Are these clipped vocals?
I went on an audio engineer subreddit, and asked them if they clip vocals, and immediately they're like "no, saturation to limiter, and I tried that, and it doesn't nearly get as loud so I thought I might be doing it wrong but.

Is someone able to tell if these vocals are clipped vs limited? Are clipped vocals too harsh? does it sound okay? (skip to 1:54)

 

Well, everything else is distorted af so what do you deduce? It's not uncommon for electronic producers to saturate the fuck out of vocals. But then you have to ask if you problem is tuning the vocals or if it's carving space for the vocals in the mix, cuz if you don't have the basics right (EQ and leveling) no matter how much you distort and compress it it will never sound right.

 

if you mean the havily distoted vocal sound, pretty sure that's a limiter overeacting to the kick and the distortion on the vocals is just a side effect left there because of *wink* creative purposes *wink*.

So i'm assuming this....

is actually ment to be "distortion from limiter".

 

SC like as in soundcloud or sidechain? did this trick have a name? also, I own this compressor, so, is this supposed to be on my vocal bus or is this as it implies, the master compressor on my master?

 

It's a Soft Clip, Soft Clip Gain, And Soft Clip Freq parameters on knobs, and then a limiter after it. I don't know of a specific name for it, but the wording mk_96 mentioned reminded me of it. (more than the sound of the vocal processing in question).

 

thank you very much. while I'm here, I've noticed that the vocals when stacking can get pretty thick, and it's kind of excessive. I have a multiband on my harmonies, and I have multiple busses trying to keep things right, so, I guess is there a way to make these vocals less thick sounding? less full but still loud? without widening too much and avoiding phase? the analogy I would give it is like, I want these vocals to be put through a hair thinning. been trying to use Mid/side maybe, but it's not entirely working or maybe there are settings I don't get.

 

i've only checked it out 2 or 3 times but i think there are a lot more things happening than just "saturation to limiter". sure, there probably is. i think it is a clipper and possibly multi-band distortion also. there is a reverb on every other phrase that gets clamped shut. multiple noise layers. glitches, drop outs. lo-fi guitar part breakdown. There is a lot of little detailed production work done in there, if you pay attention to the production.

i think they didn't listen to it; if that was their answer. Who mixed this?

 

The track itself is clipped to shit, but the vocals specifically aren't clipped (that hard). I hear heavy compression with very short attack and short-ish release, a litte too heavy tube saturator, an overdone de-esser and a limiter after that. Think I could've achieved a similar flavour with FabFilter plugins, although I don't like it and would probably at least do de-essing within the compression.
Then there's a clipper on the mix bus. Also overdone.
Painful to listen to, honestly. Why people do that.

 

heylog. he does everything himself. I understand most of the other elements involved. it isn't exactly what I am going for right now, just understanding louder vocals

 

alright. a bit off topic. do you think these are painful as well? is it any better?

for me, I just like loud vocals, so I probably won't mix exactly like him, it's not exactly like he is the standard, and I am just learning less harsh ways as what I did I guess wasn't the best. also, why is it painful to you (the high ends)?

 

At 1:54 it sounds like mid vocal is heavily compressed with multiband compression, almost sounds like OTT does. My guess is after that compression it went to a parallel saturator close to tape like or just general soft clipping and adjusted afterwards to mix it. High end frequency is heavily smeared and distorted, so I guess there is EQ with high shelf or something, to increase presence in that region and after mentioned parallel saturation it was dialed down. So My guess it is: Compression (multiband, ott most likely), then went to parallel saturator with pre and post EQs. Side vocals sound like they are just generally treated with somewhat similar compression, but doesn't go to saturation send. Of course there are plenty of de-essing going on in main vocal, probably soothe, because the sound doesn't duck in volume so much, just general smearing and smoothness is present.

 

Because the useful signal is lost to IMD.

It's different. Instead of an overdone de-essing, we have overcompressed highs. That's like a different way to mess up the solution to the same problem. Overall mix is less cramped because frequency masking between the voice and the instruments are resolved better, the bass is more controlled before hitting the mix bus clipper and, funnily enough, more highs.

 

Okay, that's a huge change for me I think? I've never used parellel saturation. is that like mixing to taste of the final vocal bus?
I suppose I have a lot more leeway, I have a lot of plugins, so I have 4 different vocals at bigger parts and sent them to a bus with some more eq to have distortion but not harsh distortion, I'm wondering if I can just send out the vocal master and parellel saturate it like you said

 

I just went and cooked something similar to the first example you gave.
Chain is (Vocals are already processed to sound natural, minimal compression, some de-essing, eq, *gate/automation !important prior to this)
Main vocals = OTT (~55% depth, ~35% time),goes to send.
Send = EQ (to reduce IMD, some frequencies might clash too much, so experiment with cutting)Fabfilter saturn 2, warm tape ~60%,
Main vocals and the Saturation send were sent to a PRE (so we are not sending to master here) and pre-master track has soft clipping boosting about 3dB in my case. Sounded honestly 80% there. After that add DSEQ or Soothe and finetune parameters. Should be close to first example, though I don't like it

 

I'm seeing a lot of ppl saying they don't like it, and to be honest, I'm not attatched to it, and I need to find my own sound anyway. so I was wondering what your opinion is on these vocals I made a while back? do you prefer it any less or more? (I used loudness penalty so the mp3 would be accurate to how it would sound on youtube) https://youtu.be/_nzkQSWFCgs?t=1

 

Yeah, sounds more natural, actually good job. Since I don't write this style of music, but see some tendencies I would suggest dropping down whole mix apart from vocals by ~ 2 dB if you don't have headroom here, since what I gathered bass and vocals have the most presence, and in this example vocals are too far back and aren't centered, don't know if it is intentional, just sounded odd for this style of music.

 

The saturation to limiter trick's main point is to increase perceived loudness, without adding much gain to that channel; and without applying any significant ratio compression.

I was thinking Fabfilter Pro-DS as the de-esser. If that is actually the case, it would not a bad bet that he has Saturn2 (for multi-band saturation and possibly some distortion) installed, and Timeless3 also. Pro-R would even do the heavier automated reverb pretty well too. Pro-C2 for the compressor, Pro-L for limiting. Volcano can do minor glitching, disto, and filtering. I'm not taking wild guesses at this; but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he did a large percentage of it with just Fabfilter plugins; because you probably could. There are a lot of plugins which contain many of these as multiFX. Lots of ways to skin a cat.