MusicVillain said: Speaking of Janice Merritt's voice, this is what I thought.

I could be partially wrong, or totally wrong, it's just my best guess.

Use this song "Emerald" as an example, produced by Scott Collingwood & Ray Cochrane.

#1. Janice's formant is great out of the box, no need to make her voice "wet". I assume little to none reverb was used, so her singing feels "in the face", not "from a distance", is the goal?

As mentioned little reverb is used. Nectar's EMT 140 Plate Reverb sim is the source -- 12% Wet. Our goal is always to have the vocal forward given the genres we work in and our many years of playing and recording bluegrass before moving on to Americana and Blues.

#2. Janice's vocal is penetrating the backing music with high clarity. I assume Nectar Unmasking was used, so her vocal signal is sent to an iZoptope relay, carving the similar EQ frequency out of the backing music?

No unmasking was used. There is nothing on the vocal but minimal EQ, light compression and reverb from Nectar. Janice is a contralto and has some natural resonance to her voice.

#3. The whole song is peaking at 0db or -1db and has a perfect loudness. I assume Ozone was used to get to that desired LUFS?

Ozone's maximizer and Logic Pro's Loudness Meter were used for that. 12-14 LUFS as I recall.

#4. Janice's breath was at a good volume level, not intruding, not completely gone. I assume RX was used to attenuate her breath?

On tunes where longer phrasing requires a lot of intakes I use Nectar's Breath Controller (the old version).


#5. Janice's essing and plosives were controlled very well. I assume some sort of waveform editings were done to her vocal, such as a RX de-essing?

No waveform editing (never done that on her vocals) and no de-essing. Our studio is nothing but a Mac computer, Kali Monitors, Rodes NT1 mic, pop filter and a Scarlett interface which other than the filter I also use on my upright bass. This all replaced a LOT of analogue equipment 11 years ago. Janice sings facing a file cabinet with a quilted table runner hanging down on it. Janice says years of gigging led to her think about plosives and moving her mouth relative to mic placement to avoid them. No room mods, etc. Four windows looking out at a forest.

#6. There are some good vocal harmony in the song. I assume it's Janice's lead vocal used in BiaB Harmoniest, or similar software, to pitch shift to third, or fourth, generate a harmony with perfect timing?

We do zero pitch shifting. Those are her harmonies as sung by her to her lead. What ever one may think of bluegrass a hallmark of it is what we call car horn harmony smile ... exact phrasing and harmony on every syllable. So her harmony work comes from that school.

Bottomline: 37 years of engineering is no joke. The difference can be heard almost instantly.

Thank you from the two of us. And while I did the vocal engineering and mastering Emerald's mix was a collaborative effort.

Bud


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