Key Vocal Qualities There are a lot of DAW choices out there, I personally use a combination of Reaper (for vocals/live recording) and Ableton for most of my straight production work. They are more natural sounding. Most of the time you’ll need to cut it out, especially on a male vocalist or if the vocals are recorded in a small room. Most professional vocals are recorded inside a vocal booth. Here is a screenshot of the EQ settings: If you were still looking for it, I hope this helped. However, most vocal booths can cost a fortune. Mud & Boxiness: The muddy area can be found around the 350Hz to 500Hz frequency range. If the effects only sound good in stereo, you know you have to keep working. It’s difficult to get that “pro” sound without one. An easy way to add presence and grit is to send the vocals to a saturation / exciter unit. They absorb the sound of the room around you, making your vocals dry and clear. There are some other things I would do to adjust for specific needs, but this is a good start. That’s what vocal booths do. While the human voice generally sits across the range of 100Hz to 3kHz, the defining elements of it are around 1k-2k Hz. Depending on the settings on the saturation unit, it will bring out a lot more harmonics in the vocals and make it sound larger than life. Avoid boosting this area because it will make your vocals sound boomy and it will not sit well in a mix. I'm a little late to the party, but I've used ProTools' 7-band EQ plugin for replicating sounds coming from inside of a building, and it sounds great. Adding a band at 300Hz isn't going to do you much good. ... if you always leave your vocals in the center of the mix, try putting them on the outside. *Photo by bmh4you. They are open back, meaning you can hear the outside world, but has a better sound stage in an appropriately quiet room. Not because that's the dominant frequency of the voice, but because that's the range we hear most clearly at - it's our ears not our mouths that make it so. So I’ll begin the process by pulling out pen and paper and noting down the weaknesses and strengths of a song.” In this case, do that with the vocals. ... and make sure your vocals sound great in stereo and mono. 2. Make note of what stands out, what emotion comes from the vocals, and where the vocals might suddenly sit back or sound different in the mix. Make sure your natural singing voice is the clear focus, and the reverb is the backdrop. However, using this technique may make your vocals sit outside the mix, even with very little send amounts.