need vocal thickening help

[Stoneroses63]

I'm on a BLA 002 for pre's and the only mics I have are an AKG solid tube (main mic) a couple 57's and a pair of Shure KSM27s. The mixes I'm doing sound great and full (pop rock) but for the life of me, I cannot get the vocal to stand out in the mix. The vocalist has pretty good pitch but his voice is a little light. Good tone though but not thick in the mix. I dont want to use noticable delay because then it shows the singer needed delay...I would just like to rely on compression to thicken besides the mic...Unless there is some delay technique that is not audible... Are there other mics that are better for this application? Thanks

[dubhausdisco1]

Have you tried to "smear" the vocal? By sending the audio to an aux track with 20-100 ms delay (be very careful of phase issues) you may get the full sound you want... By the way how is that BLA mod????

[TheNoize]

By the way how is that BLA mod????

It's good, but makes the vocals sound thin. HAHA =)

[jonah day]

Can you get the vocalist to double track his vocals? Pan hard left and right and see how that sits in the mix with one track bussed to a stereo verb, the other dry

[lemix]

Find the low frequency sweet spot, boost a little. I would also suggest ( if you have access to it ) a hardware compressor and an Eventide Hxxxx box. Plenty of VOX thickeners there !

good luck,

[daeron80]

It's possible that the problem is that the singer was standing in a place in the room where an acoustical anti-node happened to coincide with one of his formants. If so, the only fix is to move the mic and re-track.

But I would bet that the real problem is that you mixed the track with the vocal muted. In that case, go back to square one in the mix, start with the vocal, and build the mix around it. Don't try to make everything sound good individually. Focus on the whole picture instead of on the details that make it up.

[Stoneroses63]

Yes, I mixed the whole track with no vocal on it, but had it just in my mind while tracking. I will do this. Start with vocal soloed then drums, bass...Then see how it goes from there....Thank you for the responces

[jstunner]

On thing you can try doing is bringing in your reverb pans, or even switch to a mono verb for the track. Sometimes when you spread the verb too far out it can muddy things up. With a mono verb on the vocals it will keep the power in the middle. You can also try boosting a tad around 3k to help make the vocal cut through. If you have the Waves plugs, RVox tends to add a little warmth and meat to the vocal.