How to design a mixing chain that'll work on any vocal

Over the coming weeks on MusicRadar, we're going to walk you through building ready-to-go mixing chains for a variety of applications in the studio, including drums, bass and the all-important master bus.

Today, we start off with one of the sounds instruments to mix perfectly - the human voice. Using EQ, compression and de-essing, this chain can help you take any vocal from amateur hour to radio-ready.

Vocal chain

Our vocal chain will include an EQ , compressor and de-esser , in that order. That said, with plenty of plugin flexibility and options, we can be a bit more indulgent even in a basic chain (see step 6). Our first EQ is corrective so load up a flexible parametric design with high and low-pass filters.

Use this EQ to correct any annoyances in the vocal. This could be notching out too much edginess in the high mids (2-6kHz region) and thinning out boxiness in the mid or low mid range (500-800Hz). Finish up using the low-cut filter (24dB/octave) to remove any floor rumble or mic stand noise.

For the main vocal compressor, you need something flexible and fast. You might get by with a decent DAW compressor, but even better would be a Distressor or Urei 1176 emulation. For the latter there are many emulations to choose from (some free). Some are more faithful than others, but even a basic FET-style plugin will give some snappiness.

This style of fast compressor can both help level out the performance and also add some bite to the vocal sound. To achieve this, set the attack at its fastest with a medium release (settings 7 and 4 respectively on an 1176) with a ratio of 4:1. Then simply adjust the threshold (input on an 1176) for the desired gain reduction.

De-essing a vocal can now be done in various ways, including manually editing the sibilance levels in the audio file. That said, using a real-time de-esser plugin is still a great way to quickly reduce most of the sibilance. Whichever plugin you use, you should make sure to use the sidechain listen option in order to find the problem frequencies.

As mentioned, we can be a bit indulgent even in a basic chain, and the fourth plugin should be a finessing EQ. Choose a natural-sounding design such as an EQP-1A and use it to shape the overall sound. More than likely you’ll boost the high frequencies (8kHz or 10kHz) and even the lows (100Hz), but use cuts if the sound demands it.

Plugin chainers

Although saving mixing chains using your DAW features is fine, if you’re using more than one DAW, or want a bit more flexibility with routing, then a third party plugin chainer could be a better solution for creating and managing your mixing chains.

Blue Cat Patchwork is a plugin that has grown in stature year on year, and now offers one of the best frameworks to build bespoke plugin chains. The plugin comes ready loaded with 30 of Blue Cat’s very own processors. But what makes it really special is it also supports VST, VST3 and AU, and can load up to 64 of these per instance. With flexible routing, up to eight parallel chains, external sidechain options and configurable macros, plus an extensive preset library, it’s well worth the €99 asking price.

"The biggest online preset library in your DAW": Waves expands the StudioVerse with cloud-based virtual instrument plugin rack StudioVerse Instruments

Waves StudioVerse is designed solely for Waves plugins , and this does limit its appeal. But if you’re already a Waves subscriber, we can’t think of a developer with a bigger or broader choice of plugins for building every conceivable mixing chain. Cool features include slots with multiband and parallel split options, eight user-definable macro controls, and a big bank of factory and producer/mixer presets. What’s more you can access Waves’ ever growing StudioVerse database of mixing chains directly from the plugin. All told it’s an excellent system.

Excite Audio KSHMR (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) lets you create your own plugin chains, with macro controls, parallel processing, external side chaining and plugin-specific oversampling (up to x16). But it also includes a very cool leader/follower system. This clever linking system allows you to control multiple individual chains from one master (leader) chain. Excellent stuff.