sitting vocals into mix

[Raifer]

I have a bluebird blue mic and am having a bit of an issue getting the vocals to sit nicely in the mix. I have used d-verb as my main way to work with it, but sometimes it sounds pretty echoy and makes the mix sound muddy. Does anybody have a good vocal preset for d verb or a website I can research that? Thank you!
Raif

[skycraft]

I don't have any links but have you tried rolling off some of the low end in the effect return? Those low frequencies on an echo can double up and sound kinda muddy.

[Realizm]

Sitting vocals into a mix has more to do with evening out the dynamics without killing the dynamic range. So, reverb is not necessarily your main ally here, but one component of many processing elements at your disposal. There really are no 'magical' presets for reverb, compression, etc. or anything else that you'll be able to set and forget without tweaking it a little. Presets are only 'points of departure' which you use to get you started 'toward' what sound you're looking for. And, I don't know your background, but, one of the best ways to learn all these things is by working at a studio...putting in your time and learning hands on. Don't get me wrong, there are some great books and mags out there....But everyone wants to make their home recordings "sound like records". You want to do that you'll have to go to where records are made. This puts you in a position, eventually, to recall and reverse engineer mixes. You'd be surprised at how much processing and effects are used to make a vocal sound like not alot of processing or effects were used. It's one thing to have the tools, it's another to know how to use them....and use them well.

[chrisk23]

these are some helpful links:


http://web.archive.org/web/200212070.../articles3.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/200302020...articles12.htm


http://web.archive.org/web/200306220.../articles5.htm

[Shan]

I have a bluebird blue mic and am having a bit of an issue getting the vocals to sit nicely in the mix. I have used d-verb as my main way to work with it, but sometimes it sounds pretty echoy and makes the mix sound muddy. Does anybody have a good vocal preset for d verb or a website I can research that? Thank you!
Raif

Try my links in this post.

Follow everything in this column.

Hope that helps.

Shane

[will the moor]

pre-delay is your friend when it comes to vocals and reverb.

Will

[reefer]

OK.

First off! Does the vocal sound fine when you solo it with no verb. If not get the artist to stand closer to the mic as you could be getting to much natural verb.

If it sound good there are a few ways of working with verb.
First D-verb is not very nice get a better verb!
Seems you could have to much Wet and not enough Dry Vox

I get good results on singing female vox by running the following settings but you must play a bit.

As direct insert.
Mix 10-30%
Diffusion 50-90%
Delay time 1.2 - 2.3 m.s
Pre Delay is tricky depends on lenghth of words. Play if you just want to ctach the end of a word.

Also try setting up a send.

Activate D-verb on a Aux, try stereo with D-verb sometimes sounds alot better and wider.
From the Vox channel send via Bus to the active Aux channel.
Keep mix on 80-100%
Use send and Vox audio channel faders to get a balance.

Next:

Try duplicate the Vox channel then apply verb on the duplicate see insert settings above, then
nudge the duplicate about 2-3 samples for some natural phase.

Just a few ideas but this is a bit of an art depending on the music genre and vox artist.

[Raifer]

Thanks for the response could you breifly tell me how to roll the low end of the effects return? Thank you for your help I really appericiate it!

Raif

[msg6794]

i don't have pt in front of me, but the effect you're using might have this built in with a high pass filter in it, which would work. but another easy answer is to insert an eq on the effect return aux after the other effects, and roll off the low end with that. use high pass/low cut, and cut low frequencies out. try rolling off from under 1k to start, and experiment to see what sounds best?

[polf]

when mixing (depending on the genre of the music) its a good idea to get the vocals up early and mix around them because the singing might be the main focus of the song. If you leave the vocals untill the end there might not be "room" for them.