What’s your go-to vocal mixing chain? (Here’s mine…)

Got this question the other day:

“What’s your go-to vocal chain”

Obviously most mixes need different processing but I guess, if pressed, I do this:

EQ – I usually filter and cut first. Then I add what I think the vocal needs. EQ both in solo and in context of the mix.
Compression – I have a lot of different compressors that can all do wonders for certain voices. For some reason I gravitate towards the LA2A the most. It gives the voice thickness without sounding compressed.
Saturation – This could really be anywhere in the chain and doesn’t have to be after EQ and compression. Depending on what the instrument is there are a bunch of different saturation settings I go for, from thickening up the low-end of the bass with actual mild distortion to smoothing out the vocal with some tape emulation.
EQ – Sometimes after compression and saturation you need to rebalance the frequency response of an instrument. I tend to put an EQ after all that if I feel like I need to add some more high-end in again.
Parallel Processing – This is what I’ve started doing more and more of lately, especially to vocals.

Try this the next time you need a thicker vocal:

Send the vocal to a bus, add some nice saturation where it’s almost distorting. Not too much but make it so warm it’ll be hot to the touch.
Then add a compressor afterwards. I like the LA2A but any Opto style will do (or any generic compressor as well probably).
Add it in with the original vocal track until you get a nice and warm vocal track sitting nicely in the mix.

Parallel processing also includes reverbs and delays but that’s more of a subjective choice that’s never really the same in each mix.

So that’s my quick and dirty 5-step vocal chain that I’ve been using lately. If you want to take a look at my 9-step guide to a professional vocal sound you can take a look at it inside Recording & Mixing Strategies.

It include s a few more steps that tackle even the most problematic vocals:

www.audio-issues.com/strategies

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