Vocals cleaning

Recording & Production
1

Hey everyone, new subscriber here

I’m an independent artist who records my own vocals in Pro Tools, but I send all of my sessions to a professional mixing engineer. I’m not trying to mix my own records—I just want to give my engineer the cleanest, most organized vocal possible.

What plugins do you recommend for a light recording chain before sending vocals to a mix engineer?

Right now I’m looking for recommendations on:

  • Noise reduction
  • Gate (if you use one)
  • EQ
  • Compression
  • De-esser or dynamic EQ
  • Limiter (if you recommend one)

My goal is to clean up the vocal without over-processing it, so the mix engineer still has plenty of flexibility.

I’d also love to know what your plugin order is and why. Thanks!

2

Hi Yoan,

Welcome to the community ! I’m happy to give you my advice for providing clean vocals for your engineer.

  • Noise reduction : I would avoid using a plugin for this, and instead try focusing on the take - maybe use a dynamic mic if your room sounds too bad/noisy. Otherwise, as a rescue, I’d use iZotope RX in audiosuite (but be careful as it can quickly become too destructive).

  • Gate : I wouldn’t recommend using a gate for vocals (except for special effects), instead I’d clean the clip manually by muting the parts I don’t want, so you don’t risk losing any valuable information.

  • EQ : if you only want to clean your vocals a little bit so your engineer can still have flexibility, you could use any basic EQ and just high-pass in a reasonable way – if you want to go a little deeper into frequency cleaning, a Fab-Filter Pro Q3 would be my choice for its simplicity and efficiency.

When sweeping for unwanted frequencies, don’t forget to ask yourself whether or not they’re really a nuisance (when not boosting them).

  • Compression : I’d suggest not to use a compressor that’s too colored or be wise about it. My choices will lean towards an UA 1176 adjusted solely to tone down overly aggressive peaks a bit.

  • De-esser : I would use the Waves Renaissance DeEsser “RDeesser”, but keep in mind that you will need to adjust the frequency where it hits since the esses are specific to each voice. Again, use it carefully as it can sound like you’re lisping if pushed too far.

  • Limiter : I won’t use a limiter on my lead vocals, maybe in a parallel chain, but that would be the engineer’s choice.

  • Notes : your main goal is to try and get the best raw sound you can before going into your chain, so try different things before opening any plugin. When doing so, you’ll notice you need far fewer plugins to get what you want. Also, don’t overlook the edition : mute the unwanted parts, and look if there’s any necessary clip gain to do (note that you should do clip gain before opening any plugin, as it will change the volume before entering the chain, hence your settings won’t be accurate anymore).

The order of your chain seems fine to me, the only thing people could argue about is EQing before or after compression, but in the end it all depends on your habits and preferences.

I hope it will help you for your next sessions !

1 Like
3

Callum:

Thank you for reaching out and welcome to the community!

As you’re looking for a light recording chain, I would keep it simple yet clean so that the mixing engineer has more room to work with.

  • For a simple yet effective chain, I would recommend going through a UAD Neve 1073 Preamp into a UAD Tube-Tech CL1B Compressor. This is a classic chain used in many recording studios so this is definitely a good starting point to achieving a clean sound to give to the mixing engineer.

  • Another choice for compression is the UAD Neve 1176 Limiter. This is a great choice especially if you want clarity in the mid-range frequencies. This can also be used just to shape the tone, not necessarily for adding compression.

  • For EQ, I would suggest using the FabFilter Pro Q3/Q4 which offers both spectral and dynamic EQ, as well as warmth to replicate an analogue EQ.

  • Finally, in your reverb bus chain, I recommend trying various reverbs of different sizes and tones such as the Valhalla Delay, UAD Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb, and the SoundToys Echoboy.

Best of luck!

4

Hey, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me that advice. I have the Waves subscription bundle with all the Waves plugins, if you were building a clean vocal chain specifically to send to a mix engineer, what would your chain look like? How would you make the vocal all level

Do you have any social media or a way I can follow your work? I’d love to learn more from you and get more advice about recording and vocal processing. If you offer any one-on-one consulting or lessons, I’d definitely be interested in learning more.

5

Hey !

If you have all Waves plugins, a nice light recording chain could be : CLA-76 (1176 emulation) > Q10 (parametric EQ) > RDeesser. But I encourage you to try different ones whenever you get the chance - you might discover some that you like even better.

As mentioned in the post above, be moderate with your settings to avoid making it harder for your engineer !

Bypass your plugins and try to hear the difference between before and after what you’ve done, it’ll help you train your ears and make better decisions.

I assume that by saying “make vocals all level” you think of heavy compression ?

If so, I would avoid taking this decision in the recording process and trust your engineer about making the vocals clear enough throughout the track.

It’s my pleasure to answer your questions, though I am not really on any social media unfortunately. But I’ll be happy to help you in the future !

Best of luck for your next sessions.