Vocal gets buried

[osiris]

I'm doing a track with a low volume vocal that has clipping peaks. I tried to fix this in Audacity. I have it sounding great in the mix but it seems to be very low no matter how many compressors, etc. I throw on it. I can double track it. Probably will. Any good effects that can make a vocal stand out? The Panagement VST helped a lot, but I'd like it to be louder without distortion. Right now it's the right amount of cream. Thanks.

[elxsound]

Is it safe to assume you’ve already carved a space for it with EQ?

You can also consider using a side-chained dynamic EQ or a multiband tool like Pro-MB.

Additionally I would look at saturation tools. Some light saturation should help.

[osiris]

I did, but I used an EQ preset. The Compressor I'm using has Saturation, but it really brings out some unwanted frequencies. I think it may be the Chorus, but if you Solo the vocal it sounds so good.

[tehlord]

Is it too obvious just to turn other stuff down, or move it out the way of burying the vocal.

[TMarchand]

Apulsoft Unmask can make a signal jump out of a mix, and I never deviate from the default settings.

Nanaopulse could boost the transients in the vocal midrange. That might also work.

[vurt]

I'm doing a track with a low volume vocal that has clipping peaks. I tried to fix this in Audacity. I have it sounding great in the mix but it seems to be very low no matter how many compressors, etc. I throw on it. I can double track it. Probably will. Any good effects that can make a vocal stand out? The Panagement VST helped a lot, but I'd like it to be louder without distortion. Right now it's the right amount of cream. Thanks.

try a second layer, but hi pass it to remove all the low, turn this up alongside the original, it may help the vocal cut through

[original flipper]

Techlord: Is it too obvious just to turn other stuff down, or move it out the way of burying the vocal.

A low volume/power vocal needs a low volume backing - I would say come up with a mix and then bring on the vocal and adjust so that the vocal can be clearly heard - all the tools in the world are ultimately going to do the same thing.

The following vocal is a low energy vocal with a muted/sparse backing which is not flooding the vocal out.



This might help:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... erformance

[donkey tugger]

Automation is key. Boost and cut the levels according to the dynamics of the track. You can't compress a vocal and then expect it to match the dynamics.

Another little trick oft used (quite a bit by the more modern beat combos) is to duplicate the vocal then gate and distort this second version, but mix it in really low, so it's almost subliminal. Adds a touch of clarity and bite, believe it or not.

[osiris]

I considered doing the bring everything down to bring it up. The biggest issue is the verses are almost whispers. Not quite, but a slurry, low voice. Then, the first half of the chorus is pretty normal, but the second half she just belts it out. I may just run it through an editor and boost the verses up to the chorus level.

[donkey tugger]

I considered doing the bring everything down to bring it up. The biggest issue is the verses are almost whispers. Not quite, but a slurry, low voice. Then, the first half of the chorus is pretty normal, but the second half she just belts it out. I may just run it through an editor and boost the verses up to the chorus level.

It's easier to do it with automation because then you can mix it along with the rest of the track, rather than guessing, plus you can get quite forensic with particular parts where the volume is inconsistent.

[osiris]

I have to check this but I may have put 2 compressors on the track. One on main and one on the sum. There's 3 vocal track places on the template and they all get sent to one track. Reading about drums and parallel compression and the article said don't be tempted to put separate compressors in the track because they end up defeating each other.

[_leras]

I considered doing the bring everything down to bring it up. The biggest issue is the verses are almost whispers. Not quite, but a slurry, low voice. Then, the first half of the chorus is pretty normal, but the second half she just belts it out. I may just run it through an editor and boost the verses up to the chorus level.

You could start by chopping your audio into much smaller parts. From this it sounds like you just have one long vocal take. If chopped up you can just increase clip gain for each section independently to get closer to where you want to be.

Possibly you could also duplicate the track three times and then adjust each part related to how it works best for e.g. verses, quiet chorus, loud chorus.

[osiris]

That's a great idea leras. I didn't have 2 compressors, but actually 3 when you count the one I added to Guitar Rig. I hope people read this and don't make my mistake. I'm thinking in my head, oh I f I put a compressor on both the main and the send, I can make them both louder. Then, when I read that article (thank you Reason blog) about Parallel compression and mistakes you can make, that made sense. It's much better now, not 100%. I also need to carve a frequency hole in the other tracks for it.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Mixing is fitting a bunch of puzzle pieces together. Some good advice in this thread so far. Some random additional thoughts...

Understand that your vocal is the focal point. Mix around it. Don't think of it as fitting the vocals into the mix. Fit the music around the vocal. Particularly for pop music or something with a good singer. Punk rock? Sure bury the vocal a bit, turn other stuff up. Any kind of pop? The audience is there for the vocal.

Pan stuff away from the vocals. Vocals center, but instruments with lots of conflicting midrange information should be panned away from them. You can create a lot of space in the mix with just Volume and Pan. That's like 80% of mixing right there.

Monitor quietly if you're not. If your monitors are up loud, you may not be getting an accurate picture and may make it difficult to set levels. Mix your track so the vocal is clearly audible when quiet. Then it'll just sound better when louder.

If it's a quietly sung/whispered vocal, then you may even need to go so far as to stripping elements out of the arrangement or bringing them way down. There's a reason Elliott Smith (whispery singer) wasn't the singer Metallica (loud metal). Wouldn't have worked. If there's a lot of midrange information in your mix, then of course they'll drown out a whispered vocal. So bring those down, pan them away from the vocal, mute them, etc. If the verse vocals are quiet, and chorus vocals are louder, muting some stuff is an option! You can do a Pixies quiet verse loud-chorus thing, which is a great sound and awesome way to bring excitement to a mix.

Good advice about chopipng up the vocals and bringing up the clip gain. That's a great way to get a constant level into your vocal FX chain, which could be a problem you're running into. You can even duplicate the vocal and split it up between verse vocals and chorus vocals and process both differently.

Think about reverb/ambience. Don't use a long hall reverb that sounds great solo in a crazy busy mix. Maybe all you need is a short delay in the mix. Or maybe use different verbs/delays for verse/chorus. Maybe automate the delay/verb and/or use ducking.

Lastly, automation! Bring stuff down when the vocal is on. Bring it up when the vocal is silent and you want to highlight those other instruments. Or vice versa.

[_leras]

That's a great idea leras. I didn't have 2 compressors, but actually 3 when you count the one I added to Guitar Rig. I hope people read this and don't make my mistake. I'm thinking in my head, oh I f I put a compressor on both the main and the send, I can make them both louder. Then, when I read that article (thank you Reason blog) about Parallel compression and mistakes you can make, that made sense. It's much better now, not 100%. I also need to carve a frequency hole in the other tracks for it.

Did you manage to fix this?