Hollow vocals are almost always the product of a poor sounding room, microphone placement, or the vocalist’s proximity to the microphone. Let’s talk how to fix hollow vocals in your mix.
How to Fix Hollow Vocals
Hollow vocals are hard to describe but you know them when they hear them. They sound stuffy or claustrophobic, like they were recorded in a closet without any sound dampening in place with the worst kinds of reflections.
Let me preface all of these tips on correcting hollow vocals by saying this is not always something you can completely cure.
Depending on the severity, at best you might be able to mitigate the effects to get them sounding a little cleaner and more natural. In bad cases, the only thing you can really do is re-record them, but nonetheless let’s get into the tips in case that isn’t an option with three methods for fixing a hollow voice/vocal in your mix.
EQ
EQ is typically my first stop in trying to correct out a lacking, hollow vocal.
A hollow vocal typically stems from a weakness or lacking in the 1-2k range.
As you can see from my overall vocal EQ guide, a dynamic boost in the 1-2k range can fill that gap.
Let’s first be clear that if the vocal is extremely hollow or empty, EQ won’t fix much of anything because you can’t boost something which isn’t there.
If that’s the case or you’ve tried EQ and it’s not working, try moving on to the next step.
I like a dynamic EQ boost here because it’s a proportionate boost based on what’s there. The hollow vocal is typically more pronounced on some words, syllables, or notes than others because of the room and how the problem originated to begin with.
A dynamic boost brings up that frequency as necessary more or less, but I like to emphasize less is always more when trying to correct a hollow vocal via EQ.
As you might be able to surmise from the graphic, boosting too much will bring out more of the nasal tendencies in the vocal whether you can hear them when the EQ is flat or not.
As such, you don’t want to boost too much here OR do a static cut to boost across the board, otherwise you’ll bring out more of the nasal quality of the vocal or create a problem which didn’t exist before.
Saturation
Sometimes EQ can’t get it done or get the vocal all the way there because there’s simply not enough of the vocal in the 1-2k region to begin with.
When that’s the case, saturation is a good option.
Saturation is an effect which creates overtones where they’re weak or non-existent, or in other words creating frequency information which wasn’t there before.
I recently did a whole overview on how to use saturation on vocals where I covered how I use a plugin like my favorite workhorse saturation option, Decapitator to more naturally and effectively boost up those vocal mids by way of essentially creating that gap filler in the 1-2k region.
Here are my settings I like to dial in for Decapitator:
If you look at the settings, you can see there’s nothing extreme about the settings. The drive is set to next to nothing, the high and low pass filters essentially aren’t even engaged, and the tone dial is neutral.
The exception is the wet/dry mix dial is all the way up, so essentially it’s just the plugin’s existence which is doing the work here (the lazy producer’s dream).
But how about that work? Here is a vocal BEFORE applying any saturation, and be sure to pay close attention to the 1-2k region:
Now let’s take a look at that same vocal POST saturation:
You can see that 1-2k region has been filled in and boosted, and while it’s not a magic bullet on curing the hollow vocal itself, it sounds appreciably better.
Sometimes when I’m dealing with a hollow vocal, I’ll use saturation THEN follow it up with EQ to applying a small dynamic boost like I described above after I’ve created more of a presence in that 1-2k range.
De-Reverb
Lastly, you can reach for a reverb mitigating plugin known as a “de-reverb” to clean up room reflections.
The hollowness of different vocals stems from different issues which is why I mention a few solutions, but sometimes de-reverb can be the fix you need.
I like Clarity DeReverb from Waves which uses intelligence to isolate and remove reflections and reverb tails, particularly from isolated tracks.
I’ve had my best results with it when targeting larger reverbs with clear longer tails on isolated tracks, but in some situations a little of this at the end of the mix chain can be that final nudge that hollow vocal needs to clean up a bit of that unflattering room related sound.
Again, with a hollow vocal, depending on the severity of the effect, it’s not so much about COMPLETELY resolving the issue.
Instead it’s about mitigating the effect so that it’s passable without having to re-record that vocal, particularly when that’s not an issue.
Paying attention to that 1-2k region in particular and trying to bring out more of that range with a conservative dynamic boost or creating some overtones there to fill out that region more transparently with some saturation or even targeting the unflattering reflections via a de-reverb style plugin are your best courses of action for getting that vocal to a manageable state.
