I just recently purchased the plugin to replace Waves Vocal Rider (for a number of Waves-y reasons
) largely to use on male and female vocals. On the plus side, MAV seems much more flexible and powerful than Vocal Rider. On the minus side, it's not purely tuned for vocals and therefore there's more leeway for me to get myself into trouble.I've been playing around with the various settings but getting the occasional strange artifacts here and there, so I thought I'd go to the experts to see what tips you have for the various settings. Typically, I'd use MAV right after a basic subtractive channel EQ and before compression.
Here are some questions:
1. Just based on the peaks showing on MAV's meters, what should the input signal be peaking at?
2. What speed mode (and speed advanced setting) works best for vocals in current pop-style music?
3. What is a good starting point for sensitivity and range?
4. How do you set lookahead? Is it dependent on the project tempo or is there a general setting that just works well for vocals?
5. Do I need to think about any of the advanced settings?
6. I've read in my searching this subform that perhaps a 2-stage solution might be best for vocals... if you're using this, I guess the questions above apply to both stages and I'd have the additional question of whether you'd insert the second stage at the end of the vocal chain after compressors and colorizing plugins such as saturation, vintage-y type color EQs (pultec, etc.), and so on?
Thanks much in advance!
Any additional thoughts would be greatly appreciated.