How to? Vocals sounding "out front"??

[bunt]

Hello everyone! I would appreciate any and all suggestions! I'm trying to figure out how to make vocals sound prominent in a mix... I mean without just pushing them louder than everything else. An audiophile buddy of mine gave me some awesome reference CDs and the first thing I noticed (other than their squeaky clean-ness and huge stereo imaging and pristine separation of instruments).. um oh yeah, vocals... if I watch the level meters, the vocals never push the meter any further than the average level of everything else all together, yet they jump out at you and pretty much dominate without clouding up or drowning all the other instruments.

Can you give me some advice on this? How it's done?

I have a Tascam 788 multitracker. It's 24 bit, so I have plenty of headroom.
I'm trying to achieve this before any reverb or echo, so those effects aren't in the picture yet. I rarely exceed 8 tracks.. usually drums, bass (stereo), acoustic guitar, elec guitar, and organ or piano.. sometimes a mandolin, then the vocals (mono)
I tried compressing during recording at 2:1 with a threshold of about 10, medium attack and slow release, but A-B'd that with no compression and couldn't find much difference. (I try to move up & back on the mic when my vocals get louder or softer... with my average being about 4" away from it)The compressor is outboard (behringer)cause I just don't like the internal compressor on the Tascam... it either squashes everything in an ugly way or does (perceived) nothing.

I'm Just using the Tascam preamps with a Bluebird mic and it's stock pop filter, which, by the way is not so good at reducing pop, so I have to reduce my own pops & sss's by just being more careful when I sing. I tried one of thos Samson 'C-valve' pres, but I didn't like the sound, as in I lost clarity & depth & tone.. which was pretty much expected, but hey.. I tried it. Also tried the pres in my mixer, (behringer eurotrack circa late 90s)and one of those little art tube DI box pre-things with the cheap 12ax7... but in the end, I get less noise when I just use the recorder's pre's.

I hope I've given enough info.. (seemed like maybe too much?) But in the end, I can get a (sort of) decent sounding mix if (when) the vocals push the level meter up about 1 to 1 1/2 segments above the general mix. (sorry I don't know the db scale of "1 segment"... I still think this (vocal) just sounds like it's at a bit higher volume, instead of "standing out in the mix, plus the level meter kind of validates that too..

Any help/advice on this would be greatly appriciated! Thanks very much!

 

[Jim Lad]

A couple of things I do is to give the vocals less reverb than back up vocals and choose 100% width for stereo. (in the reverb setting)
Bring down the peaks and push up the volume. (so, compression) and place everything else in a way that doesn't walk all over me.
You can add some presence in the EQ too.
I use a preset for that but others here can throw numbers at you.

 

[bunt]

thanks Jim! I didn't think anyone was going to touch this one... I appreciate your suggestions

 

[Jim Lad]

Double post. Sorry.

 

[Jim Lad]

I think it's the "Hey Pros" thing.
We usually leave those questions to the pros.
I'm sure one will be along shortly.

 

[bunt]

haha! Point taken, but you all seem to know quite a lot more than I do. I'll go edit that

 

[nate_dennis]

A few other things to consider (and I'm by no means a pro)...

Panning: By moving instrumentation (exlcluding kick, snare, and bass [which is just a standard and by no means a rule]) away from the center of your stereo field you give your vocals more room and, by defininition, more prominance.

EQ: Make sure that you have enough room in your vocals frequency range cut out, or flat out avoided, by other instruments to not fight your vox for space. With guitars and pianos it's pretty impossible to get this done, but that's when we go back to panning.

Double Tracking: You may well get some nice results recording the lead vocals twice. Some people leave them panned perfectly center to fatten up the sound and make it sound like one person. Some people pan them apart a bit. If you've heard any Elliott Smith records; he made GREAT use of this technique.


I hope this helps.

 

[Bristol Posse]

Compression, EQ, choice of reverb/delay, panning and riding the fader will all help place the vocal (or anything else for that matter) where you want it in the mix

Making sure you capture the performance as well as possible and that the performance is as good as it can be will generally mean that you need less manipulation of the sound to get it to sound "right"

Don't accept a so so take, get it right and don't record too hot. Pres and converters are really designed to work optimally at 0dbu which translates to somewhere around -18dbfs on your DAW meters.
Also plugins emulating analog gear circuits are going to work more like what they are supposed to emulate when the input is around that 0dbu (-18dbfs) RMS level.
Try not recording to get as loud as possible without clipping and shoot for an average level of -18 on your DAW meters with peaks around -10 instead.

It's surprising how much this can open up the sound, and how much better the tracks seem to take EQ and compression etc and you can bring up the overall volume later on with a limiter.

 

[kcearl]

I always use an analog delay and some chorus but I look for a particular sound...accompanied with some comp and an EQ and I can almost bare listening to myself


also mix everything around the vocals...once I started doing this I started getting the levels I need..if my drums are a bit quiet I might do them first but nothing else before the vocals..this ensures they're up front from the start

 

[Jean-Pierre]

I agree with kcearly, start with vox but one thing one of the top producers in the country has taught me is make space with eq (that is where parametric eq comes in luckily most digital software have that) find the points where the eq change will make the most impact (between 2.5 kHz and 3 kHz just watch out too much will make it sound harsh) and take that out of your guitars mostly and add very little to your vocals. Your mic should be picking up the vocals well to start with most mics do. You should also play with panning. Imagine you are looking at a stage and start there. I am sure this will help. Rever and delay will also help.

 

[bunt]

A few other things to consider (and I'm by no means a pro)...

Panning: By moving instrumentation (exlcluding kick, snare, and bass [which is just a standard and by no means a rule]) away from the center of your stereo field you give your vocals more room and, by defininition, more prominance.

EQ: Make sure that you have enough room in your vocals frequency range cut out, or flat out avoided, by other instruments to not fight your vox for space. With guitars and pianos it's pretty impossible to get this done, but that's when we go back to panning.

I agree with kcearly, start with vox but one thing one of the top producers in the country has taught me is make space with eq (that is where parametric eq comes in luckily most digital software have that) find the points where the eq change will make the most impact (between 2.5 kHz and 3 kHz just watch out too much will make it sound harsh) and take that out of your guitars mostly and add very little to your vocals. Your mic should be picking up the vocals well to start with most mics do. You should also play with panning. Imagine you are looking at a stage and start there. I am sure this will help.

Making sure you capture the performance as well as possible and that the performance is as good as it can be will generally mean that you need less manipulation of the sound to get it to sound "right"

Don't accept a so so take, get it right and don't record too hot. Pres and converters are really designed to work optimally at 0dbu which translates to somewhere around -18dbfs on your DAW meters.
Also plugins emulating analog gear circuits are going to work more like what they are supposed to emulate when the input is around that 0dbu (-18dbfs) RMS level.
Try not recording to get as loud as possible without clipping and shoot for an average level of -18 on your DAW meters with peaks around -10 instead.

Hey Thanks everyone! I think it's pretty cool that you are each saying pretty much the same things... That's a good indicator (to me) that these are the things I need to work on.

I've actually been trying your suggestions already, and it was kinda scary in a good way. I mean all of these tips help to do what I'm trying to do even tho I haven't found the exact perfect settings yet.. The scary part is that when I heard my vocal standing out & being all sassy... I quickly realized I need to do a new take... since all of my flawed singing stands out nicely.. heh.. I mean it's on pitch & all, but I learned that I have a tendency to drop the S on words that end in S.. or at least it sounded that way, and also dropping the ends of phrases as a general observation... just sort of fading on it. Not a lot, but enough to realize the anti-professionalism in my vocal, and the fact that strength on the vox comes from me, mostly... and not so much from "doing stuff" in the mix. Oh yeah.. another new observation on myself after this newfound clarity is I can "hear" the anxiety when I'm about to go for a note close to the edge of my range... I don't really know how to describe it other than I can hear it coming before it gets there...

Anyway, THANKS to all. This helped