Lead Vocal Stem and riding/deessing question

Hi Jon! Thanks for the great insightful videos! I’m wondering: Do you always/often work from vocal stems that already have reverb printed on them, or was this mostly a “I need to start at Finneas’ sound” decision? In my experience I feel a little limited when verbs are printed because it’s harder to compress, harder to deess and fix and also, well, especially on the reverb side of things I can get more clarity into a vocal if I have the control in the mixing stage (for instance by eqing or deessing the reverb send or return). But maybe you could elaborate on your feeling about that. Then secondly, do you spend much time riding vocals? I see some clipgain here and there, but not much on the faders. Anyway, any insights into the vocal massaging would be helpful. Thank you!

Hey Richard!

I definitely prefer having them separately of course, and on lead vocals I almost always do. Then I can process separately which we all want to do. On BVs that’s not always be cause, but with RX and clip gain, I don’t have many instances where I can’t sort out what I want to achieve.