Vocal Mix Essentials
Plug-in Collection
About the Vocal Mix Essentials
Vocal Mix Essentials is a complete vocal chain in four plug-ins: preamp colour, broad tone, midrange surgery, and the compression that holds it all in place. It follows the order a signal would take through real hardware, which is why the four of them behave predictably when you stack them.
Start with the preamp
VPRE-73 is our Neve 1073, reduced to the three things that matter on a vocal: the transformer-driven gain, the top-end lift, and the point where pushing the input stops being clean and starts being flattering. Almost every vocal that sounds expensive went through a preamp with iron in it. This is where the take gets its body, before any EQ or compression touches it.
Two EQs, because vocals need two kinds of EQ
Edelweiss`72 is the mixing and mastering channel strip, and on a vocal it's the broad brush: overall tone, the low end you don't want, the air you do. VEQ-5 is the Pultec MEQ-5, built specifically for the band where vocals, guitars and snares fight each other. When a take sounds boxy at 400 Hz or buried at 3 kHz, that's the MEQ-5's territory, and it's a different job from the one a full strip does well. Having both means you stop asking one EQ to do both.
Compression that keeps the words intelligible
VLA-3A is the solid-state opto, modelled on the LA-3A. It matters here rather than its slower sibling because a vocal needs its consonants caught, not sailed past, and the high-frequency contour in the detection path keeps the take from going dull as you compress it. Set Peak Reduction, pick Compress or Limit, and leave it. Together these four get you from a raw take to something that sits in a mix without reaching for anything else.
Where to take it next
This set carries a vocal from raw take to finished and dry. The natural next step is space, and the Reverb & Delay Bundle supplies it: a steel plate for the classic vocal treatment, a spring for something more mechanical, and a tape echo that sits behind the line rather than answering it. The free RO-GOLD plate is a good way to hear what a plate does for a vocal before you decide. Add one send and the chain is complete.
Vocal Mix Essentials Features
Authentic sound
We put a lot of thought and work into emulating all the sonic aspects associated with analog tape: Class A recording and playback amplifiers, tape response and saturation, NAB pre- and de-emphasis EQs, the sonic effect of different tape speeds and bias levels, hiss and hum - it's all there. We also added an adjustable wow and flutter feature that emulates frequency modulation (FM) due to motor speed fluctuations.
SSE2 optimized code
DSP operations are pipe-lined using the SSE2 instruction set. This ensures highest possible performance operation despite very complex computations.
Auto-adjusted oversampling for maximum audio transparency
Aliasing artifacts are efficiently attenuated using a low latency linear phase Dolph-Chebyshev poly-phase design. The oversampling is auto adjusted to your session‘s sample rate to save valuable CPU power while offering the most transparent sound possible.
HighDPI / Retina support
All our plug-Ins support high pixel density on Mac OSX and Windows to bring you the most enjoyable user experience on high DPI displays. Please refer to your manual to find whether your DAW is HighDPI capable if you‘re working on Windows.
Plugins in the Vocal Mix Essentials
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VLA-3A
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VEQ-5
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VPRE-73
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Edelweiss`72
