need some good vocal plug-ins

[nakedzen]

Thread is still on track I see.

Update on that Sturgis vocal compressor: It's limited, but can act as an added effect for saturation/heavy compression, does thicken things nicely. Works very well on keyboards as well.

[JohnB]

picked up wave tune on current sale 68 or so through audiodeluxe. got it to correct some live vocal tracks. i noticed i occasionally get bored half way through a note . anyway, relatively cheap now, pretty easy to use & keep natural sounding.

it has a session limit of 10mins - meaning it can correct a 10m swath of audio in your project. A bit of a pain if you want to correct a single project with an hours worth of live tracks in it. you either need to bounce as you go Or divide into subprojects for each song. In practice not that big of a deal since div'ing into subprojects is a good move anyway.

edit: i'm using it with reaper & the rewire 'works', but is a little flaky. waves is apparently going to officially support reaper soon.

[ajaxlepinski]

I've spent hours researching recording vocal techniques, plug-ins, preamps, mics, etc.

The most incredible plug in I found was the Revoice 3 (vocalign pro 4 or vocalign project are slightly cheaper versions but still pricey). So yeah, expensive but they're incredible. I'm definitely getting the Revoice. You can match up double vocal takes with precision, match up vocal harmony timing, you can fix pitch by matching tracks together while still leaving a variance for a not too polished vibe, you can create instant double tracks for vocals or guitar. It's amazing. Melodyne is another one that's extremely popular.

Dude... my vocals suck and I feel NO guilt or shame using plugins to fix them. I just saved Revoice 3 to favorites for further study.

What I truly hate is, when some tag team comes along, blows the Record Label President, gets slapped on an album, run through the publicity mill and viola.... Milli Vanilli.
I have no issue tweaking a vocal track but, it's gotta be 98% there to start.

I also despise albums that overuse sims: bass sims, guitar sims, orchestra sims, drum sims and when you toss vocal sims on top, you get that plastic, muddy, crap, totally lacking dynamics that has been already mentioned.
The fewer sims and the less compression, the better. Otherwise, you get music that is insanely fatiguing on the ears.