The best VOCAL CHAIN in 2022!

hello boys and girls my name is christian kola and today i want to talk about recording vocals recording vocals is something really serious that's why i'm dressed like this by the way down by the sea you would scream my name and up in the sky you could see me flying [Music] don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away go away i'm never gonna stop no i'm never gonna say goodbye i'm never gonna stop until the world knows why i wanna talk about microphones i wanna talk about microphone preamps and i wanna talk about compressors i want to show you my current go to vocal signal path and right now it's actually the most affordable vocal chain that i've used so far you can see parts of it right here and more importantly i want to explain why and how i choose certain gear for recording why i choose a certain microphone why i choose a certain preamp or a certain compressor and on top of that i just had a great vocal session with my man alan from dimitri so we're also gonna hear some of that session you will hear that vocal signal path in action and i will show you how i tweak it that's a lot of fun let's get started here we go but what is the most important part of the signal chain when we record vocals it's quite easy so it starts with the most important part that is a source and then it just gets less and less important that's different with other sources like with guitars where the cabinet or the speaker might be more important than the amp or even the guitar or with a metal kick drum where the eq might be more important than the mic preamp and so on but with vocals it's quite easy it starts with the source the most important part and then it just gets less and less important so let's talk about the source it simply means the better your singer sounds and the better he performs the better your vocal track will be sounds like a stupid cliche but it's true so that means if you have a singer that sounds great and performs great you're probably not gonna end up with a shitty sounding vocal track it's as easy as that so the more you can do to make the source sound great the better it is because that is the most effective thing to change that means if you can choose between two singers take the one that sounds better but i know in the real world we don't have much time and most of the time we cannot choose the singer we have to live with the given singer but still here take your time to improve his performance as much as you can as an engineer or as a producer i'm not the type of guy who will push singers a lot because i feel like most of the time that's just scares them and kills the atmosphere of the session but what i do is i try to analyze them all the time and i try to give them as much feedback as possible and whenever i find something especially positive i will give them an immediate feedback and tell them hey that last take was a lot better it sounded more intimate maybe because you were singing softer i could hear your breathing a lot better that helps the track try that again so the more feedback they get from you especially the more positive feedback they get from you the more confident they will become and the more they are in control of their voice and with some singers that might not be necessary but with most of them if you guide them like that your vocal tracks will sound a lot better so take your time to guide them and that's actually more important to have enough time here than to waste a lot of time testing different microphones different different preamps and so on because most singers are not comfortable with that usually i'm trying two or three microphones and that's all because i don't want to annoy the singer or bore him with endless gear tests you know all the singers in the studio most of the time they're really nervous and they just want to perform so don't stop them let them do their thing so that means we really have to know our gear i might be able to try two microphones but i'm usually not able to try different mic preamps or other processors so i have to rely on what i think will work on that session and that again means i have to know the gear i have to be experienced so it's important to really test your gear whenever you have the time so you know how certain microphones how certain mic preamps sound so you grab the right stuff when the session starts let's talk about the next thing and that is the room and the room is also quite important it will color the sound of your recording i'm both recording in a well-treated vocal booth right here next door but i'm also like today i'm recording in my drum live room a much bigger room and that's just a very different sound so of course you will get a lot more ambience from the live room which you usually don't hear that much in a dense metal mix but let's say in a more intimate arrangement like a singer-songwriter thing you can really hear that room which might be good or bad overall in a bigger room the bass sounds a little more linear in a vocal booth it tends to be a little thicker which can be good or bad again you know whatever but what i want you to do is in case you have several rooms to work in try them all you know do a sound check everywhere try to understand how they sound and then again knowing your gear knowing your rooms will help you to choose to make the right decision when the singer is there because then you don't have the time anymore to do a lot of tests next up is the microphone and of course the microphone has a huge influence on our vocal sound and people use totally different microphones for vocals for example i have never used any of those very very typical vocal microphones let's say neumann u87 or neumann u47 type of microphones i love 87s on guitar amps combined with the 57 or sometimes as drama overheads but they always sound a little too honky for me on vocals um akg c12 microphones usually a little too bright for my taste other people love it what i'm saying is it depends on what you do it depends on your style your genre it depends on the singer you are recording so to pick the right vocal microphone you have to analyze who you are working with and you have to analyze how you want to sound so what am i recording i'm recording anything from let's say alternative rock nickelback or something in the type of voices up to the most extreme guttural brutal stuff in death metal or pig squeals and everything in between and what do all those vocals have in common yes they are loud they are edgy they are aggressive sounding and we need a microphone that can take that kind of sound that can tame the beast so to say so we don't want something that sounds too detailed that sounds too intimate that has too much high end and too much upper mids because that will just sound annoying and too aggressive i think that is one of the reasons why the shure sm7b is so popular not because it's very detailed and not because of the frequency spectrum which sounds more like a mid-tunnel or something it's not a great sounding microphone but it can handle it can take everything you throw at it even the most extreme stuff the opposite of that microphone would be something like a browner microphone have you ever worked with browner microphones beautiful sounding microphones that vma has a beautiful low end for example but they just sound horrible and extremely aggressive in a bad way in an annoying way on let's say harsher rock vocals they produce like overtones you hear a lot of parts of the voice that you don't want to hear a lot of ringing a lot of it almost sounds like a feedback or something and that is something you can't really tame with eq so those microphones are just too details too harsh sounding for what i do they might be cool on an intimate ballad vocal or something like that but browner microphones on on on metal and rock vocals have never worked for me again it's not a matter of quality a lot of the very very detailed microphones i have a microtech fell microphone here for example a tube mic for 3000 euros very very detailed but it's showing me a lot of details that i don't need to hear you know from a death metal singer a lot of mouth and lip and throat noises that i simply don't need you know uh you know glenn benton is not whitney houston let's go back to the sm7b the sm7b is a great microphone especially if you want to hold it in your hands but i have been searching for something that works just as good as the sm7b on harsh vocals so it never sounds too extreme you never have to deal with too much top-end information that you are fighting later in the mix because by the way for me it's much easier to add some top band later than to remove the harshness of a browner microphone for example so i was looking for a microphone that can do the sm7 thing but sounds a little more detailed and with a little more hi-fi sounding frequency spectrum so yeah sm7b as a condenser so to say that's what i was looking for and i found two microphones that fall into that category i've been using one of them for years and the other one i've just started using it recently and i really love it so let me show you those microphones these are my old and my new favorite for everything vocals more or less maybe except for very very soft and intimate vocals by the way i'm planning to do another video on exactly that where i will be using some very very expensive and very different sounding microphones for recording yeah an intimate ballad which is the opposite of what i record most of the time which is screaming yelling and yeah stuff like that anyway let's talk about those two microphones so i have been using this one for many many years this is a neumann tlm 193 don't confuse it with the neumann tl m103 which sounds much harsher and is not good for what we do here so this microphone is a very safe bet it just works for any aggressive vocals if you ask me it sounds very linear it takes eq well if you need more highs and it sounds detailed enough just a great sounding mic it is more like promoted as a instrumental classic instrumental microphone or something and it sounds very close to the u89 which shares the same mid-sized capsule great microphone but here's my new favorite and this one is from austrian audio a pretty new company formed by x akg people in vienna this one is called oc 818 and is a wonderful sounding microphone it shares all the qualities i've told you about the neumann microphone it just sounds a little brighter and a little more open and since i i boost some highs most of the time during the mix down this one just comes in quite handy and i have done three or four vocal sessions with this one now and i love the results i haven't done any death metal vocals with this one yet but i'm sure it's gonna work great so it sounds a little more in your face it sounds a little more intimate without being harsh it also takes eq really well really really versatile microphone but this microphone doesn't only sound great it has a lot more cool features that the neumann microphone doesn't have first of all it's a multi-pattern microphone which makes it a lot more versatile you don't really need that for vocals maybe but wait a minute it has a pad it has a filter built in the neumann microphone has nothing like that um so you can even use this on on a snare because it can pretty much take any level you can use it on drums on guitar caps you can use it everywhere where the neumann microphone because it has no pad is a little more picky but this is just we were just getting started though they have some really really innovative built in there's another output here where you can record the back side of the capsule and then you can later in the mix tune the polar pattern of the mic which is really cool so you can go from whatever from from omni to figure of age to cardioid whatever you need so very interesting for example for drum overheads to fine tune the balance between the symbols but it gets even more fancy because it's a multi-pattern plug-in so you can have whatever the base in as an omni and then the highs in cardioid to avoid the proximity effect for example you can really fine tune how the mic hears the room and that is truly innovative i haven't really tried this but i'm planning to get another one and make a comparison um with my akg c1414 on drum overheads let me know if you want to see that so the austrian audio sent me sent me a microphone i need another one can you do that thanks by the way no one is paying me for this video today nobody i just like this stuff so this is a very modern approach this is a very versatile microphone if you don't have the money for this one and you want to try it they also make a cardioid only version and i think this one is around 1 000 euros and the cardioid only version so if you just want to record vocals cardio only version which sounds exactly the same that's what they tell me you can even use this one and the cardiod only version as a stereo pair um costs i think half of what the neumann costs the neumann is i think 1 300 or something euros and the cardio only version of the austrian is half of that 650 or something so i can recommend both microphones they both sound great the austrian sounds a little more open but it has a lot more features so you can use it a lot on a lot more sources i like it when companies are innovative as long as their stuff also sounds good after many years i finally found a microphone that that is just as cool as the neumann so that is the microphone keep in mind that it depends on your source and your style there are people recording with sony c800 microphones vocals and it sounds great way too harsh for me my style is to record with a more neutral sounding microphone detailed enough for the voice but not like like not not too harsh in the high end because i can do that later that is safer than recording with a very harsh let's call it open sounding microphone where you have to fight the harshness later that's how i do it you might do it differently but if you're looking for a microphone like that because you are recording people like i do who have very nasty and aggressive and edgy voices those microphones will round the edge of and will make it sit nicely in a mix but will sound a little more hi-fi and a little more expensive maybe than an sm7b which is still a great microphone so that's all about the microphones let's move on and talk about microphone preamps well the differences are smaller than you might think we do have a lot of different mic preamps here especially my colleague kai has a lot of them maybe i should do a video where i compare them all let me know if you want to see that you would be you will be surprised how small the differences are i used to mainly used two mic pres and those were my api mic pres which have a certain tendency to sound a little more aggressive or forward sounding or something and the other one was an old drummer 1960 preamp maybe it's just badly designed or something but it always sounded like it was slowing down everything that sounded a little too harsh but again compared to microphones microphone preamps are a lot less important unless you start driving them so once you start distorting the preamps you get that character but the subtle differences you hear in preamps is mostly nothing that is really important in a dense and and and crowded metal mix so we can push a knee preamp and you will get a distortion out of it but you know what i don't do that i never push my preamps during the recording during the vocal recording at least because first of all it's really hard to tell how much distortion you want and once the distortion is there you can remove it so i prefer to play safe and to add distortion later in the mix or even play back the track through a pre-amp if i want that distortion that is much safer on top of that i have never liked it how distorted mic preamps sound during the recording because the vocals are totally uncompressed so you will have certain words and syllables suddenly saturating and distorting and for me that always sounded out of control in a bad way you get that fuzzy low-end distortion on some syllables and i just don't like it so at some point i decided to go for a really clean sounding preamp and here's what i found i found those lovely cranborne audio preamps they sound so clean and they don't distort and they have no noise i really fell in love with them basically because first of all if you don't want that they have no sound they're really versatile you can connect line mic or high z gear so you can plug in your guitar or bass and the di sounds great you can use line signals we will be doing that in a minute or of course microphones the only thing i don't like about this preamp hello cranborne is that it has no pad so if you have a loud signal with a loud microphone you you might clip your converters if you don't have a pad in between that's a little that's a little bummer so please add a pad in an update it's not actually the krenbone preamp itself it is very distortion-free and it can take all those levels but it's usually getting a little too hot but that only happens if you have a very hot microphone condenser microphone on let's say a guitar cap or something you know then but otherwise great preamp because if you want some color they have added this lovely mojo feature and that is so innovative it's an analog circuit i don't know what they're doing it's not eq and you've got two modes one is called thump one is called cream i will show you both of them in a minute on those vocals and the cool thing is you can go from really subtle to quite extreme and it's not that level dependent like a normal distortion so you can just add this without changing the overall level too much and it's much easier to judge if you want that sound or not during the sound check then again you can go back with a line signal you just switch to line here so you can use the mojo feature after the recording i told you like i prefer not to use too much color and distortion on vocal tracks during the recording but with this feature it's quite easy because first of all it doesn't change the level too much and it doesn't seem too level dependent so it's not only clipping like the the louder words but it's like it seems to be working on the on the entire dynamic range of the vocals so it's cool i use it a lot more on drums though but on vocals it can be nice as well we will hear that in a minute so it seems like with the cranbourne preamp i'm getting best of both worlds so it's a super super extremely clean preamp and very noiseless which is important for recording the eyes if you want to reamp later noise is also important let's say you want to record acoustic guitars like like a quiet acoustic guitar with a small diaphragm condenser every db matters really clean sounding preamp but if you want you can add the mojo if you need it you can connect all kinds of of gear you know guitars line gear keyboard microphones now just add a pad and then i'm perfectly happy but this is a great great piece of equipment check out the camden preamp from trenbon audio next up is the compressor and the first thing you might ask is do we really need a hardware compressor during the tracking because you might have like thousands of plug-in compressors in your daw all kinds of compression you know so do we really need that it's expensive and isn't what you said about distortion coming from the mic pre also right about compression isn't it smarter and safer to add compression later in the mix and not in the heat of the moment in the heat of the recording session good question good question but the answer is no for several reasons first of all it's just very nice to have a compressed tracks like a bunch of compressed vocal tracks that sit right in the mix when you start mixing you know it just helps and believe me there can be too much compression i usually compress during the tracking up to 10 db or something and then i compress again in a dense rock and metal mix that's what you need so don't be afraid of compression that can be the wrong compression maybe but if you use the right compression there can be too much don't be afraid of it but that's only one part the other part is and that is much more important that most of the singers or probably every singer will perform a lot better when being compressed during the recording because when they hear the compressed voice they will hear more details of their own voice and they will be capable to control their singing a lot better they're not going to fight the dense mix if you don't compress them at all they will probably try to sing like with more power on the softer parts which will ruin the emotion there and they're not gonna give full power on the heavy parts because it feels too loud you know so compressing them during the tracking just makes it sound like a record and makes them feel comfortable and makes them hear everything a lot more detailed a lot more precise and makes them perform better and again it's nice to have compressed tracks you know that you can turn on a mix and it already sounds like something you're closer to the final thing but you might argue yeah why don't you just compress the monitor of the singer and that's a good question there's another function another advantage that compression gives us because it makes recording a lot safer you know first of all you don't have to write the fader all the time to prevent clipping your converters or just to be able to hear the singer that's what you have to do if you don't compress believe me what i record goes from whispering to full screaming so if i don't compress there in order to hear everything precisely i have to write the fader all the time otherwise i get distortion or i don't hear the quieter parts it's just not fun compression makes it easier not only for the singer but also for me to understand what's going on and to concentrate on the musical performance and that means i hardly have to ride the fader anymore i only have to do that if it gets really quiet i forgot to say one thing that's a really handy feature that the kranbon preamp has listen it's stepped so this is so cool so you can like for the whispering you can go two steps up and then you go down again on the other part it's very easy to recall the exact settings of a recording session really cool and it's a lot easier to get a precise stereo image on stereo tracks like the same amount of um amplification on both sides really cool feature and it sounds nice sounds nice right so that's compression you want compression because it makes your life easier it makes the singer's life easier and it just you know it looks sexy if the meters are moving let's be honest but which kind of compression do we want well in the tracking stage we want something that is invisible that sounds like somebody riding the fader and i'm pretty cliche here i'm pretty cliche what do we use for vocal compression yeah optical compressors and that's what i use because it's the safest thing you know you can go to up to 10 12 db of compression and it doesn't sound compressed through a good optical compressor and there are two options that i have here i have one clean option and i have one let's call it colored option the clean one is the empirical lapse distressor a classic compressor a real legend that i've been using for whatever 10 15 years and i'm using the opto mode on the distressor and some of the smart guys among you will say but hey that's not a real optical compressor which is correct it's just a vca compressor emulating the behavior of an opto cell but i don't give a because it sounds great it's a really clean sounding gentle compression that works amazing for recording vocals so if you want a total like no-brainer vocal tracking compressor get a distressor in opto mode turn off the distortion modes and maybe turn on some of the side chain filters works like a charm it's just not exactly cheap and the stressor i think it's around 1 700 or 800 euros right now over here in europe so that is a lot of money for one channel of compression so there's something else i can recommend to you which also works really well and you can see it here this is the vocal leveler from tigola audio manufacturer from berlin here in germany and that is actually a true optical compressor and i can already tell you it sounds a lot more colorful a lot more dirty than the distressor so if that's what you want like a touch of color of harmonics of saturation but in a very controlled way compared to a preamp this might be interesting also it's like i don't know the 500 module is i think 600 euros or something so it's close to a third of the price of a distressor the cool thing about optical compression is that it's very idiot proof to dial in there's nothing you have to do you just have to say i want more compression boom and that's it and this one also has like a fast and an auto setting i usually have it in the fast setting on vocals works like a charm really nice you have to be a bit more careful careful with the gain staging because you can run into distortion easily which might be what you want or not what you want the distortion is rather nice and very sexy sounding i will show you in a minute but that is a nice compressor that i've just like like found half a year ago or something and i've been using it quite a lot since then um bringing a lot of color to my life okay so that's the taylor we will hear it in action in a minute next thing you see here is a de-esser and that is a classic from dbx the 520. do we really need that no you can't track without a de-esser and you can do that later in the daw but i really love the dbx de-esser be you know you can shave off four or six db of sibilance already and you're gonna need a lot more de-essing anyway it's like with compression so why not do it right here and already have a pre-processed track and you need less processing in the daw i really like how they work on top of that the cool thing about dbx is there's no threshold so you just set the amount of de-essing you want and it will take care of the rest it's a pretty smart unit you just press those two buttons dial in the right frequency and the right amount you want and it's idiot-proof i like idiot-proof stuff especially for tracking you know same with the compression as with the de-essing and it's not expensive the dbx stuff is actually pretty affordable okay what about eq that's the last thing and i have to say eq is something that can be done later so i hardly eq vocals when i record them why i only do that when i know i really really need something that might be some boost at higher frequencies that's the only thing i do twice a year and then i use a pultec a hardware pull deck for that unlike compression which i have been explaining you in the last 10 minutes or something unlike compression there's no real difference whether you eq now or later for me so eq is not important here right now but what we're gonna do now boys and girls is listen to some vocals like i told you i've just tracked some vocals with alan from dimitri and they have just released their debut album in english they are from czech republic usually they sing in czech now they have an english album there's a link below check it out today we're listening to a classic power ballad and i asked him to just sing the verse and the bridge again it's just one take or two takes or something there's no correction there there's no auto-tune there it's just a rough track and i have recorded this track without any processing so what we're going to do now is we're going to play that track back into my cranbond rack here we're going to go into the line input of the cranborne camden preamp we can listen to the mojo then we will go into the compression finally into the de-esser and back and then you can hear the difference so let's have a listen to the rough vocals don't you want to stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me to make me feel and now let's send them into the wreck don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me to make me feel now i wanna start with the mojo feature so you see there are two styles one style is the cream and i hardly use it on vocals i use it on drums mostly and sometimes on guitars it can add a lot of distortion and it kind of carves out the lower mid range and it can go from subtle to very extreme let's have a listen scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make let's check out the thumb feature i really like that one on vocals it adds some low end but also makes things sound a little more compact whatever they do there it's nice and i tend to use it together with the high pass filter let's have a listen you make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me things just get a little thicker and yeah things sound a little more compact so it sits better in the mix ain't you gonna make the pain go away don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea so that's already quite nice so now we will be hitting the tigula vocal leveler and first thing i want to show you is the saturation or the distortion it can produce so by not adding any gain reduction here like no compression at all and by driving the input of the tigua vocal leveler we can hear the distortion and it's not subtle the pain go away don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me to make me feel that's already alive ain't you gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away and the interesting part is that the distortion comes from the fat circuit that sits at the end of the of the compressor so we go into an intro put transformer first then we go into the optic cell compressing and then we go into that transistor and that transistor emulates i think it circuit or something but this is actually adding the the color and the distortion so we can influence that distortion that color by either the input gain we do it here by adding more gain in the camden or by adjusting the gain reduction and the thing is the more gain reduction you add the less you distort the signal it's kind of unusual but this is how it works so let's add some gain reduction boom from reaching the sea don't you want to grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away and that's around 7 db of compression already fully cranked really nice we could go further but i think i don't need that i can also hear a nice saturation let's try the fast setting instead make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me and now you can hear the compression a lot more but i kind of like this on vocals scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna just have to compensate the gain reduction with the output gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away but now we hear that because of the compression we have more sibilance and that's what we got the dbx the sf4 of course and it's so easy to dial in you always make sure you're using this high filter only mode because it just sounds more subtle and a lot better enable it find the right frequency typically around 3k or something and the right amount of de-essing so let's fully crank it let's see what happens don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea don't you wanna grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea we have whatever 10 db of compression and the de-essing and this sounds a lot more like a record and one really interesting thing about that tegula saturation is that it seems to shave off the negative side of the waveform you can really see that saturation in the waveforms if you look at the files i even asked tigala if this is correct and they confirmed they said yes that saturation will carve off one side of the waveform that's how we want it and it will add even order harmonics to your signal so that's the distortion we've been listening to but let's make it a little cleaner and compare it to the unprocessed version we start with processed and then i switch don't you wanna stop me from reaching the seam don't you wanna grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away and wow such a difference that sounds so much more like a record it's not only the dynamics but the overall frequency response it's the gun process signals just sound a little honky and thinner and out of control let's have another listen start with processed don't you want to grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay away one more time the difference is huge don't you wanna grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay this just sounds wrong now interesting right and so so here you can see how much a good vocal recording chain actually affects the the sound of your recordings this sounds so much more mix ready right and this is so much more fun to work with if your tracks sound like this from the start and it's not a lot of work you know because you need to record the vocals anyway so you can twist a few knobs and make them sound better already it's good for you it's good for the singer wow if we listen to the bridge i think it it's probably a lot more extreme let's start with processed go away i'm never gonna stop no i'm never gonna say goodbye i'm never gonna stop until your world goes wise i'm never gonna stop i'm never gonna say goodbye so this part doesn't really work without compression and it's no fun to record a part like this without any compression believe me okay next thing i want to do and that is already prepared i want to add a little eq look at this one uh let's solo the track again turn off the reverb i want to add some highs take out some some some hong kong hong kong in the middle and add some low end i i'm never gonna stop let's overcome all lies don't you wanna stop me from reaching the sea do you wanna grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away can you hear my live room now through the compression ain't you gonna make the pain go away with the eq here we go don't you wanna stop me from reaching the scene don't you wanna grab me to make me feel ain't you gonna scream to make me stay ain't you gonna make the pain go away so that is incredibly nice once again once again it's not a lot of work it's easy just get the right gear and yeah recording will be more fun let me sum it up one more time what we've been doing here so i've been telling you which microphones i like i especially want to recommend this one because it's a lot cheaper than the neumann the austrian audio and has a lot more bells and whistles and cool whatever and yeah and there's also a cardioid only version if you only want to record vocals versatile microphone very warm and linear sounding it's just great you've heard it and we're going into a camden 500 preamp which is best of both worlds for me because it can sound clean and it can add a lot of mojo like you've just heard we just heard that lovely combination of the mojo with the saturation coming from the tigola vocal level which is our next device here which is a very nice sounding optical compressor that adds a lot of warmth and saturation and color really nice if you want something cleaner i can recommend the empirical labs distressor in opto mode even if it's not a real optical compressor it still sounds great but this is like the color and dirty version of it so in case you like what you're hearing this is cool you can ride like the distortion of the saturation with the input and with the gain reduction you have to get used to it but it's still a lot easier and a lot more effective in a way than doing this with a preamp which is a lot more out of control and a lot more level dependent in a way finally we're hitting a dbx 520 that i bought a few weeks ago because i wanted to have a hardware de-esser again because i'm de-essing like the out of everything anyway later so why not take off a few db of sibilant material right from the start they are all hooked up together in my cranbourne audio 500 rack but you can use any other wreck for a vocal chain like this the crown band has like it's also a usb interface and has a lot of additional dingle dongle dongle but um yeah this vocal chain i think sounds great is pretty affordable if you ask me yeah some of you might say but you know this is a professional channel you know what else i want you to leave a comment let me know which microphones you use sm7b probably or let me know yeah what do you think about this video do you like driving preamps hard do you like which compressors do you like uh show me your vocal path i want you to subscribe to this channel as usual ring the bell blah blah blah the usual stuff and um i'm looking forward to see you on my discord server i was looking forward to seeing you checking out the the files and blah blah blah and now i'm i'm kind of getting lost so um yeah thanks for watching say hello to your grandma as usual i see you in hell bye bye

Channel: Kohlekeller Studio

Views: 76,301

Keywords: djent, metal producer, recording studio, producing metal, mixing metal, sample replacement, kristian kohle, recording metal, metal sound, guitar tone, kohle audio kult, produce like a pro, nail the mix, dymytry, vocals, tlm103, tlm193, austrian audio, tegeler audio, distressor, dbx, deesser, vocals compressor, u78, u47, u67, akg c414, cranborne, camden, mic preamp, 500 rack, 500 gear, oc818, eve audio

Id: NmmOzW5wF9w

Length: 43min 16sec (2596 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022