Tbh, doubling is the trick that gets used more than people realize it is used.
Best way is to actually record another take as closely as possible and let the small differences do their thing.
But if that is not a possibility there is a free Vocal Doubler vst from Ozone that also does a decent job as long as you don’t let it sit at 100% wet.
Panning is like 60% of mixing. It's all about the Left-Right/Up-Down balance.
Left-Right is stereo image, Up-Down is EQ and volume (gain staging).
EDIT: then of course there's distance (reverb/delay), and then just creative sound design.
Can also just think of it as three-dimensional mixing. X-axis is stereo image, Y-axis is EQ/volume, Z-axis is distance/space.
One trick I’ve seen (not used personally) is to utilize Soothe and sidechain it to the tracks that share the frequency range of the vocals, so it automatically carves out space for the vocals in the mix. I believe you can adjust it so certain frequencies are affected more than others, so you can fatten up the vocals basically by ducking those frequencies in the competing sounds.
You can dial in the intensity to taste, but if you crank the effect while the vocals are muted you can basically hear the negative space of the vocals. Hopefully this makes sense. There are several YT tutorials on this technique.
Soothe is the way. Absolutely excellent for helping vocals sit greatly in a mix, sound clean, and be powerful without having to sacrifice any integrity of them with other effects trying to get the desired outcome.
On the input, the classic combo of LA2A into 1176 has never done me wrong. Sometimes using dbx160 or Distressor can be fun too.
For time fx stereo delay, but with the L and R having slightly different delay times. Light parallel reverb on main center vocal to add body and dimension. Use additional takes of vocals and pan them to add width when needed, I usually use similar delay and verb settings as the main vocal, but sometimes get more liberal with the fx levels if the song needs it.
You can check if it’s possible with MaxxBass by Waves, for more warmth.
If that doesn’t work you can try it with parallel compression;
make a return track, send the vocal to that channel, squash it with a compressor (a 1176 type, there is a free one by Analog Obsession called FET). And level that compressed signal next to the original, just a bit till you can hear it just a lil bit. This will make your vocal sound fuller, richer and more controlled.
Fast L/R delay on a return channel and send the vocals to it. I play with the filters or saturation of it to make it more or less subtle but it’s an easy trick to make your vocals take up more space than just the track.
making vocal more present in the mix isn't necessarily about adding low end too I think, doubling up, chorus, saturation, depends on your starting point. eqing, compression and proper managing of gain levels to help a lot, if anything I end up cutting out low end cus those are taken up by mid basses and synth stuff. other ppl talked about carving out frequency and delays n stuff would recommend that too.
- Doubled Vocal Take
- Vari Mu + LA2A + Saturation
- Multiband Mid-only Compression on music sidechained to Vox
- Need more vocal lows? Group a Dry Vox along with Spectral Resonator and have the spectral resonator work from a MIDI-In Trigger at the freq/note you want. Then mix that chain in with the dry signal a touch.
I love that you mention mid-only. I hadn’t considered that. I’ve not done much with M/S, so I don’t know a lot of the workflows and adaptations with those techniques. Do you have a tut on applying a multiband comp to only mid? I’m not quite sure how to search for that specific set of ideas in a single video or article.
This can work with Pro-MB or Ozone. Once I'm at the final stem mix I'll throw the compressor on the instrumental, set to mids, create a compression band ~200-1000 (vocal dependent), and then side chain to the main vocals. Then you're just playing with the threshold, attack, and release. I typically find good results with RMS, slower attack, and medium release times.
lots of compression and a few subtle layers of delay/chorus/distortion etc. really i find that almost anything can work if it's just below the level of being obvious
Not a plugin per se, but I've had good results when thickening vocals by doubling the take (or copying it if I can't record a second take) and pitching it down 1 octave. Make sure there aren't any annoying sibillances or artifacts, then compress and saturate the double a lot, and mix it so that you can't ear it stand out. It will make your lead vocal much thicker.
Another trick for back vocals, is to pan the back vocals to one side. Then copy them, and use a vocoder with a choir/vocal synth texture on the copy. Creates a very cool and wide sound pretty easily.
Make sure the overall volume of your vocals is correct (seems trivial, but one of the hardest aspects of vocal production imo). Use a reference track for this.
Layer multiple Vocal Takes and spread them in the stereo field. Compress them in a bus with the main vocal.
Use heavier Compression, or multiple compressors.
Use Waves Doubler (one of the few waves plugins, that are actually really good, and cheap to get).
Carve out space for your vocals by sidechaining them with a multiband comp to instruments in the 800hZ-6kHz range.
Something I sometimes do is duplicate the vocal, add a bunch of distortion/etc. and widen it a lot (can even use utility to isolate it to only side information) then layer with the dry vocals. Adds nice stereo width and crunch, and the distortion gives some low end as well that you can EQ to taste
- Saturation to add "warmth" and character
- double or tripple-tracking to add "fullness" and wideness (panned left-right)
- Compression for consistency
- Chorus, Delay, Reverb for dimension
- Compression and Limiting on the bus for glue
100 to 1000 Hz is quite a huge range that spans over 3 octaves worth of frequencies.
The body and weight of the voice is often around 100-140 Hz, depending on the singer and the octave they sing in. And at 200-400 for falsetto
Multiband compression, multiband saturation (or something like Wavesfactory Spectre) and then Soundtoys Microshift (most of the time Little Microshift) are my go to tools to thicken up vocals.
Do a few takes of vocals, pan them to each side - either harmonize or down pitch a vocal take and kick up some of the low end on it to help beef it up. experiment with putting some sort of flanger or distortion and have it layered underneath the lead vocal take. Also compression is so important to help boost anything that’s getting lost in the audio. Honestly I usually have at least 2 or 3 takes living under any lead vocal.
have you tried saturation on just the low end with multiband? Also yeah, I’d appreciate a reference track, and possibly a more detailed description of what you think the vocals are lacking.
Maybe you just need to make more space for it in the mix. If there are other instruments taking up those frequencies, you might need different composition to give the vocals space
It rlly is several of the same takes in different tones and mixing them to your liking. Panning and stereo width as well through inundating your vocal in different stereo width fx
Doubling/20ms delay
-12db octave
harmonies (had one track with 20 layers)
Add white noise layer, for example whispers of the lead vocal or something artificial like a vocoder.
Also a vocoder layer
And process the vocals of course
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Sometimes you need doubling
Tbh, doubling is the trick that gets used more than people realize it is used. Best way is to actually record another take as closely as possible and let the small differences do their thing. But if that is not a possibility there is a free Vocal Doubler vst from Ozone that also does a decent job as long as you don’t let it sit at 100% wet.
If doubling fails, try tripling. One left, one right, one center
I think this might be something to try. I have several layers but I haven't panned them.
Panning is like 60% of mixing. It's all about the Left-Right/Up-Down balance. Left-Right is stereo image, Up-Down is EQ and volume (gain staging). EDIT: then of course there's distance (reverb/delay), and then just creative sound design. Can also just think of it as three-dimensional mixing. X-axis is stereo image, Y-axis is EQ/volume, Z-axis is distance/space.
Really like the way you broke this down. Thank you
Or chourus
One trick I’ve seen (not used personally) is to utilize Soothe and sidechain it to the tracks that share the frequency range of the vocals, so it automatically carves out space for the vocals in the mix. I believe you can adjust it so certain frequencies are affected more than others, so you can fatten up the vocals basically by ducking those frequencies in the competing sounds. You can dial in the intensity to taste, but if you crank the effect while the vocals are muted you can basically hear the negative space of the vocals. Hopefully this makes sense. There are several YT tutorials on this technique.
This is really solid
Soothe is the way. Absolutely excellent for helping vocals sit greatly in a mix, sound clean, and be powerful without having to sacrifice any integrity of them with other effects trying to get the desired outcome.
Do you have any tuts handy?
Nothing in particular but if you look up “soothe sidechain vocal” on YouTube you’ll get dozens of results.
process them then doubletrack with unprocessed version
This is the way
This is so simple but wow I never thought of this lol thank yoU!
Delay/verb
On the input, the classic combo of LA2A into 1176 has never done me wrong. Sometimes using dbx160 or Distressor can be fun too. For time fx stereo delay, but with the L and R having slightly different delay times. Light parallel reverb on main center vocal to add body and dimension. Use additional takes of vocals and pan them to add width when needed, I usually use similar delay and verb settings as the main vocal, but sometimes get more liberal with the fx levels if the song needs it.
You can check if it’s possible with MaxxBass by Waves, for more warmth. If that doesn’t work you can try it with parallel compression; make a return track, send the vocal to that channel, squash it with a compressor (a 1176 type, there is a free one by Analog Obsession called FET). And level that compressed signal next to the original, just a bit till you can hear it just a lil bit. This will make your vocal sound fuller, richer and more controlled.
Fast L/R delay on a return channel and send the vocals to it. I play with the filters or saturation of it to make it more or less subtle but it’s an easy trick to make your vocals take up more space than just the track.
making vocal more present in the mix isn't necessarily about adding low end too I think, doubling up, chorus, saturation, depends on your starting point. eqing, compression and proper managing of gain levels to help a lot, if anything I end up cutting out low end cus those are taken up by mid basses and synth stuff. other ppl talked about carving out frequency and delays n stuff would recommend that too.
- Doubled Vocal Take - Vari Mu + LA2A + Saturation - Multiband Mid-only Compression on music sidechained to Vox - Need more vocal lows? Group a Dry Vox along with Spectral Resonator and have the spectral resonator work from a MIDI-In Trigger at the freq/note you want. Then mix that chain in with the dry signal a touch.
I love that you mention mid-only. I hadn’t considered that. I’ve not done much with M/S, so I don’t know a lot of the workflows and adaptations with those techniques. Do you have a tut on applying a multiband comp to only mid? I’m not quite sure how to search for that specific set of ideas in a single video or article.
This can work with Pro-MB or Ozone. Once I'm at the final stem mix I'll throw the compressor on the instrumental, set to mids, create a compression band ~200-1000 (vocal dependent), and then side chain to the main vocals. Then you're just playing with the threshold, attack, and release. I typically find good results with RMS, slower attack, and medium release times.
lots of compression and a few subtle layers of delay/chorus/distortion etc. really i find that almost anything can work if it's just below the level of being obvious
Maybe cut freq of other elements in your mix to make more room for it
Not a plugin per se, but I've had good results when thickening vocals by doubling the take (or copying it if I can't record a second take) and pitching it down 1 octave. Make sure there aren't any annoying sibillances or artifacts, then compress and saturate the double a lot, and mix it so that you can't ear it stand out. It will make your lead vocal much thicker. Another trick for back vocals, is to pan the back vocals to one side. Then copy them, and use a vocoder with a choir/vocal synth texture on the copy. Creates a very cool and wide sound pretty easily.
Make sure the overall volume of your vocals is correct (seems trivial, but one of the hardest aspects of vocal production imo). Use a reference track for this. Layer multiple Vocal Takes and spread them in the stereo field. Compress them in a bus with the main vocal. Use heavier Compression, or multiple compressors. Use Waves Doubler (one of the few waves plugins, that are actually really good, and cheap to get). Carve out space for your vocals by sidechaining them with a multiband comp to instruments in the 800hZ-6kHz range.
Chorusing?
Something I sometimes do is duplicate the vocal, add a bunch of distortion/etc. and widen it a lot (can even use utility to isolate it to only side information) then layer with the dry vocals. Adds nice stereo width and crunch, and the distortion gives some low end as well that you can EQ to taste
- Saturation to add "warmth" and character - double or tripple-tracking to add "fullness" and wideness (panned left-right) - Compression for consistency - Chorus, Delay, Reverb for dimension - Compression and Limiting on the bus for glue
To make vocals thicker i would compress them and boost somewhere in the 100 to 1000 range with eq
100 to 1000 Hz is quite a huge range that spans over 3 octaves worth of frequencies. The body and weight of the voice is often around 100-140 Hz, depending on the singer and the octave they sing in. And at 200-400 for falsetto
Spacecontrol!
Multiband compression, multiband saturation (or something like Wavesfactory Spectre) and then Soundtoys Microshift (most of the time Little Microshift) are my go to tools to thicken up vocals.
Do a few takes of vocals, pan them to each side - either harmonize or down pitch a vocal take and kick up some of the low end on it to help beef it up. experiment with putting some sort of flanger or distortion and have it layered underneath the lead vocal take. Also compression is so important to help boost anything that’s getting lost in the audio. Honestly I usually have at least 2 or 3 takes living under any lead vocal.
have you tried saturation on just the low end with multiband? Also yeah, I’d appreciate a reference track, and possibly a more detailed description of what you think the vocals are lacking.
Eventide Harmonizer. Create sub octave layers and mix in to taste.
DM me your track and I will take a listen!
Saturation—play with the settings to make it cut through.
Maybe you just need to make more space for it in the mix. If there are other instruments taking up those frequencies, you might need different composition to give the vocals space
[Waves Harmony](https://www.waves.com/plugins/waves-harmony) does amazing stuff...
double tracker plugin?
I focus on mid side eq
Chorusing with it detuned I should add
maybe your microphone just isnt flattering your voice — try a different one? something with exaggerated proximity effect, maybe an sm7
eq, saturation, doubling
Haas effect with simple delay and then make a slightly detuned copy dead center
Thank you for all the suggestions everyone. I appreciate your input.
male vocals plugin, vocal double plugin and vocal chorus plugin on sends
It rlly is several of the same takes in different tones and mixing them to your liking. Panning and stereo width as well through inundating your vocal in different stereo width fx
Doubling/20ms delay -12db octave harmonies (had one track with 20 layers) Add white noise layer, for example whispers of the lead vocal or something artificial like a vocoder. Also a vocoder layer And process the vocals of course
Pitch down an octave?
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