Thread by @alyssilya

_Singing on stream? Covering a song? I'm dropping one of my best kept secrets: the PROFESSIONAL VOCAL CHAIN I've used on my own singing for over 8 years. You'll get an in-depth look at what I use and why, plus how to make it with FREE plugins and use it live! 🧵 #vtuber #ENVtuber

Disclaimers from the last thread apply here too, you can read them here:
1/3:
2/3:

3/3: Putting this together took a lot longer than I expected, so I'm gonna be splitting it up into three parts over the next couple days. This is Part 1. Part 2 will be making a free version based on this setup, and Part 3 will be setting it all up so you can use it live in OBS.

For this first part we'll take a look at the original plugin chain. I'm using Ableton Live 11 Suite to host it.
💠 If you don't have Ableton, don't worry!💠
Once we understand how the original works, I'll teach you how to build it with free plugins in any DAW and even in OBS.

BEHOLD: NYAR'S SECRET SAUCE. Lets go through the ingredients!

First, pitch correction. There's lots of options out there (Antares Auto-Tune being the most popular) but since I use the same setup both in the studio and live, I usually work with Waves Tune RealTime for low latency and its more subtle effect.

There's plenty of resources out there already for setting up autotune for your voice, so I won't be covering it here. Most pitch correction plugins out there are pricey and add more latency to unoptimized setups, so we'll be leaving it out of our freeware chain later anyway.

Next up is the Deesser. If you read my last thread you know what it does. This is the same thing but in a single standard Ableton compressor. If you haven't read it, I go over what it does here:

After the deesser is a pretty standard 8-band equalizer set up for a highpass (low frequencies are cut) to help isolate your voice from everything else.

Everything after this is a lot of stages of compression to brighten the sound. This first compressor after the isolating EQ is pretty standard with a relatively low ratio. This is followed by a modified OTT with the lows cut almost entirely.

OTT is a bit of a producer meme at this point, but it started out as a preset for Ableton's native multiband compressor. Since the original is Ableton-exclusive, Xfer has a free .VST plugin that replicates the original preset and can be used in other programs. More on this later.

After OTT is a parallel chain of two compressors. These help glue the vocal together and make everything sound cohesive. I'm using two here because native Ableton compressors even at high ratios don't have the same squeezing power as the rackmount hardware this setup is based on.

The rest is just fluff to make your voice sound pretty. I like using subtle reverb with a very small amount of overdrive to give the vocal a new layer of depth. This is followed by an effect that pans the mono signal into stereo, creating width and giving your voice more space.

I make small variations to this setup when working with different voices to help the vocal better fit the musical context I'm producing, but this is the "one size fits all" structure.
Tomorrow we'll be making this with entirely FREE plugins. Drop a follow so you don't miss it! 💙

PART 2 HERE: