Used for Jimin's lead vocals on "Fake Love", as stated by producer James Reynolds in this August 2018 Sound on Sound interview. An image of the settings can be found here.

Jimin chorus lead vocal: iZotope Neutron, FabFilter Pro-MB, Empirical Labs Arousor, iZotope Trash 2 & FabFilter Pro-DS, plus sends to Slate VerbSuite Classics, FabFilter Pro-R, Soundtoys EchoBoy, Waves Factory Trackspacer & FabFilter Pro-DS.

“Welcome to my vocal world! BTS like bright, punchy vocals. There is not a lot of room in the mix because there is a lot of stuff going on, so I am not boosting low end on the vocals, because you are not going to hear that. Instead I’m trying to give the vocals more presence. The first thing I have in the chain is Neutron, which is a great EQ, and I love its dynamic mode. I boost high end with the Neutron, and band three is set to 4-6000 Hz, with the dynamic mode pulling down any loud ‘ess’ sounds or anything else too sharp. The Neutron is also tidying up the bottom end. After that is the Pro-MB multiband compressor just reining in a couple of frequencies to control the vocal.

“Next is the Arousor, adding some distortion so the vocal is very spitty and present, with lots of attack. After that there’s another instance of Trash 2 set to multiband, which I am using to give the vocal drive and really making it sit solidly in the mix. You have to know how to use Trash 2, otherwise vocals can get too harsh, but in general it is a very good way of saturating and really thickening a vocal and giving it presence. It does depend on the song, I am not always so full on with a vocal! At the end I have the Pro-DS de-esser just controlling the sibilance. Sometimes I used two instances of it, one at the beginning and one at the end, but the Neutron is already kind of doing a de-essing job.

“There also are many sends on that lead vocal. The first send is going to one of my favourites, the Slate VerbSuite Classics. It’s set to a hall-type reverb with 1.75s decay, and because I set quite high pre-delays it is almost like a slap on the vocal, which puts the vocal in a nice space. The next send is to the Pro-R for a longer, bigger reverb, which works for a chorus. I have cut low end and high end as you don’t want that floating around. The Pro-R is really good for controlling those things. Next is an EchoBoy quarter-note delay, saturated by setting it to ‘Splattered’ under ‘Style’ and that send then goes into the Trackspacer. I have a send from the lead vocal going to Trackspacer, so that whenever the lead vocal is singing the Trackspacer ducks the quarter-note delay out of the way. The Trackspacer is frequency-dependent, so it will duck whatever frequencies are dominant in the vocal, which makes it great for moving stuff out of the way. Then there’s another half-time EchoBoy delay setting, which is being automated for delay shots, and finally another Pro-DS.”

In this post Josh shows off the empirical labs arouser he uses. He states that he has been waiting years for this

Used in his mixing workflow at Nerve Studios. "I've put this thing through a few days of mixing so far and it's doing pretty damn well."

"Finally getting a chance to run this bad boy through its paces! Excited to start using it on my mixes :) Gil Griffith Empirical Labs, Inc. #arouser This thing is awesome!"