"Steve Furlong also built me the Vac Rac tube limiter which in itself is hard - tube limiters have a particular analog sound so they're pretty different than like brick walls and limiters. I really prefer the sound of that stuff," says Steve Vai about the Inward Connections Vac Rac Series TSL-3 Tube Limiters which is used in his studio.

Used on the vocals for "When the Curtain Falls", as stated by mix engineer Al Sutton in this January 2019 Sound on Sound interview. An image of the settings can be found here.

"The main lead vocal, track 48, has the Opticom for some compression, and I'll always have a parallel lead vocal channel next to it, called 'smash', again for parallel compression, and it'll have tons of plug-ins and I'll just crush it to pieces, almost to the point of distortion, and tuck that underneath the main vocal. The plug-ins on the 'smash' channel include the Waves SSL Channel, Waves CLA-76, Waves DeEsser, Waves H-Delay, and the Soundtoys PhaseMistress. The latter is to get the choruses to sound wider, and the track has some automated delays. For vocal reverb I use the Echoplate 2 [plate reverb] with a Delta Labs Effectron II for pre-delay, and depending on the song either a Lexicon Primetime II or Fulltone Echoplex for slap-back delay.

"Finally there are the backing vocals, on which I had again the Waves SSL-Channel, CLA-76 and DeEsser, and then the Waves SuperTap delay, for stereo delays in the choruses, also to get them to sound wider. I do the vocal blend in Pro Tools and, depending on the parts, will send the blends out on one of the two stereo outs. In this case I had two sets of stereo outs to the API and I compressed each pair lightly with the Inward Connections TSL3 and TSL1."

To glue everything together, Al Sutton once again employs parallel compression. "The API Legacy has an A bus and a B bus, and I'll put a Shadow Hills compressor on the B bus. I'll blend that back in with the A bus, and I'll print that back on as a stereo track in the session. I'll print a brickwalled track as well so we can hear the mix really loud, and get some idea of where we'll end up. But I'll send my mix uncompressed to mastering, which for this album was done by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound. I leave loudness up to the mastering engineer, because I don't want to play that game any more. It just ruins your mixes. If you can get at a competitive volume without having all the dynamics smacked out of your mixes, I think it will resonate more with people."

Used for the vocals on "Big Girls Don't Cry", as stated by mix engineer JJ Puig in this November 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

Vocals: Digidesign delays, Waves Trueverb, Focusrite D2, Neve 1073, Inward Connection TSL3

“The two channels on the far left are the actual vocal tracks [‘LEAD**], and more to the right you can see that there’s a dedicated vocal channel for each section of the song, so I can create the right feeling from section to section. So the first verse [‘1stversvrb’*], the bit with just the acoustic guitar backing, has its own reverb using a Waves Trueverb, which is great. I’ve rolled off above 1k and left all the low end to make it darker and fuller sounding. I’m a Waves guy, they make the best stuff! The D2 gets rid of any dirt below 111Hz and also adds a bit of high end around 12k.

“The breakdown section has a Digirack Mod Delay II slap delay. There are different ambient feels and different attitudes for different sections. Towards the end, where she’s ad libbing, I put a longer delay on. The delays change for each section of the song, but the main long delay that was essential to how the vocals feel is on the entire vocal, which is why I had it on the main channel. It’s again the Digirack Mod II delay, set to 265.49ms.

The rest of the vocal effects were all done outside [the DAW]. I had a Neve 1073 between Pro Tools and the console, because I really wanted the sound of that Neve. The closer you can get to the original source with your effect, the more you’ll get the effect you want. If I’d stuck the Neve on an insert in the Focusrite, the signal would already have been coloured by the console, and the Neve sound would have been less obvious. I probably added +3dB at 12kHz on the Neve and +2dB at 220Hz. After that the vocals went through an Inward Connection TSL3, which is a great vocal compressor that adds great attack. You can get very aggressive with it, and you won’t hear it. I had about 8dB of compression, which is quite a bit, but as I said, you don’t hear it. It made her vocals more expressive.”