Effects Chain for Vocal

Kenny DNK

Hi Guys,

Can you give me an idea on what the best chain to use for vocals?

My thoughts would be

GATE - COMPRESSOR - EQ - REVERB

But I get a funny feeling that the gate should be at the end so that it kills the end of the reverb???

HELP!

madtheory

For what purpose? Singing/ speaking? Live/ studio? Pop/ Rock/ death metal? What mic?

Disregarding the large number of variables, here's some general advice:

1. Is it the right mic?
2. When you listen in context, does the vocal actually need any processing?
3. The gate is probably unnecessary.
4. If you're just compressing to reduce dynamic range a little, ditch the comp and use a limiter instead.
5. Depending on the voice and mic, the eq might need to go before or after the comp. Or you might need to notch out some nasties before the comp, and do a sweetener after it.
6. The reverb should be the same one used for the rest of the mix, generally, so putting it directly in the vocal chain doesn't make sense.

Kenny DNK

Thanks a mill for that... just some home recording (singing)

Wasnt aware that the same reverb should be used for all channels either.. so thats a bonus. Nice one.

madtheory

You're welcome

The reverb thing is not a rule, but it is a good starting point. Occasionally you will need a different reverb on certain things. It all depends!

So you're recording. I wouldn't recommend processing while recording, do it afterwards in the mix. Vocal compression/ limiting and eq is quite an art. Generally compressors change the tone a lot more than limiters do. So horses for courses.

Noise gates are not as useful as just editing manually. If it's toms, it takes a while to do but you avoid the distortion caused by the gate's envelope. Back in the days of tape, some of us would actually go to the trouble of erasing the bits in between tom hits. Madness in the quest of the ultimate toms sound! Sometimes one might gate the kick to get more or less click. It depends.

However it's rare that you'd need to delete all the bits in between the singing unless the recording is done badly. I find that noobs tend to overdo this type of editing. It's usually a waste of time because the other instruments mask the noise. At worst you risk robbing the recording of any natural ambience.

Kenny DNK

its mostly proggy house that I do and have used reverbs on a chain before where I would automate the decay time to make the sound bigger when building a cresendo in a breakdown. Should I still run this as a send???

I wouldnt have put any effect on while recording, afterwards just used a gate with a nice release to chop out the dead parts, a compressor to bring it all to the one level and an eq then to roll off the low frequencies.. is this ok??

madtheory

If it sounds good, it is good. Personally I would leave out the gate and cut those bits out manually.