Bill Allen wrote:
I've been struggling with a technique problem. How
do you get your
vocals to sound good? I know that you can't make a silk purse from a
sow's ear, but you can make the best of what you've got. What
combination of plugins and settings do you use to get the best sound
from vocals particularly in Ardour? I know that this is one of those
subjective questions for which the best answer is try it out yourself
and find what sounds best, but there are so many plugins (an
embarassment of riches), each of which has many settings, that a brute
force search of all the combinations would take forever - not to mention
that after a while, my poor ears become exhausted with the effort and
refuse to hear differences anymore. So what I'm really looking for is
good starting points to work from.
One combination that I like is GVerb to get depth and L/C/R Delay to get
width. Even with those two getting the settings right takes time. For
comunication, I've included a jack rack with some settings I've found
that work OK. I would love your critiques and suggestions for other setups.
I'm of the opinion that you should work on getting the vocals to sound
good dry -- before adding any effects. What are you using to record the
vocals? I recommend a good condensor mike and a pre-amp, and use
balanced XLR for the entire signal path, at least until where the signal
is going into your audio interface, where you probably just have RCA or
1/8" inputs.
-- Brett