Plugins for a Vocal chain

Plugins
1

Hi specialists,

I am running the whole band through three instances of GP.
One instance I use just for the mics/ vocals.

I have problems to find a good vocal chain for a nice sound of the vocals.
Is somebody using it as I do and can recomment the plugin(s) in use and the related
setting of them? For sure it needs to be tuned according the singer and the circumstances, but I would like to have a good start point.

My set up.
Shure SM58- Behringer XR18- GigPerformer- Behringer Amplifier

Thanks
Flodder

2

Difficult question, since it’s definetly a matter of taste!

you could on one hand build your very own combination of hand-picked plugins.
A general guide for what is “needed”:

Or you get a cool channel strip which covers most of a vocalist’s needs and maybe add one or two additional plugins to it

There is even a channel strip which is specialized for vocals:
(I guess German language is OK for you
 :wink: )

Or you get something like IK-Multimedias “Mix Box”, where you can “assemble” all the effects you need into one preset
 maybe also something that might be useful not only for the singer.

3

Overloud

4

I’m usually not a fan of chained or "all in one’ type plugins, but I’ve found Xvox from Nuro Audio to be quite good for vocals.

5

Thanksgiving guys, I will have a look on it.

Best would be to have one plug-in with the setting which works for others

I have a bunch of plugins, but I am not good in setting the gates and EQ‘s and compressors


6

Might be useful

7

I noticed you have everything already running through the Xair18. The latency through the Xair for mission-critical processing (the initial EQ/dynamic shaping) is basically zero. I mean, nothing is totally zero in the digital world, but to keep it simple, it’s zero.

The moment you start offloading that processing for vocals, you risk breaking the connection between performer and voice (if you are going to be monitoring from GP and not direct from the xAir).

If you really feel you need additional processing beyond the boards capabilities, and updating the board is out of the question:

For live performance, your most handy tool in addition to the onboard EQ/compressor will be a zero latency dynamic EQ like Toneboosters or ProQ3, or a zero latency multiband compressor. More than enough power to tackle voice resonances, plosives, and Sibalance 
 but also enough power to destroy your sound. Put post the Xairs processing, it’s also a good “shaping” tool post compressor.

The only “color” compressor that I add live would be an 1176, Dbx, or LA2A emulation. That all depends on the character of the vocalist, and what your group is trying to achieve. My vocalist sounds awesome through the Steinberg 1176 in my bands CL3, but it’s a process hog. 1176 can add subtle saturation and keep you from adding your own
 unless you need it for effect. The less things there are to go weird live, the better.

Now — if you’re offloading vocal post fx, reverb, delay, chorus the time delay doesn’t matter nearly as much. At that point, you pick your favorite plugins that don’t kill your CPU!
-Delay into reverb softens the delay.
-pre delay on reverb is your friend
-long reverbs push vocals back (without being managed)
-EQ the reverb
 either into or out of, doesn’t matter
-Post fader send for effects
-multiple reverbs = more stuff to manage, but typically a “polished” sound when done tastefully

Mastering.com released full 7-10 hour courses on EQ compression and reverb on YouTube.

I thought I had a decent conceptual understanding, but did the compression one anyway, and it totally changed the way I look at these tools.

8

Thanks to all for the detailed infos.

In the XR18 I use only the EQ for each channel.
Before I had the four mic’s in the Auto mix of the XR18, but I guess it’s not a good idea if the mics are used parallel, so I switched it of.

I tried the XVox Plug-in in GP, that seems to work well for me and is easy to set.

Thanks!
Flodder

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