This week, we’re talking about vocals. In the world of music production, vocals are an integral part of almost every genre. Even tracks without lyrics often incorporate vocal-like elements, such as breath sounds, vocal cuts, and vocal textures. However, for many producers, vocals represent the most challenging aspect of music production to perfect. Capturing that emotional connection between the listener and the human voice requires specific skills and tools.
Fortunately, modern technology offers a wealth of solutions to make working with vocals easier, more accessible, and more successful. This blog post explores some of the most effective vocal plugins, apps, and websites to enhance your productions.
Nectar Elements -V4-
Brand: Izotope Price: $49.00
Nectar Elements is a great option for beginners and producers looking for a complete vocal processing solution at a more affordable price. Nectar Elements offers a robust set of essential tools, such as equalization, compression, de-essing, and pitch correction, giving you precise control over vocal timbre and dynamics. While it doesn’t have all the advanced features of the Plus version, Elements is capable of delivering professional results in an intuitive interface. Its artificial intelligence technology assists in decision-making, facilitating the mixing process and ensuring a polished and professional sound.
For those looking for a solid starting point in vocal treatment, Nectar Elements presents itself as a smart choice, offering a great balance between cost-benefit and quality.
FabFilter Pro-DS
Brand: FabFilter
Price: USD$179.00
The FabFilter Pro-DS stands out as one of the most respected and effective de-essers on the market. Its intuitive interface and highly accurate sibilance detection algorithm allow the producer to precisely and transparently control the presence of excessive sibilance in vocal recordings. In addition to its primary function as a de-esser, the Pro-DS can also be used to limit high frequencies in other instruments, such as drums, offering a versatility that makes it an indispensable tool in any studio.
Features that make the Pro-DS an excellent choice:
Intelligent sibilance detection algorithm: Identifies and corrects sibilance in a precise and musical way.
Versatility: Can be used both as a de-esser and to limit high frequencies in other instruments.
Intuitive interface: Easy to use, even for beginners.
High-quality processing: Ensures a transparent and natural sound.
In short, the FabFilter Pro-DS is an essential tool for any producer looking for precise control over sibilance in their vocal recordings and greater flexibility in their mixing processes.
Brand: Waves
Price: $35.99
Key Features: Six faders (bass, treble, compression, reverb, delay, pitch), and TONS of presets!
If you're looking for an all-in-one plugin to add to your vocal tracks, Waves' CLA Vocals has you covered! It features an eight-slider interface that includes an input and output fader, an EQ band for bass and treble frequencies, a compressor, a reverb, a delay, and a pitch control.
Each of the six main effects controls has three different presets and can also be disabled individually, allowing you to use the plugin in multiple combinations.
Brand: Soundtoys
Price: $99.99
Key Features: Monophonic pitch and formant vocal manipulation
One of the most popular vocal pitch-shifting plugins on the market, Little AlterBoy from Soundtoys offers everything you need in a single plugin. type.
Use the Pitch dial to (you guessed it…) change the Pitch! Use the Formant dial to experiment with gender-bending. But Little AlterBoy goes a few steps further than your average pitch-shifting plug-in, providing three different modes to alter the tone of your vocal, and also includes a Drive button that applies one of Soundtoys' acclaimed tube saturation presets - taken from their equally revered Decapitator plugin.
Brand: Fabfilter
Price: $119.00
FabFilter Saturn 2 provides everything you need in ONE saturation plugin, allowing you to divide your frequency spectrum into bands and apply different types and amounts of distortion to each band. You can go for full-on tape-emulated warmth in your lows, while adding a bright tube crunch to your highs. The choice is yours, but rest assured that the Saturn 2 has EVERYTHING to satisfy your saturation needs!
Antares Vocal Reverb by Auto-Tune and Waves Tune Real Time
Brands: Antares and Waves
Prices: US$129.00 and US$199.99 (but now with a discount!) for just US$35.99!!
We've selected these two TRENDY automatic vocal tuning plugins, the most beloved and prestigious (and controversial!) software that's available to you with the powerful tool to adjust your voice through artificial intelligence.
Real Time Tunes is a real competitor when applying live processing (in the studio or on stage), but Auto-Tune is preferred by most engineers for post-processing. Something that should be taken into account when choosing your next favorite.
Brand: Celemony
Price: US$218.00
Key features: Advanced manual vocal pitch correction
Melodyne is an advanced editing tool that allows the user to manually change the characteristics of individual notes in a sample or vocal recording. It is primarily known for its vocal tuning capabilities, but it can change tempo, pitch shifts, change vibrato, and even timbre. One of its most powerful features is the ability to process notes in a polyphonic recording – not just monophonic.
There are a few similar tools that can provide the same function, however, Melodyne’s vast toolset, advanced features, and innovative design truly make it one of the most IMPRESSIVE. Melodyne is available in four different tiers, each offering varying capabilities at different entry points.
Brand: Izotope
Price: $199.99 (now on sale for just $49!!!)
Another iZotope plugin that makes it onto this list. VocalSynth 2 allows the user to shape vocal samples in unique ways. Like other iZotope plugins, VocalSynth 2 is available as a complete kit that can be applied to your vocal track or as a standalone effect.
The creative potential of this tool is nearly limitless, allowing you to add highly efficient and effective industry-standard processing effects to your vocals in a complete interface. Effects include vocoders, delays, distortion, and chorus processing. By experimenting with these combinations, you’re sure to develop a vocal sound that’s right for your mix.
With a bold user interface and excellent harmony compatibility with other iZotope toolkits, VocalSynth 2 is a great choice when working with vocals.
Brand: Waves
Price: $199.99 (now discounted to ONLY $39.99)
Key Features: Add up to seven harmonic layers to your vocal tracks in the stereo field with true music theory guidelines
A common way to spice up a sung section of a track is to add harmonic layers to your vocals. Waves Harmony is a game-changer for creating choruses and bridges because you can easily add up to seven harmonic layers, in any key you want.
This can save you time from having to manually record and edit multiple layers. Once in the Waves Harmony interface, adding harmonic layers and placing them in the stereo field is extremely easy. The best part about this plugin is that it also includes music theory assistance right in the interface – meaning if there’s a specific chord you want your vocals to play, you can do it effortlessly and without much prior knowledge!!
Brand: Izotope
Price $99 (Now discounted to ONLY $49.00):
Key Features: Vocal restoration suite including de-clip, de-click, de-pop, de-ess and more
iZotope RX is a powerful vocal restoration suite thataudio feed that features some of the most reliable plugins on the market for their intended purpose. However, RX’s Music Rebalance module is what we’re thinking of here. This attempts to separate your music into four categories – Percussion, Vocals, Bass, and Other – and provides sliders for each type of material.
Results may vary, and while the tool is not specifically intended to isolate vocals – it is intended to level them out again, louder or softer – it can do an incredible, more than incredible, spectacular job.
Brand: Sonible
Price: $129.00
Key features: AI noise gate with highly accurate preset algorithms to isolate the intended signal type
We couldn't end this section of the article without mentioning Sonible's AI-based smart:gate, certainly a standout among other plugins of the same function;
Sonible has implemented artificial intelligence to create a highly effective noise barrier that has never been seen before. Simply set the AI algorithm to vocal and watch the AI automatically remove any background noise that may be present. The reason this works so much better than any manual noise gate with threshold is because the AI has been trained to only detect vocals – meaning it will clean up anything not recognized as vocal, before you even interact with the gate controls.
*Prices shown are prices posted on January 20, 2025 on plugins.com.br/plgns.com