I’m a hobbyist using Bitwig on Linux, and I try to rely on native devices as much as possible. I’m still trying to set a satisfactory default chain for vocals. I’m doing more and more collaborations with friends who sing, and I think I can do better with their vocals.
There are videos out there by @corradococco (How To Mix a Vocal in the Mix), Mattias Holmgren (How I Process Vocals / Vocal Mixing Guide) and surely more, and they help you get the foundations right, but they are also many years old and in the meantime Bitwig and the community have been releasing new presets from new devices that focus on vocals, and I’m not happy about how I’m trying to combine all this.
For instance, questions I have:
For EQ, Sculpt offers a “Vocal Betterer”, Focus a “Vocal Smoother”, and there are the three good old "Vocal EQ"s. I’m not sure about putting the three in sequence and tune them or what.
For compression, Compressor+ offers “Vocal Smoother and De-Esser” and “Solid Vocal Leveller” but I’m not sure I’m getting the best of them and whether they are better alternatives to the “Vocal Compression” presets for the old Compressor.
For saturation (broadly speaking), I wonder if Etherium is my best starting point, and whether I could get good results from Drive keeping the sound clean.
For reverb, the Reverb device leave me a bit meh, and the “vocal” Convolution presets leave me the impression that I’m doing something wrong.
… with all these questions about new devices I wonder whether I should just rely on the old “Vocal Basic”, “Vocal Starting Point”… and call it a day. But then, there are plenty of community presets that also promise interesting effects on vocals… See for instance Vocal Starter by @hariossa.
And I know the answer is “trust your ears” , and I do, but… it would be great to hear how other people are approaching their vocal tracks with Bitwig native devices.
I’m not quite sure there can be one chain that can fit any vocals, but I guess you could generalise with a selector for main different types, while using same macro modulators to control similar settings on different layers at the same time.
A lot of the sound starts at the source. You can only polish a turd so much. What mic(or type of mic), preamp, room? How well does the mic match the vocalist? These are all very fundamental aspects of recording that new producers don’t understand. Otherwise you can end up “fighting against the grain”.
I think the audio quality of the vocals I work with is good. Not professional studio level, but good enough for what I’m doing. I’m using a decent micro, and the friends I collaborate with also have their mics from a few years ago when they sung on stage in parties and celebrations. The rooms where we record are our home rooms, with no special treatment. Still, the background sounds quiet and the bit of reverb that might come sometimes isn’t the problem, I think. So far the songs had vocals at low or mid level, no big shouting, which also helps and brings more flexibility.
I have tried to reproduce the preset in @corradococco’s How To Mix a Vocal in the Mix. I will share it soon here in case anyone is interested. I am still tuning it / learning how to use it, but I’m already getting promising results. I think the problem I had with my approach so far is that I chained the effects one after each other, while I’m getting better results quicker with the parallel approach of Corrado’s preset. I know both approaches are valid and there are plenty of tutorials about both, but I seem to do something wrong with the chaining approach.
I also need to learn better how to use the FX tracks for shared effects. I have the impression that I make more harm than good when I use them, and the vocal tracks are the ones suffering this harm the most. I’ll keep practicing.
Generally compressor+ is very useful, on vocals i’d probably use smooth mode.
Sculpt in tube mode is also neat, i just like tube sounds.
EQ+ is another obvious one that’ll be useful in most cases.
For reverb i’d probably rather use delay+ or convolution(with one of the studio rooms probably) on a send, as you said the reverb device isn’t great.
, and I do, but… it would be great to hear how other people are approaching their vocal tracks with Bitwig native devices.