I agree about Neutron 2. It’s awesome, and kinda magical.
Nowadays I use it on about every track because it really makes great EQ and compression suggestions based on the actual musical material plus the musical context.
From there it’s fairly easy to apply reverb & delay IMO.
Vocal effects - recommendations
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I bought the Music Production bundle 2 in march 2017 (Neutron Advanced, Ozone 7 Advanced, Nectar 2 Production Suite, VocalSynth 1, Trash 2 Expanded, RX Plug-in Pack, and Insight) and use Neurton, Ozone and Insight a lot.
The others not so much. But Nectar does have some cool features.For vocals I use:
- EQ/Compressor: my DAW EQ/Compressor ( S1 Pro 4 fat channel, love it!) and sometimes a specific plugin if I need a sound (waves SSL for example)
- some ambient delay or so to make it blend in the mix. I also like the Presonus Convology Reverbs Library but use reverb less and less these days on vocals.
- sound shaping fx I use a TC voice-live 3 (vocoder, hard tuning) or nectar
- harmonizing/pitch correction I use melodyne 4, works extremely easy in Studio one.Haven't upgraded to Music Production Suite yet. The upgrade price is too much for me now ($399 USD) .
I do think iZotope have great products and Neutron + Ozone are awesome. -
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I attack vocals like this :-
I normally record with either my U87 or SM7b into a 1073 with gentle compression if you get this stage right your vocal processing with be good and a lot easier.
In pro tools I then do some corrective EQ followed by maybe some multi band comping to tame some frequencies that I don’t really like to sound of when a singer might have got a little closer/further away from the mic. After this I’ll do some character EQ mostly the waves SSL channel and some more gentle compression
Depending on the type of music I will normall then use waves 1176 for some aggressive compression if it’s rock.
As for effects I then use Soundtoys soundblender for a split harmoniser effect.
Plate reverb
And then a combination of delays to help give the vocals more space.All effects are on aux tracks and used as inserts so I have lots of control of them.
Hope this helps
Thanks for the suggestion Raoul but as Nicky said, I was after a "fix it all for me" solution.
The main reasons being:
1) I don't mix very often so lack of experience and tools/investment
2) The recording I want to "fix" is a live recording so no options on Mic's, placement etc.
3) I'm lazy
4) I get sound blind, just like profiles. I understand what Compression, eq etc do, but can't decide if changes I've made it better or worse! I've added some ADT, compression, verb. Delay I can't get sounding right, so left it out for now.
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"Sound blind". I like that!
I'm actually anticipating this myself. It's been so many years since I've done any practical work that I reckon once I'm set up again, everything's gonna sound great no matter how-bad it is.
I listen to talkback on AM radio most of the day and night, so that's the "fidelity" I'm used to, plus... it's actually an old clock radio who's clock broke 20 years ago. Doesn't get much worse than this. My other main source for audio is the Mac's CrapMac™ mono speaker, which has a bass response of exactly zero, and is so quiet I have to literally get on the floor to hear it properly.
So, I'll be joining the Sound Blind™ club for sure, V8. Hopefully it doesn't take too many months before I'm able to tell a completely-shite plugin from a good one. There's also the factor, that I'm sure you were alluding to, whereby tweaks of EQ and compression parameters, for instance, can all "sound good" no matter how we set them. This is especially true when the gear's good (the equipment and plugins, not drugs... although they'd have the same effect).
In the end it comes down to practice and becoming acquainted with what works in a mix and what doesn't, and to get there we simply have to try stuff... suck it and see, so to speak.
