Hello guys-its almost 7 AM and I just got back from my rehearsal space after another long night of mixing, so please forgive me if this is not quite coherent...I have a kind of complicated question. I was just wondering what kind of process you guys go through to decide how to get vocals to sit in the mix. There seems to be such a wide range of options (and I am just talking about certain effects, and not the different ways of using compression and EQ) available to get vocals their own "space" in the mix: 1)delay (single, multitap, stereo, mono-also varying feedback, length of time etc.), 2)reverb (plate, hall, or room, with different amounts of early reflections, damping, and decay time), and 3)pitch modulation (chorus, flanger, pitch-shifter, and I don't even know what the settings of LFO, envelope, manual, and resonance sine/triangle actually do), or a combination of these, or dry. I feel like I spend WAY too much time exploring all my options for getting the vocals to sit right in different parts of songs, and I am never sure if they are as good as they can possibly be, or even sometimes what exactly my goal is! I was just wondering if any of you guys have some sort of guidelines which you go by when choosing between all of these effects. Also, when choosing between these options, do you base your decision more on how the effect makes the vocals sit in the mix, or do you base it more on the emotional quality that a certain effect gives? I realize that a lot has to do with the kind of music you play (ex.- a Ramones' style punk band is more than likely not going to use plate reverb with 3 seconds decay time combined with stereo crossed mutitap delay and just a tiny touch of hi-band flanger for their chorus vocals). But I do seem to notice a lot of different combinations in just the basic new hard rock song on the radio today, and I can't always even tell what exactly is going on with the vocals in these songs, or more importantly, WHY THE PRODUCER DECIDED TO USE THESE PARTICULAR EFFECTS. Anyway, maybe these questions, or my assumptions about this might seem a little strange, but any comments will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!