However, to mix vocals, a dedicated saturation plugin can make things easier. Since saturation is nothing but a light distortion, most distortion plugins can do a good job. Saturation can be done in many different ways. It’s often used on vocals to make them cut through the mix a little better. Saturation is a great tool for adding extra presence, weight, and fullness to your vocal. If you mix vocals, a de-esser is simply a must. A ratio or range knob that determines how much you want to suppress the unwanted frequencies. Most de-essers will have one more important knob. Going too extreme with the de-esser can make your vocal lose its presence. Setting up a de-esser will vary from plugin to plugin, but generally, to set up a de-esser, start by finding the frequency area where the harsh “S” and “T” sounds sit (typically between 7kHz and 14kHz).Īfter that, all you need to do is set the threshold to a level where it catches all the harsh “S” and “T” sounds without affecting other parts of your vocal’s high-end.

So in most cases, you’ll want to use a plugin designed explicitly to de-ess. Again, just like the gate, you want to do this early on in the processing chain to avoid amplifying these harsh frequencies even further.ĭe-essing can be done with a standard compressor, but to mix vocals it’s usually not as effective. Most gate plugins visualize this process nicely, making it even easier to dial in the correct values.Ī de-esser is a type of compressor specifically designed to reduce sibilance, which are the harsh “S” and “T” sounds that can often be overbearing in a vocal track. So if your vocal sits nicely at -12dB and some low background noise at -48dB, then you can probably set the gate to anywhere between -20 to -30dB. Whatever dB level you set the threshold to, the gate will let everything above it play and cut out everything below it. With most gate plugins, all you need to do is adjust the threshold.

Otherwise, effects like saturation and compression can intensify background noise and make it harder to remove down the line.Ī gate can look intimidating but is actually very easy to use. In our guide, the gate is the first processing plugin in our chain since you want to remove unwanted background noise immediately. However, using a gate is often easier and will save you time when you mix vocals. Some like to do this manually for maximum control by cutting out all the parts in the audio track where the vocal is not present. A gate plugin is an excellent tool for reducing the amount of background noise in your vocal track.

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