Hello, I've been making industrial/EBM music for a long time, but whenever I go to do a live show I tend to have problems with mic feedbacks and voice effects.
I've been using Reaper with VSTs for vocals with good results on headphones, but I never get a good result using plugins + Reaper live, I'm not a professional mixer.
This year I bought a Boss SE70 pedalboard, which is very versatile for using on vocals, but I would still like to try using plugins, due to the variety and practicality of automation.
I would like a similar effect to Wumpscut and Skinny Puppy's vocals.
I have a show scheduled for Saturday, December 13th and I would like to ask the community a huge favor.
I really need an effective vocal chain that has EQ+Saturation+Compressor and some crispy(metalic) distortion, in addition to Chorus + Delay + reverb (board or room). I would like the Delay and Reverb to be in sends to control them independently, and I don't know if it would be the case to put the distortion in parallel too?
Is my first post here and, well, sorry for the wall of text and rusty english, in short, I need some effect chains for vocals with distortion and crispy(metalic) satutarion, with a little chorus/doubler to give a unison/detuned effect and a little reverb and delay in parallel. I use reaper, and it can be a preset with separate effects or even using a plugin like Mix Box from IK Multimidia or Xvox Pro from Nuro Audio.

I have most of the plugins available from R2R, VR and other crackers. In addition to waves packages, kilohertz etc.
Thanks in advance for any help.
PS: I'll leave some songs as an example of the vocals I'm looking for.

Explanation videos that I can't understand all procedure:

This one on 9:08 is a nice exemple.

another nice exemple

>>>>
I will leave here some links with some live gigs from my band and especially the first one that shows the live feedbacks issues

And here is a link from a live gig recorded in 1994 I was using a pedal board digitech rp 300

 

I think Ben Baptie's approach to mixing Julian Casablancas vocal could be a good starting point

 

Many of these "vocal chain" multi-fx plugins like Nuro do not have anything over going with something more " Studio Staples".

Eq - Fabfilter Pro-Q4. Saturation - Soundtoys Decapitator and Fabfilter Saturn. Compressor - Fabfilter Pro-C2. Multiband compressor- Fabfilter Pro-Mb. Clipper - Kazrog K-Clip3. You do not want a lot of compression. Fabfilter Pro-DS is more than enough if you need a de-esser.

Then you can branch out into all of the more boutique distortion plugins or guitar stuff like Amplitube ToneX, etc. Most of the nastiest portions of Ogre's vocals were just him destroying his own vocal cords. If you are shooting for more the Too Dark Park era kind of sound. Eventide H3000 would be a good add. The entire Eventide Bundle would be even better .

A pitch shifter I like is Zplane Elastique 2. It's not an auto-tuner. You just have to unlock timbre from pitch in the bottom left corner (Lock Icon). Get it on sister site.

Moogerfoogers bundle would be another good add. Maybe my favorite one. The MF-109S Saturator and MF-102S RingMod are both good. A little LFO and modulated growling is simple.

The Goodhertz Bundle 3 from R2R would be well worth your time. They can be abused far beyond what their plugin names suggest. Most have a 3 dot icon on them that expands the right side, where is generally where all the stuff you can misuse is.

Here's a ridiculous distortion for free: https://www.newfangledaudio.com/obliterate

Nasty saturation free plugin. be careful with it: https://codalabs.io/szechuan/

 

Last edited: Dec 12, 2025 at 2:25 AM

no particular reason why i mention it in this thread, but you're one of the best posters on this forum and i appreciate the time you take to give thoughtful and thorough answers. can we bang out a few more clones, please?

 

Thanks for the tip, I will see it today later!!

Thanks for your detailed tips, I will try something with these plugins today!!
My biggest question is how to configure them correctly with the vocals and avoid mic feedback live, and how to do some sends with Reaper, I mean, I know, but I don't know how to configure them correctly like in this video I posted. I wanted to make this effects configuration, this preset, in Reaper, replacing the UAD plugins, which I don't have.

I know it's embarrassing, but if someone who watches this video and uses Reaper, could create a preset of a project with effects similar to the video and send me the preset, it would help me a lot, as the show is this Saturday and it will be difficult for me to assimilate these techniques by then. Likewise, I'm still not completely familiar with these new DAWs.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JthgIvm68mY

 

All of this is going to be pretty heavy for a live setup. The first chain I mentioned is the easiest to pull off, but even those plugins might be more than you want to mess with on stage. You absolutely don’t want oversampling on anything. Your #1 issue to avoid is latency.

Once you start throwing in lookahead parameters, linear-phase EQ, multiband compression, or big saturation plugins like Decap, the latency stacks up fast. That’s when the vocal starts feeling delayed in your monitors. And just to add this little wrinkle… External Latency Compensation, PDC, whatever you want to call it, actually makes it worse for live use. The DAW “helps you” by delaying everything even more.

For live vocals, keep it simple: a basic EQ, a compressor without lookahead, and maybe a little saturation if you really need it. REAPER’s stock plugins are honestly your safest bet because they won’t add nearly as much latency as third-party plugins. The real goal is getting your round-trip latency as low as possible and keeping your CPU from spiking. That’s how you avoid a crash course in your DAW in front of other people.

You also don’t need a ton of reverb. The reason we create reverb sends in the studio is so multiple channels can share the same reverb without chewing CPU. Reverb plugins are some of the heaviest sources of latency and CPU load you can add, and live, that can quickly become a serious source of a problem.

All of this stuff is the reason a lot of people would really not use a DAW for this purpose at all. You should look into something like Gig Performer when you have more time. Or an external dsp satellite if you want to blow some money on UAD.

 

Last edited: Dec 12, 2025 at 9:56 AM