If you use bussing when mixing, then you likely have a vocal bus which all of your individual vocals route into before going to the master bus. If you use my mixing template, then you get even more granular with dedicated busses for lead vocals, harmony vocals, and backing vocals, each of which then feeds into the main vocal bus.
Unlike an individual vocal chain, any processing we add to the vocal BUS chain is going to affect every single vocal feeding into it. As such, we need to be careful and conservative with any processing we insert on this bus.
Let’s talk how to process your vocal bus chain.
Vocal Bus Chain Effect
Let’s go left to right, first to last in what processing to add to your vocal bus chain and break each one down in depth.
Gain
This one shouldn’t be necessary in most cases assuming you’re practicing good gain staging across the individual tracks in your mix.
As a reminder, check out my gain staging cheat sheet on how to keep the input levels of every track in your mix at a responsible point.
One exception where you might need a gain plugin here would be if you have A LOT of tracks and some peaking simultaneously to push that overall peak level of your combined vocal near the point of clipping.
While you can bring down the overall level of the combined vocal via the vocal bus fader (that’s part of the appeal of bussing), a gain plugin to bring down the level to feed into the next processing can yield better results from those plugins.
If nothing else, if your vocal bus level gets a little too hot, this can be an indication that you need to revisit some of the levels of the individual vocals in your mix.
Check out my overview on how to deal with an overly dynamic vocal to transparently bring down the dynamics without taking away from that vocal.
EQ
While I’ve gone through and individually EQ’d every vocal in my mix (see my vocal EQ guide), you can still use an EQ first in the chain (after any gain plugins) for a couple purposes.
First, I like simple high pass filter and low pass filter on the low and top ends of the vocal bus, respectively.
Specifically I like adding a high pass filter around 80Hz and a low pass filter at 20k.
These are both relatively conservative filters which won’t change the palpable sound of the vocals in any way.
Despite that, they’ll help clean up the vocals, particularly the low end, by removing any low end rumble or noise which isn’t contributing to the sound of the vocal itself.
Although we likely already put a high pass filter on every individual vocal, even higher than 80Hz, this filter will address any artifacts which may have found their way onto ANY of the vocals in our mix as a byproduct of all the processing we did on them in our individual vocal chains.
This also adds a little extra mixing headroom by removing that and any artifacts above 20k by way of that low pass filter. This allows us to achieve a louder mix and ultimately audio master, as well, with less gain reduction necessary to do it.
Multiband Compressor
Even when you’ve got all of your individual vocals sounding just right in terms of frequencies via EQ, you may hear a favoring of a darker or brighter sound on the collection of vocals when they’re all playing together.
This can again by the product of subsequent processing on individual tracks which are adding up over the course of many tracks.
When I want to sway the tone of the overall vocal slightly in one direction or the other, multiband compression is great for a little subtle, macro level control.
Note that I’m not referring to very specific frequency problems which we’re hearing across our bed of vocals; if there are any specific problem frequencies then they should be identified and dealt with on the specific track level.
With a multiband compressor, you can apply the same strategy you might use on a specific vocal, albeit with much lighter ratios. While I mention an average ratio for a specific vocal, I’d knock this down to 2:1 at most on our vocal bus:
If the vocal bus feels a little thin, try compressor expansion around 200Hz by 1-2dB. If the vocal is feeling muddy, try compressing at 400-600Hz again at a 2:1 ratio to achieve 1-2dB at most. If the vocal bus feels a little harsh, try a 2:1 ratio at 3-5k for a 1-2dB.
You can also apply a light macro level de-esser at 7-10k to get the overall sibilance a little more under control.
Note that when I say 1-2dB at most, I mean at the most offending problem moments in that vocal bus.
The beauty of the multiband compression is that it only compresses when the threshold which you set is met at each or any of the frequency bands. This makes it very transparent to nudge your combined vocal in the right direction as necessary so that it doesn’t step on the mix’s toes unnecessarily.
Saturation
You can eschew multiband compression for dealing with harshness or a thin sound on your entire vocal bus in favor of saturation to smooth out the top end and warm up and thicken out those mids.
Take these seemingly conservative settings from my favorite saturator, Decapitator from Soundtoys:
Applied to a vocal, you go from a thinner or brighter sound to a fuller vocal, particularly in that 500-2000Hz region:
This is my go-to move when a vocal is sounding thin or weak and needs a bump here which can’t be achieved from simply attenuating the brighter or top end frequencies, so refer to my overview on vocal saturation for more information on that.
I also cover there how to blend in a more aggressive, less transparent saturation with heavier distortion which can help your vocal cut through the mix more effectively, as well.
(Glue) Compressor
I love a little glue compression on my vocal bus just to make all of the vocals fit together a little better in the context of the entire mix (which is all that matters).
My overview on vocal bus compression covers the best settings so that you have that added tightness to your overall vocal, but here’s a snapshot:
Once again we’re going with relatively conservative settings because we’re applying this compression across our collective vocal.For
For vocal bus glue compression, I recommend a 2:1 ratio, a 3ms attack (though 10ms is also advised for an even slower approach to maintain the transients of the consonants), an auto release to best react to the complicated dynamics of the vocal bus, and the threshold set to achieve 1-2dB at most of gain reduction.
That’s typically all I add to my vocal bus chain. It’s mostly just about shoring up frequencies and adding a touch more control rather than adjusting the actual tone of the vocals which is best done on a track level.
I’ve talked about introducing some very light reverb across your entire mix bus (see my mix bus chain tutorial), but I recommend keeping that on said mix bus so that both the vocal AND instrumental sides of your mix get the same room sound to provide a little extra cohesion across the ENTIRE mix.
Vocal Bus Chain Reviewed
- Gain staging shouldn’t be necessary on the vocal bus if you’re applied responsible gain staging across the individual vocals, but in the case of a lot of vocals you may need to knock the level down a couple dB.
- High and low pass filters clean up any last minute low or top end noise, not to mention they add a little headroom to get a (cleaner) louder mix and master.
- Multiband compression allows you to coax the overall tone of your vocal bus in one direction or the other and address collective vocal issues on a macro level, albeit conservatively.
- A little saturation can smooth out top end harshness or fill out a thin or top heavy sounding collective vocal to sound fuller. Again, you shouldn’t need much, so keep the Wet/Dry mix percentage on the dry side.
- Glue compression at a 2:1 ratio helps to create a sense of cohesion to make the several or potentially dozens of vocal tracks gel together better in your mix.
