Way of Life Mixed by Dcp

[dcp10200]

one of the challenges i've had with this mix, is getting the vocal right. she's missing treble in the tracking and it greatly affects her diction and probably doesn't help with the nasality problem which predominates. i found the UAD precision enhancer kHz helpful, for example. but we also need to watch out for the room she's been tracked in, it's far less than ideal. because of the extreme dynamic in her vocal, the room starts to come out strongly under compression, countering/contradicting the ambiance and placement of the other instruments. if i recall, i ended up using 3 different compressors on her (and a limiter!), but each contributed something individually to the task of control and sound shaping which i felt was needed.

I can't argue with you there, the vocals are somewhat of a challenge here. Besides the compressor I used some soft clipping and a limiter (I do alot of heavier rock and metal with growled vocals so that combo isn't too strange for me) but I also found myself using a de esser, something I find that I don't use so much. Alot of times I find that the CLA 76 Bluey plugin does the job but for some reason a freeware emulation of a destressor seemed to work better for this track.

Interesting reading with the use of clipping and limiting on the vocals. Something I wouldn't have ever considered. I will have to keep this in mind especially with this style of music.

The clipping is to add some grit to the vocals but also even out the transients of the vocals. It's more so a thing in music that uses more gutteral and growled vocals to help them cut through a mix and then applying a limiter (my goto is the waves l1) evens out the volume changes.