You may wedge some saturation in there somewhere if your vocal benefits from it, and of course you’ll have reverbs and delays on sends to mix in to taste. Next, you could try following that up with corrective EQ, a touch of de-essing, a fast compressor to catch the sharpest peaks, some ‘sweetening’ EQ, and a slower compressor to glue everything together. Usually pitch correction will go as early in the chain as possible that way it’s receiving the dry signal and correcting the pitch just the way it comes into the DAW. There are still a few things to keep in mind, though.

Like we mentioned earlier, where these effects go is ultimately up to you. In any chain of effects for vocals, UAD or otherwise, you’re going to find EQ compression de-essing perhaps realtime pitch correction software like Auto-Tune saturation and time-based effects like reverb and delay (usually on sends).

Because of that, instead of listing out an exact vocal chain, we’ll instead talk about the most common effects for vocals with some loose hints as to placement. Keep an open mind and take nothing we say as gospel, because every mix is its own beast with a million variables. Now there’s a lot open to interpretation here, and even a lot to debate in terms of which effects go where in a given vocal chain. Every interface also comes with a free plugin bundle called ‘Realtime Analog Classics.’ That alone will give you plenty of toys to try on your mixes, like Pultec EQ, 1176 and LA-2A compression, and more.įrom there, it’s a matter of experimenting to find the best UAD plugins for vocals moreover, which of those work for you and your style! However, the quality is well worth it, as is the ability to run Universal Audio plugins.Īssuming you don’t already have an interface, going the Apollo route is a great choice.

The cheapest Apollo will still set you back about $500, so unfortunately they aren’t cheap. Apollo interfaces come in a variety of configurations, and they’re known for industry-leading conversion and preamp quality. Today we’ll explore some of the best UAD plugins for vocals! Mixing Vocals with UAD PluginsĪs mentioned above, the first step to mixing vocals with UAD plugins is going to be having the right hardware. Most importantly, the software runs on dedicated DSP supplied by either an Apollo interface or a satellite, which is a prerequisite for getting into UAD plugins. Over 20 years ago, Universal Audio ushered in a new standard for plugins and interfaces. UAD’s plugin catalog is a huge collection of some of the best analog emulations out there.

Universal audio plugin bundle