ..  but it's still there eating up headroom in the mix. In a live scenario this is even more important. 

fretmeister

@bezzer I’m just reading about the Vig plugin.

That looks right up my street! 

Bezzer

@fretmeister if you like his sound then yeah I think you’ll like it. Like I said I still use it for some tracks, it’s all over my mates latest EP as it just fitted the requirements with no fuss.

fretmeister

I watched Vig’s demo on YouTube and when he added just a smidge of the tube drive it sounded amazing. Just enough to add a bit of harmonic content.

I’ll have to buy it.