Tips to make vocal track fat & punchy?

[creativeforge]

Thanks Mark,

Wow, OK, trying to follow, here. This is important info. Are you saying that if I draw on the waveform itself, that it is like moving the gain slider pre-effects, therefore affecting the input level of the signal going through the effect slot? This would create a fluctuation in how much of the signal gets treated with the effect? Then does it mean the effects used will vary in intensity, which is not something I'd want to happen.

So then if I only use the Volume envelope to mix, then what I affect is a settled/stable level of gain with a settled/stable level of effect that don't fluctuate across the song?

It would then be self-explanatory that the gain and pan are located on the GUI before the effects slots, which are located before the track waveform. And that the envelopes are located beneath it all, affecting a full signal.

So: envelope = post-effect fader? Am I understanding correctly?

I also (rarely) use an envelope to control how much effect is introduced at certain points on a track, especially reverbs (selecting "Mix").

Thank you for the lesson,

Andre

[Mark Bliss]

Yes, thats basically it, in simplified terms.
And admitedly, we are probably getting into the "subtle differences" here between a good mix and a step up to cleaner clearer results. And maybe reproducible results that take less time.

And honestly, the amount that it "matters" varies depending on the specific processes you might place in the inserts. Something like for example a digital delay. Not too much.
But any plug-ins that attempts to emulate an analog process on the other hand, is generally going to be "calibrated" to expect an input level in a certain range.

Thats not to say that occasionally going outside said range might not produce interesting results...
But what I describe is considered "best practice"

The other factor is that if you want to setup advanced templates for mixing, you will likely want to work with consistent input levels, project to project.

Getting quite a bit more advanced here perhaps, but its a good concept to understand as you work this stuff out.
A useful example perhaps would be a drum bus. Some people would use a bus compressor across the entire drum submix for example. The only way to rely on this working as expected in your mixing template is to have the input to that plug in be within a desired range. If it isnt, it wont have the expected result.

For a long time I just didnt "get it" when people said they "mixed into" some preset chain in their template. How do you mix into a chain if you dont know what the level is?
The answer turned out to be obvious.
Know what your level is. Or do whatever it takes to set that level where it needs to be.

Make sense?

Trust me, still learning and tinkering with methods myself, and trying to share what I learn as I go.

[creativeforge]

Yes, thats basically it, in simplified terms.

I need simplified...

But any plug-ins that attempts to emulate an analog process on the other hand, is generally going to be "calibrated" to expect an input level in a certain range.

This makes logical sense to me. I just didn't look under the hood like this, before. Lots of intuitive work - move button, change value - what changed? - so this "technical" stuff was seen as "need to know." But now I need to know, especially due to the kind of project I'm doing. (did you get the link in PM?)

We always have stuff to learn, thanks for sharing what you know,

Andre