My tricks for keeping a voice prominent in the mix involve compressing it quite a bit—often with a limiter and around 10dB of gain reduction. I also frequently use Trackspacer or Soothe for more detailed work. The Focusrite Fast is great, but it lacks mid-side processing and can sometimes produce an unpleasant effect!


I struggle to maintain the voice consistently centered, especially when there’s an almost empty intro followed by a super dense chorus. I don’t like to automate the vocals; I prefer to "manage" the beat so that it’s tailored around the voice.


What are your tricks? What suggestions do you have?

 

waves vocal rider

 

At one point I used the waverider tg to then apply compression and more effects... but now sometimes I even do it by hand... it's not that much work... but these plugins make the work a lot easier.
Then it is opto compression + another fet compression, distortion just to generate harmonics and then some limiter.

 

I have never had luck with extreme limiting and vocal riding. It all creates far more problems to fix than is worth it... I just use reasonable compression and mix, like ye olde days. With Automation and envelope drawing what could be simpler? Nothing's better than your ears for this kind of work.