Hey friends!

I’m working on building a vocal mixing template to help speed up my workflow and improve consistency across projects. I'd really appreciate any advice, tips, of your own chains/templates that you use regularly.

Whether it’s plugin order, routing, send/return FX setups, or favorite go-to plugins — I’m open to any insights.

Also, if you have general tips for vocal mixing (compression strategies, automation tricks, parallel chains, etc.), I’d be super grateful for those too.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share!

 

Last edited: Jun 28, 2025 at 11:50 PM

I won't give away the plugins I use, but I will give you a good strategy:

1. APU Loudness Compressor, default attack release, source to target mode, -14 LUFS target, gain matched to the verse of the song (that's the only plugin I'm giving away, and it's the most important one)
2. Any EQ, saturation, de-essing, gating you want to shape the sound
3. Compressor in parallel (dry wet knob is ideal), no more than 60%
4. Any further tone shaping or problem-solving
5. Gain plugin with the volume knob automated, you probably won't need a ton of automation because of step 1
6. Effects send with reverb and/or delay, with a separate compressor right after to duck the FX with a quite long release (somewhere around 1000ms) and fast attack (between 1 and .1ms)

If you want to streamline this approach, I recommend doing step 1 and using the newest Pulsar Audio Vocal Studio plugin.

 

Vocal mixing is a big topic to unpack. And somewhat surprisingly, there are very few instructional videos by A-level mixers that focus on vocals.

1. Prep - can range from gentle trim levelling to Mutt Lange-style detailed consonant editing, pitch, timing, room tone, breaths, etc.
2. Method - small speaker, low level, etc.
3. Processing - remove problem frequencies (multi-band compressor, resonance suppressor, etc.), tonal EQ (e.g. Pultecs), level control (2A - gentle, 1176 - more aggressive, RVox, etc.), De-essing, Limiting

A lot of the actual processing is style dependent - e.g. metal vs pop, etc.

For starters have a look at:

Ken Lewis, Mike White, Mike Senior, Yoad Nevo, UAD ("How to Dial in a Pro Vocal Chain").

The two things I'd say are most important - consistent tone, being careful not to push the processing too far as we're very sensitive to how the human voice sounds.

Finally, automation is more-or-less essential e.g. less compression in exposed song sections, etc.

Cheers!

 

Trackspacer anyone? - on vocals - t=2.56s

 

I haven't much to add to shinjiya's excellent post other than to say that because we have the modern option of doing so, prep your vocals before processing them with plugins. What I mean is, look at the waveform and get rid or soften breath sounds, noise between lines and tighten up any timing issues that you hear not flattering the groove (the same can be said with the drums, percussion or anything tha stands out of the bounds of being in the pocket). Also, any sibilence can also be lowered in volume more naturally than most deessors can. Doing this kind of preparation can really help a vocal be precise and natural sounding. It can take time but to me it's worth the effort to do these things.

 

I posted this through my phone so I couldn't really explain much of my reasoning, so here's a few questions some people might have when reading the steps:

- "Why APU Loudness Compressor?"
Because it is, hands down, the cleanest and most natural leveller/vocal rider I have ever used. I have tried pretty much everything, and the APU was the only one that didn't fluctuate at some points or sounded compressed sometimes. It is also incredibly efficient on the CPU, meaning you can use it on almost everything.

- "Why parallel comp? How much?"
Since the APU Loudness Compressor is so transparent, I use parallel comp just to transfer some of the tone of a compressor into the vocals. I always have a fairly slow attack with a somewhat fast release. The amount of gain reduction varies, usually somewhere between 5 to 7db, with only 30 to 60% applied in the dry/wet knob. Usually that is enough to smooth any bumps post APU, and it imparts the nice tone of your favorite compressor. Mine is a Kiive one that I won't tell. Sometimes it's also a Kazrog one.

- "Why automate the gain knob on a gain plugin? What is the point of automation here?"
I suck a bit at balancing vocals in the mix, so I like to keep my fader unlocked. It also allows me to quickly bypass the automation if I need to. The point of doing automation here is to restore a bit of the volume difference between parts. Some songs go really loud at the chorus, so after both stages of compression, it might be softer than expected, especially since I match it to the verse. Usually, I just look at the waveform and I go about restoring some of that uncompressed volume difference as I listen to the song.

- "Why not use the built-in reverb/delay ducker?"
I usually don't like duckers in effects because they are very simplified and don't give any feedback whatsoever. If you never tried to duck with a separate compressor, try doing it and be impressed at how much you can shape the effect just by working the attack and release. I like Cytomic The Glue for this purpose.

This is pretty much it. It is part of my current workflow in eliminating compression overall, or just making it very hard to notice in places where I'm using it. You don't have to take everything I say and use it in your session, but instead try to understand the reason why I do it, and then you can apply a similar concept to your own mixes if that resonates with what you want to do. The best stuff comes from understanding the reasoning behind things instead of just copying it like "tips and tricks", that's where you find what works and what doesn't, and you might get some stuff merged into yours, that will inevitably become your own sound after you keep iterating into it.

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2025 at 3:39 AM

I agree with everyone commented here, a good recording that captured the feeling, cleaning (hum click etc) and also most importantly clip gain staging or serial compressing are essential for successful track. In addition to that I wanna share what makes recording fun to me.

1- Monitor wet, record dry: Set desired fx on monitoring signals and route that to desired outputs (mostly headphones) since many vocalist wants to hear fx on their headphones (autotune etc) but be sure you record the dry signal. Keeping artist happy makes session easier and inspiring. Plugin market is saturated so I won’t name one but for recording session, low latency plugins work better for monitoring stuff.

2- Audition FX on the fly: Every session is a treasure, visit your favorite sessions and create fx groups and save them into another template.
Over time, you will have many fx groups that suits your sound and that speeds your recording workflow. While you are working on your current template, you can call those favorite fx channels or groups into your session easily.

Also these are great on return channels as well, create different creative fx chains on return tracks (100% wet). While listening your recording, you can simply fade in or out to layer that sound or momentarily turn on and off that fx group. Auditioning fx groups individually or together with vocals also can spark new ideas or decide with your arrangement ideas as well.

Most importantly, always ask "what makes me waste time or stop while creating most of the time?" and set your template or faves around that.

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2025 at 6:32 AM

Thanks for such useful information, I've already started building my template around these tips. And I'm already hearing that they really work.

I would also like to know your point of view about routing, mastering (in particular limiting)
Should I do all the processing on the vocal channel itself, or should it go to the group to stop the vocal tracks ?(backs, dubs, adlibs...).

Also, should the reverbs, delays, stereo-expanders... go to the same vocal group?

The main problem is that my mixes don't sound nice around 2-8kHz (harsh).

 

Just remember that while it's most common to use a de-esser to tame vocal sibilance, it's also not uncommon to insert a de-esser after compression. A wider-band de-esser like FabFilter Pro-DS can be useful for addressing non-vocal harshness as well, including compression artifacts that may introduce harshness in this range:

You can narrow the band on Pro-DS as needed, and the more narrow you can make it to get the result you want; the more natural it will stay. A lot of people consider a de-esser plugin only for dealing with vocal sibilance; but they can also be used for this too. You can even use two of them, one pre and one post-compression.

Depending on what you are processing (with your actual your vocal content), lots of people will go straight to Soothe2; but the post compression Pro-DS instance is a "trick" from the few million year period before the Paleolithic/ pre-Soothe2 era. If you have an annoying sounding channel that you can't seem to fix or figure out why it is harsh to start with, try Pro-DS there.

This is just about the harshness you mentioned. If you are also dealing with any plosives in the channel, that is a better spot to put a plugin as an insert pre-compression. If you have a plugin you specifically use for that.

Before you enable all these processors on the channel, is where you will want to insert Melodyne, should you need to use it. It's easier to do that kind of micromanagement with it clean.

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2025 at 2:03 PM

Are you capturing vocals, using samples or are mixing what is given to you?

 

that one, i'm also recording vocalist's

 

For me, it depends on the song. A song where the back vox and all the fluff besides the lead vocal is just as important, I will try to save some CPU and instead just do corrections in the individual channels and then merge everything into a vocal bus where a lot of the processing happens. I use this routing:

Back vocals (1, 2, 3, ...) >>> Back vocal bus >>> All vocals bus
Lead vocal (1, 2, 3, ...) >>> Lead vocal bus >>> All vocals bus
Effects (reverb, delay, etc) >>> All vocals bus

Lead/Back vocal bus will receive the approach I mentioned earlier, All vocals bus might get a bit of saturation/compression for glue, and maybe TDR Arbiter to correct some harshness.

My routing is usually very straightforward, every track on a mix follow something similar to the routing I wrote above ("all guitars", "all drums", "all keys", etc). From there, it has a send to a parallel bus (where I use some heavy handed Musik Hack FUEL, blended just a little bit) and sends to three other parallel buses with different types of compressors that I also might use, usually I just skip over them, though. Those "All" buses and all the parallel buses go into a Mix bus, and then into the Master bus. The only reason I have a Mix bus separate is that I like to be able to toggle it on or off with a single button. I actually explained my entire mix bus here.

If I need them, I keep them last in the vocal bus it makes more sense based on the song. A lot of the time I can get away by applying it to every vocal in the song in the "All vocals" bus. If I catch something wrong, I'll try dividing them between lead/back bus. These days, I kinda stopped using stereo-expanders because I felt like they were making my vocals worse.

Experiment with light dynamic EQ at 2khz, 4khz and 8khz. Sometimes a tape plugin can help smooth out those frequencies as well.

 

Most so called problems come from a bad listening environment, not from a bad mix. So most people compensate for their bad listening environment, not the tonal balance of the song. And then they have the perception that their "problems" never get fixed - because they can not.

I never have problems with "harshness" neither with "bass overlapping instruments".