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Mix Recipes: Clear and present vocals

Getting your vocals to sit right on top at the front of your mix is desirable for any vocal focused song. Lackluster vocal production is like a glowing neon sign that says, “home studio recording!” This tutorial covers a simple mix recipe for getting your vocals right out there in the front of your mix with clarity and presence. Show me the recipe

Vocal mixing: silence is golden

There are a lot of little noises that can sneak in between phrases. These extra noises are not noticed while the vocalist is singing but you don’t want to hear bleed from headphones, rustling paper, or any other distractions in between. It is quite common in the home recording studio world to put a noise gate on vocal tracks to eliminate these types of problems. Tuning a noise gate to correct this can be a time consuming process which is prone to creating one or two unnatural sounding words here and there. I prefer a more natural sounding approach. Show me how to do it »

POD X3 Live Tips and Tricks: Guitar and Vocals to Different Outs

The Line 6 POD X3 has the ability to function as two fully loaded and independent POD XT units. You can use your POD X3 to process two input sources and maintain individual control over the outputs. Here are a few basic and advanced examples of how to set up your X3 for this type of processing. Show me how to process two inputs »

Book Review: Mixing Audio – concepts, practices and tools.


Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices and Tools
price check		 UPDATE: This book is now available.

A new book on mixing techniques is coming out in January 2008. The press release on the book makes it look like a potentially valuable resource. The book promises to cover techniques from basic to advanced and should appeal to home recording enthusiasts as well as studio professionals. The book comes with a DVD of audio examples including four full mixes to play with. The mixes are rock, hip hop, techno, and drum and bass. These mixes are used in examples and tutorials throughout the book.

Quick review:

This book covers a lot of higher level concepts without as much rubber meets the road type advice. A large portion of the book is devoted to talking about tools (as the title implies) with an entire chapter devoted to describing the function of controls found on a typical mixer. This book is absolutely recommended to beginners, but has pockets of information that can be enjoyed by more experienced mixers looking to hone their chops a bit. One of the greatest aspects of the included DVD is the library of sound clips demonstrating critical listening.

More books about mixing

Vocal Mic Selection

I have always thought it was important to choose your first vocal mic carefully. After you build your home studio mic collection you may find a number of mics in your cabinet which could all work wonders on a vocal recording. Once you have the luxury of multiple mics at your disposal it can be quite a bit of fun selecting the mic that most complements your vocalist’s voice. This article will show you an effective way to quickly make a mic selection.

Home Recording Microphones

I have three mics available that I think sound great on vocals in a home recording situation.

AKG C 3000 B Condenser Microphone
AKG C 3000 B price check

I recommend the C3000B to a lot of people as their first large diaphram home studio condenser microphone. It has a very clean and true sound. It is great on everything from vocals and acoustic guitars to drum overheads and 4×12 guitar cabs!
CAD Equitek e100 Condenser Microphone
CAD Equitek e100 price check

The e100 really shines on vocals. It has a very warm and traditional sound quality to it. If you want a home studio microphone with a lot more of its own character than this is a great choice. Using this mic into digital can really warm up the signal.
Oktava MK-319 Large Diaphragm Condenser Mic
Oktava MK-319 price check

I picked one of these up for a steal when they were closing them out at Guitar Center. This mic has quite a following. It has a somewhat dirty sound. It works well when you want a vintage tone. That’s vintage as in lo-fi not vintage as in warm.

Setting up the mics

When judging mics against each other it is important to make sure you are comparing accurately. This means you don’t want to track each microphone separately and compare the takes. You want to eliminate the differences that can come singing the same part over and over. The way I handle this is to set up the mics with their capsules in as close to the same place as possible. I set up my three mics in a line. I could also have set them up in a triangle but with just three mics a line is close enough. The picture below shows how I have the mics arranged. You can see a bit of tissue placed between the microphones so they don’t rub or click together while we’re testing.

Vocal Mic Placement
Mic placement for testing vocals

Vocal mic audition

My DAW is set up to record each mic to its own mono track. If you don’t have the capability to record three mono tracks at once then you will want to audition the mics in pairs using a process of elimination. Have the vocalist record a portion of a take. Singing just one verse or one chorus is enough to check out the mics. If the vocalist or song is very dynamic (with a quite verse and loud chorus) then you will want to record enough of the song to allow you to judge each microphone based on the full range of what it will be asked to do. Sometimes a mic sounds good on low notes but bad on high, great on the loud parts but loses definition during quiet parts. Once you’ve recorded your test take you can start comparing the mics. Mute all but one of the vocal mic tracks and start playback with all the instrumental tracks playing as well. The reason for this is to judge the mics based on how they will sound in the mix. Some mics will help the vocalist to cut through better even if they aren’t the most pleasing when solo’d. Take turns with each microphone track, unmuting it while muting the others. It is a pretty simple process at this point to just keep listening back to the different mics and pic the one you and the vocalist like best.

Once you pick your favorite mic you will want to solo just that track and listen back. You are primarily concerned with the way the mic sits in the mix but it is important to give yourself a sanity check on the sound of the mic. There are things you might not hear during this initial audition that you will start to hear once you listen to the song about a hundred times in a row while mixing.

We talked a bit about really dynamic vocalists or songs and it could be possible you pick more than one mic. It is not unheard of to use one mic for the verse and a different mic for the chorus. Your home studio is your creative playground, be sure to have fun and experiment!

Taming Vocals: Compressors In Series

Taming vocals can be a very tough job. I have a few techniques that I use based on the song I’m mixing and the vocalist on record. A few ways to tame a vocalist are “riding” the fader, compressors, other dynamics processors, EQ, and even reverb. Sometimes you will use a combination of all of them to tame your vocals. This article is going to focus on one particular application of compressors to tame vocals. That is the use of multiple compressors in series.

It is rare for me to mix a project where I don’t use compression of some sort on the vocals. If you are mixing something very sparse, like an intimate singer/songwriter demo, then leaving off compression can be a good decision. I was recently mixing a fairly loud rock project and needed to tame the vocals to a very consistent level throughout the song. This song and vocal track needed to go a bit beyond the limits of typical compression. The sound of the spoken voice is probably more familiar to any human than any other sound. The sound of a singing voice is probably the second most familiar sound to us as humans. People know what a singer should sound like. It can be fairly easy for a listener to detect a heavily compressed vocal track because they can spot the unnatural character right away. Even worse is the tendency for carelessly applied compressors to pump and heave.

Using multiple compressors in series can really help to alleviate this problem. Chaining compressors together one after another will let you achieve higher reduction levels without crossing over too far into the land of pumps-ville. I was looking for 8dB of gain reduction on this vocal track. What I did was use two compressors in series, shooting for around 4dB of gain reduction in each.

Plugins used in this tutorial

  • Waves Renaissance Compressor
  • Waves Renaissance Vox
Waves Renaissance Maxx Native Bundle
Waves Renaissance Maxx Native Bundle

Powerhouse audio processing with incredible accuracy, fidelity, and flexibility is what Waves Renaissance Maxx is all about. It brings together Waves’ most acclaimed audio processors in one package that includes the Renaissance Channel, Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance Reverberator, Renaissance Equalizer, Renaissance Vox, Renaissance Bass, Renaissance DeEsser, and IR-L Convolution Reverb Light.

Step 1: The First Vocal Compressor

We will get the ball rolling by adding a general purpose compressor the vocal track. This first compressor will be the Waves Renaissance Compressor. I use the mono version since I’m mixing a mono vocal track. If you recorded your vocal stereo then you will use the standard stereo version. Figure 1 shows my initial settings for the compressor.


series vocal compression figure 1
Figure 1

The ARC (Auto Release Control) is turned on, the compressor is in Electro mode (vs. Opto) and it is set to Warm (instead of Smooth). I’m using a compression ration of 2.5 with attack at 5ms and release at 50ms. To set the threshold we need to do some playback. Start playback and adjust the Thresh slider (on the Input column) down until you are seeing about -4dB on the attenuation meter (see Figure 2).

series vocal compression figure 2
Figure 2

That’s it for the first compressor. It is important to listen through to your whole track. Try not to get sidetracked by academic advice and mixing with your eyes. Always let your ears guide you. That said, it is now time to add compressor two.

Step 2: The Second Vocal Compressor

We will use the Waves Renaissance Vox for the second compressor. Again I will use the mono version but you should use the version appropriate for your track. The Renaissance Vox plugin is a beautiful exercise in simplicity. It is a “one knob” compressor. Since we are looking for another 4dB of reduction, all we need to do is start playback and bring down the Comp control until you are getting around -4dB on the attenuation meter (see Figure 3).


series vocal compression figure 3
Figure 3

Again, always observe the three L’s of mixing: listen, listen, and listen…

Conclusion: Vocals Are Consistent!

With our two compressors in series (one after another) we are now using each of them to do half the work for our targeted 8dB of gain reduction in dynamic range. We’ve managed to make the loudest parts of our vocal track 8dB closer in volume to the quieter parts without introducing any unnatural pumping.

Waves Renaissance Maxx Native Bundle Waves Renaissance Maxx price check
This bundle includes the Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance Vox and Renaissance EQ. Those are three of my favorite vocal plugins.

This technique will definitely help your home studio vocals get the professional recording studio sound.