Even after we’ve EQ’d our vocal, we may find that it’s feeling thin or empty. This is when I reach for vocal saturation to add overtones to those mids by way of some light distortion information to fill out the sound.
Vocal saturation is a great way to add thickness and warmth to a thin, harsh, or top heavy vocal, so let’s talk about how to use it on your vocal.
Vocal Saturation
As I covered in my overview what does saturation do, this is an effect which actually ADDS overtones or frequency information which wasn’t there before to your audio by way of distortion.
Here is a before and after depiction of saturation being added to a guitar which was recorded with too harsh and bright a tone:
As you can see, there’s about a 3dB boost on average between 200-2000Hz.
This gives a different and much better tone and result than if you had just boosted that same region via an EQ.
Using my saturation workhorse, Decapitator from Soundtoys, I applied the following settings to a looping segment of vocals:
Part of what I love about Decapitator is the ease of use to achieve all sorts of different results.
As you can see, all I’ve got is a bit of drive with the “T” style (modeling the Thermionic Culture Vulture) and Mix set to 100% wet. The very existence of this plugin on your track is enough to add saturation.
Here I’m not even touching the filters or tone control, though these can be adjusted to color the vocal as you need.
Sometimes I’ll just drop an instance of Decapitator on my vocal or any track, leave the drive off, then tweak the “Tone” dial to slightly favor a darker and warmer versus a brighter sound.
Applying the above settings on a looped bit of audio, I froze the frequency peaks to display what’s happening tonally BEFORE the saturation on the vocal:
Pay attention to that 500-2k region as we compare this with the same looped section AFTER saturation has been applied:
You can see there’s a thickness and stronger presence in that 500-2k region (with a bit more below 200Hz, as well) that we only got after that saturation was applied to the vocal.
This is a great way to add body to a vocal in a more transparent or better said superior sounding way than again just boosting that frequency stretch via EQ.
You can also use a more aggressive, heavy distortion leaning saturation on your vocal to help it cut through the mix.
Decapitator has a few presets specifically for vocals for achieving varying degrees of the sharp distortion to give your vocal that extra bit of edge:
The “Angry Vox” preset gives your vocal that extra bit of “bite” to help it cut through a mix.
The key here is just about blending in the amount of the effect to taste because it’s not at all subtle like the above vocal saturation I showed.
When using the effect as an insert directly on the vocal, you can blend in a light amount via the Wet/Dry “Mix” dial to just give it that aforementioned “bite” so that it’s barely perceptible by the listener.
Conversely, you can seriously crank this up to 100%, even upping the “Drive” dial to the max to make your vocal sound like it’s coming out of a guitar amp with the distortion cranked up.
Tick the “Punish” button to REALLY push it over the edge at the occasional choice moment to make your vocal sound… well… ANGRY!
As you can tell, vocal saturation has multiple uses depending on the type and amount you blend in.
While it can have its “fun ear candy moments” when you really crank it up, conservative vocal saturation deserves a place in your vocal chain, particularly when your vocal feels thin and could benefit from those low-mids and mid warmth.
