Originally Posted By: Rustyspoon#
Dave, Thank you!
Take your time. There is no rush.
As I mentioned, I am interested to know how vocal is routed. I really like it. It is upfront, not over saturated and yet warm, clear and most importantly (for me) not "overproduced", has a lot of life in it.

Thank you,
Mike.


Mike, ok I have the project file for In the Still of the night open.
In the past I have used some quite complicated effects chains for vocals, always experimenting, but this one is quite simple.

No hardware, all software.

1) Neutron 2.
I get the initial setup by running it's track assist function, that is great for finding the interesting EQ nodes and setting the initial parameters for the compressor. Similar to the tonal balance control you can press ALT left mouse button and zoom over those nodes it has identified and hear exactly what is happening there and tweak if needed.
For this mix I am only using the EQ portion and the first compressor, I disabled the other modules.

2) Waves De-Esser

3) Waves Vocal Rider.
This is a great little plugin that saves lots of time drawing in volume automation to keep the levels more constant. Depending on the track sometimes it is all you need, and I see that on this track I didn't do any manual volume automation.

That's pretty much it!

Also I have two sends coming from this track, one is going to a dedicated reverb track, the other to a delay track. Reverb is set to 100% wet, and I adjust the volume of that track until I get the amount of reverb I want. I prefer having the reverb on a separate track because I find it's easier to control that way.
The delay track is using a stereo delay (the one that came with reaper) with two different delay times. The one panned left is set to 100ms, the one panned right is set to 150ms. Subtle but effective.

Hope this helps a little!

Dave

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