Plugins for vocal?

[Kuolanan_Herra]

Have anyone managed to get GOOD vocal sounds with current plugins? Without annoying latency!!!

[Kim]

Yes, I use the dwarf for the vocals and I get very good results. I use EQ, doubler, compressor and reverb. And I even use one of the chains for vocals and one for guitar at the same time. I have no feelable latency and it sounds very good. I felt latency as well when I used an Autotune. But this is gone, I don’t need it. Since this is gone there is no latency any more.

[Kuolanan_Herra]

Latency is not problem until start backing tracks from audioplayer. I do not use autotune either. There are very useful multiband compressor in beta section! My current gigsetup is voicelive 3x for vocal and backing tracks, Dwarf for guitar and keyboard. I play my own rock songs and Dwarf has a lot better OD/disortion guitarsounds! After some updates i hope i can do all with Dwarf!

[Kim]

I allready use the Dwarf for both and it works brilliant. I guess the latency then is a result of the backing tracks. I never tested that.

[jon]

@LievenDV just recently shared his experience on using the device for vocals. Maybe he has a word on this

[LievenDV]

I’m not there yet myself but I had my first experience.
I managed to get some decent, usuable settings and results and I’ll probably use that as a primer going from here. It lacks some of the more lush, longer verb though

I have no access to my Dwarf right now but if I do, I’ll try to share my basic setup with you.
by any means, read Chapter III of my Dwarf journal

LievenDV's Dwarf journal

Chapter III: Vocal test Since I have no microhpones with jack plugs, I had to go out and buy 2 xlr to jack plugs. I thought I had some hiss and clicks on my recording but checking it on my pc it was better. So, I concluded most of he noise was in my headphones. I needed some time to find a good compression, delay an reverb setting for vocal. chain: -minigain-comp-eq-delay-split: 2 reverbs-minigain can’t show a screenshot because the device disconnected and I couldn’t get back to it. I didn…

I recall having some latency issue as well but I was working in a pedalboard that also serves some guitar needs since I’m working on a “guitar+vocal” board.

I’ll have to do some testing myself so see what the behaviour is; when and where latency pops up.

I was missing some “instantly usable settings”.
Being used to work with products from TC Helicon, the ranges of the controls make sure 75% of a control is usable. This isn’t always the case when using the “regular” plugins.
Getting some compression and EQ working is pretty similar to my guitar but timebased effects of getting some faux chorus or hamrony tricks going was hard.

The timebased stuff like delay and reverb are harder to set to something useful than when I use them for guitar so I get that you were having difficulties. it are those 2 things that make the foundation of my vocal tone.

It created an itch to start experimeting with the “codeless plugin development” some day, to perhaps build my own time based effects aimed at vocalists that want to dial in something useful right away.

I started out with finding a basic plate delay, which usually works well on a vocal.
Then I wanted to add a second “layer”, the longer hall delay I love to use.
you can experiment with using it behind a plate or in parallel (splitting to plate and hall and then mergin again)

I added an EQ to act as a high pass but also compensate for the lower-midrange focus my AKG d5 seems to have (I use it for heavy metal vocals).
Setting the highest range of the EQ too high introduced quite some noise though.

I usually throw in compression too. 1:4 ratio with quick attack and long release. To even out the singing. Not that you notice it that much but the bits that help, help.