Recording Vocals - Recommends on Effects Chain for Good Headphone Mix

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danconnolly
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Recording Vocals - Recommends on Effects Chain for Good Headphone Mix

Post by danconnolly » Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:37 pm

I'm not a vocalist but one time went to a studio and the dude's headphone mix blew me away - killer reverb, probably some compression, etc. - and for the first time I was able to let it rip vocally. Not sure how to get something like that on the DAW and any feedback/suggestions are much appreciated. Looking for a good effects chain, I guess.

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Ted
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Re: Recording Vocals - Recommends on Effects Chain for Good Headphone Mix

Post by Ted » Tue Nov 30, 2021 3:16 pm

Not sure which DAW you're using, but in Logic X there are some stock vocal signal chains one can select that will give many options for a nice prefab vocal setup. I'm guessing that other DAWs have similar options.

I have some 3rd party plugins that I like and use. Off the top of my head, Nectar by Izotope is a pretty good vocal suite-- lots of cool presets. I like some of the Waves vocals plugins by Butch Vig, Greg Wells, Tony Maserati and Jack Joseph Puig a lot. I wasn't a big fan of the CLA Vocals plugin on my voice but I do like his Epic/Echosphere plugins. If I'm just looking to get some tracks laid down quickly I'll grab a preset from one of these and get going.

Then later I might try A/B' ing them against each other or creating my own signal chain with maybe a channel strip plugin, compressor, and reverb-- I like IK Multimedia's Sunset Sound Reverb on vocals.

I found that regarding a headphone mix, I made the mistake early on of using some presets that had pitch correction and they were causing some latency so that when the signal got to my headphones, the timing was off. So be careful not to put too much effects on your monitor mix that it interferes with the way you sing.

Also, not to be overlooked-- make sure your room has some kind of treatment-- installed or ad hoc while you're cutting vocals so you won't have a boxy room sound hanging over your tracks. I started getting better results using a reflection filter around the mic and a sheet/blanket hung behind me when possible.

And finally, getting Melodyne and using it to do pitch correction on my vocals has helped me alot. When I started, my vocals were pretty pitchy but as time went by, being able to get them to sound better and better gave me more confidence when I'd cut a track-- and it helped me sort out elements of my technique that needed improving-- so I still use Melodyne on every vocal track. but becoming a better singer is getting me to the point where I don't have to ride every note with it. Haha.

Good luck.

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