I do similar. Several vocals and maybe a pair of harmony tracks.... I've been trying to simplify the process as much as possible. Doing more with less, so to speak.

Recently, I have been using TRIVOX which can do harmony and thickening on the fly in real time. It saves the time to record 4 or 5 more tracks and make sure everything is lined up with the "I's" dotted and the "T's" crossed. I just drop it in the lead vox track, set the parameters and let it do it's thing. Set the return low so it only adds a bit of ambiance to the overall vocal. You can hear it in several of my most recent offerings in the showcase.

As far as FX.... I drop in the waves Vocal rider and the CLA vocals plug. That's about all I have been using recently. I don't have the time to drop multiple plugs that do different things when the Waves CLA does the job.

Regarding using the two DAWs..... I use Cakewalk and I happen to have Melodyne for pitch and other things. Just export the vocal as needed to a wave and use the other DAW to fix the vocal then send it back to Cake. BTW... I think WAVES is now making a pitch correction plug that is much more affordable than Melodyne. Technology is causing all sorts of interesting things to happen.

In Cake I have also been using busses. One of my "givens" is a vocal buss. However, a year or so back, maybe longer, I got the idea to set up a "band" buss. SO everything musical goes there. This allows me to drop the level of the band rather than trying to bump the vocals higher with volume or compression. The cool thing is I can drop the band level without messing with any of my existing volume automation. It's just so much easier to put the vocals at the right level using this method. I happened upon this when I was struggling to get the vocals up above the music with a lot of tracks and every one of them having volume automation.... what a dreadful job to try to rework a bunch of envelopes.... then it hit me. If I can't get the volume up, why not just turn the band down and use a buss to do it? Waa Laa....eurika!!!!

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
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