Waves Renaissance Compressor Plugin

"waves bundle fx are very good, we use the C4, the Rcomp, the REQ and the L2 a lot"

At 33 minutes and 37 seconds in the video attached you can see the Waves Renaissance Compressor.

In this [interview](http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul05/articles/andrewcoleman.htm) Pharrell's engineer Andrew Coleman talks about using the Waves' Renaissance compressor. "It's not a whole lot — about 18 channels of [processing], plus plug-ins like Metric Halo's Channel Strip and Waves' Renaissance compressors and the Sony Oxford Compressor — but we know exactly what to expect from each combination."

"There are quite a few plug-ins on Kendrick’s vocal. He has a real raspy, mid-range vocal, so I use the Renaissance Compressor to smooth that out. I have it in manual and opto modes, with the threshold all the way down to -18, so if anything in the mid-range leaps out too much, it keeps that in check."

It’s all about getting something to sound the most inspiring as quickly as possible, to keep the momentum going. You would think that more advanced producers would want infinite parameters in their tools. But in truth, I’ll use something like Renaissance Compressor – I’m a big fan of optical compressors. Either that or the Renaissance Vox comp – it has a way of placing vocals perfectly in the mix without the compression being noticeable or harsh. Very transparent and smooth. I probably use it more than any comp; I can get good results fast and keep it moving.

Used for J. Cole's feature on 21 Savage's "A Lot", as is visible in the aux "All Vox" in a downloadable photo of the "A Lot" Pro Tools session (available in [this .zip file](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/assetlibrary/i/inside-track-maddmix-protools.jpg.zip?e.NufXPkJ6AA9d08Z4nh0YmAafFdQF5n)) from this March 2019 *Sound on Sound* interview with producer Maddmix. > "'All Vox' has the Avid Lo-Fi and Waves RCompressor. I take the Sample Size down to 15 [bits] with the Lo-Fi, which is a trick I learned from Jaycen. It works like a form of compression, and makes the vocals a bit more up-front and louder. The RCompressor is set to a ratio of 2.56 and is there to keep the vocals in place. 'All Drums' has the Acustica Diamond, in a special edition made for Dave Pensado. I felt that the drums needed a little more 100Hz, so I boosted with that plug-in. I like the way it works on the low end. I also used the Lo-Fi on here, on the same 15-bit Sample Size setting as with the vocals."

Used on the vocals for "Take Me to Church", as stated by mix engineer Rob Kirwan in this March 2015 *Sound on Sound* interview. > * **Vocals:** Bomb Factory 1176, Focusrite Red EQ, SoundToys Echo Boy, Line 6 Echo Farm, Knas Ekdahl Moisturizer, Waves Renaissance Compressor, Avid Trim & Audio Ease Altiverb. > “The two ‘tele’ voices at the top are backing vocals. I think they were ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ that came from the demo. They don’t sound like telephone voices at all, so I’m not sure why they’re called that. Instead they almost sound like church voices. Below are two aux tracks for those vocals, with Bomb Factory compression, Focusrite EQ and an Echo Boy delay. The backing vocals below that — ‘BV1–4’ — are the ones with the signature Leslie effect on them, and they again have some Focusrite EQ and Bomb Factory compression, and I gave them some Echo Farm slap delay to add depth to the reverb. > “The next tracks are the verse lead vocals from his Logic session, called ‘Male Creamy Lead Vocals’, on which I put some Renaissance compression and a Trim, and ‘Vox Verb’ is the Moisturizer track, plus two Trim plug–ins, one being +1dB and the other –0.5dB. I hate automating in Pro Tools, so I will often use the Trim to bypass it. Writing automation is a tedious task. Below this are the chorus vocals, called ‘New Vocal’, so we obviously recorded these again at my studio. In order to make them sound like the demo vocal I stuck them through the same chain and EQ’d them heavily. ‘Vox Plate’ is the Altiverb, and there’s a delay track below it which again has the Echo Farm, on a delay setting. Finally there are several more double–tracked chorus vocals, and they also have the Renaissance and Focusrite, and the Moisturizer and Echo Farm aux tracks below them.”

Noah Shebib tells that he uses the Waves Renaissance Compressor Plugin in Drake Lead Vocal on "Headlines"

"...but the vocal itself, I use, um, here I used a Waves Renaissance Compressor, just to tame them a little bit." (12:11)

"Imogen's workhorse plug-ins at the mixing stage were the Focusrite D2 EQ and D3 compressor, along with the Waves Renaissance Compressor." (From Imogen Heap's interview with Sound On Sound.)

Mentioned under the official Waves artist page. “I treat Waves plugins as I would the best analogue outboard and expect the same quality, but with endless flexibility. The Renaissance Compressor is my go-to plugin for vocals every time.“

bottom right corner of the screen you can see the Waves Renaissance Compressor

Used on "Apeshit", as stated by producer Stuart White in this September 2018 *Sound on Sound* interview. > The first four aux tracks feature SoundToys effects, namely Little Microshift, two EchoBoy delays, and a delay from the Little PrimalTap. Next are a Hall Reverb aux and a Church Reverb aux, both using Waves’ RVerb, an EMT plate from Audio Ease’s Altiverb, four aux tracks with the Waves H-Delay and various other plug-ins on them as well, and four more reverb auxes with the Avid Revibe II, two Avid D-Verbs and another RVerb. > White: “I use the Little Microshift in pretty much every mix, with the left-right micro pitch-shift effect that’s similar to the classic effect in the Eventide H3000 shift where you pitch one side down six cents and one side up six cents to create width. It’s a good way to get your vocals wider without them being out of phase. It thickens up vocals, and is kind of like a doubler. I do quite a lot of filtering on some of the EchoBoy delays, for example with the Waves REQ, and I am adding colour with the SoundToys Devil-Loc, which is great if you want to colour the delay so it is separate from the main vocal, and compress it with the UAD LA3A and mix that in to taste.” > (...) Beyoncé’s lead vocal tracks consist of three aux tracks, four ‘dirty’ and eight ‘clean’ audio tracks. The audio tracks only have the EQ3 on the inserts and a few of them have a send to the Church Reverb. All White’s processing is done on the three aux tracks. “All lead vocals are sent to the ‘B Aux’ track and the ‘B Parra Aux’ tracks. On the former I have the McDSP DS 555 de-esser. I use the Waves de-esser the most, but in this particular track, because I wanted to compress her voice really hard, I felt that the 555 would work the best. I am rolling off until 6144Hz into what it is detecting; it’s like a side-chain filter. The FabFilter Pro-DS is doing a little more gentle look-ahead de-essing. > “After that there’s some pretty heavy EQ from the EQ3, with a high-pass at 142Hz, a 9dB cut at 244Hz and a 2dB cut at 3kHz. My cut at 244Hz is because she is singing in this husky, low voice, so there’s not a lot of energy in that. I get the energy from the RComp compression, and the EQs, including from the SSL E-Channel, are there to make her sit in the track, rather than making it sound filtered. I love the RComp, mainly because it doesn’t sound like compression to me. The SSL E-Channel adds a bit more compression, and the [Crane Song] Phoenix II Tape Emulation is really cool because while it doesn’t actually sound like tape, it smoothes out transients in a signal just like much analogue equipment does. It enables me to get a fatter vocal sound that again makes the vocal sit in the mix. The final EQ3 has a notch at 3.2kHz to take out some harshness. I also have sends to the Verb aux track, which are the D-Verb and [Waves] H-Reverb, and the Delay 1-4 aux, with the EchoBoy. > The other aux track, ‘B Parra Aux’, is a parallel compression track, with the RCompressor and the CLA 76, which I mixed in low. Both these aux tracks then go to the ‘LD ALL Aux’, on which I’m doing some more surgery with the McDSP AE400 [dynamic EQ], which allows you to set a threshold, just like on a compressor. It’s like turning a volume knob down on a frequency the moment it gets out of control. Finally, there’s the Waves C4, for some control, to keep the vocal even. This track has a lot of energy, so this is an example of using compression for energy, mood and attitude. I also worked a long time to get the compression on Bey’s breaths to pump on the beat. I wanted her breaths to be another percussive element in the track, and getting the attack and release on the compressor right was key to getting that feel and pumping effect.” > Five of the 22 Beyoncé ad lib, backing and harmony vocals below her lead vocals also go to the above-mentioned aux tracks, while the rest have their own signal chains. These audio tracks are sent to several aux tracks, often with tons of plug-ins, and all aux vocal tracks in the end get sent to the ‘Voc All’ group aux right at the top of the session, which has an RCompressor, with ratio at 10:1. There are more group aux tracks, like ‘TrackAux’, ‘FX Voc Aux’, ‘FX’ and ‘Music Aux’, which all get sent to the ‘All Aux’. This in turn gets sent to the ‘no limiter’ mix print track, and finally there’s a Stereo Master track.

Used on Rihanna's lead vocals for "SOS", as stated by mix engineer Phil Tan in this February 2007 *Sound on Sound* interview. An image of the settings can be found [here](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/news_large/s3/imagelibrary/i/inside4sosrenais-N7lS2AgEqet_.vkvN3XTsN09KVPpKlkm.jpg). > **Lead vocal:** Waves *Renaissance Compressor* > "'SOS' is a pounding type of song, and the lyrics are a cry for help, so the vocals need to be 'in your face', almost aggressive. I therefore wanted to make sure that the vocal is fairly constant. There's plenty of level automation with the vocals going on, riding the faders with the mouse — this song was done in-the-box at Silent Sound Studios, also in Atlanta. Ideally it would be nice if you didn't hear compression, but in some cases you do want to hear it. The compression ratio isn't that much, and I pressed the Opto button, which emulates the feel of older analogue compressors."

When asked about a favorite compression plugin, Nick Harriman of Dusky answers: "Waves Renaissance for squashing the vocals a little bit and the Logic compressor for sidechaining." Originally sourced from [this Sept 2013 article](http://www.earmilk.com/2013/09/24/earmilk-interview-dusky/).

Spotted on "Fred Falke In The Studio" with Futur Music Magazine.

Mentioned by sound engineer Trevor Muzzy in this *Sound on Sound* interview about the production of "Starships". > "You can see that the pre-chorus and chorus vocals have a lot of timing and comp edits. They were imported directly from the session I cut the vocals in. I did not merge or consolidate them, they just are the way they are. There's quite a lot going on with the vocals. I tried to create a nice basic vocal sound using the inserts, and once they sat well in the track, most of the sonic variations between the sections came from the sends. There was no tuning on the rapping, but the sung vocals in this track had a fair amount of tuning with the Logic Pitch Corrector plug-in on the inserts. The tuning is part of the sound of the record, with vocals needing to be very, very precise. In some cases, we pitched them up or down for vocal effects. Logic Pitch Corrector is a little harder-sounding than Auto-Tune, but it has its own distinct sound that we liked for the vocals in this track. It really fits the song. > > "The other inserts on most of the vocals were all Waves: the C1 compressor, SSL Channel, Renaissance Channel, De-Esser, Renaissance Compressor, API 2500, and the Logic Channel EQ. The C1 compressor is the first in line on several lead vocals, and it does the same Pensado trick I used on the guitars, which is to compress a specific band — in the case of the verse lead vocal, around 2849Hz — focusing on notes that sounded a little harsh. It smooths this problem out more elegantly than using an EQ. Then the signal goes through the R Channel with some basic EQ, cutting significantly at 281Hz. Again, it was a matter of removing some less pleasant things to let the nice aspects shine. I bypassed the compressor in the R Channel. I needed a bit of de-essing, and the Waves De-Esser is a great all-purpose de-esser, in this case working at 5634Hz with the side-chain set to high-pass. > > "There were two more compressors on her vocal. There was no science behind this, it was just a matter of experimenting to find a unique sound. The first is the Renaissance Compressor, which I love and which is set to a fast attack time and takes off about 6dB, so quite subtle, not too intense. The API 2500 is set pretty aggressively and you can hear it pumping a little bit on the vocal. It was already in the session — it had been used on the demo vocal. I pulled it over to Nicki's channel and liked what it was doing, so I adjusted it to fit her vocal. Finally, the Channel EQ notches quite a lot around 600Hz and a little bit more around 235Hz, just carving out some low-mids to make the vocal sit better in the track. > > "Regarding the sends, there are some really distinct things happening here. The main lead vocal was similar throughout the song, but I tweaked it as it went along. The pre-chorus and chorus vocals all have Bus 1, which went to the same Altiverb effect that I had on the drums, to add some ambience to the vocal. The rap verses are much drier. Bus 35 is the Waves Doubler, which gives a bit of spread to the lead vocal — I used this on the rap as well as on the sung vocals. Bus 4 is the Waves CLA with a drastic telephone effect. That was another effect that was there from the demo version and added a cool quality. Bus 50 is the [Sound Toys] Echo Boy, which is the main plug-in I use for delay throws, whenever I want to repeat a word. In this case it's on a quarter-note Echoplex setting. It's a single, mono echo that I panned a little bit to the side. Bus 7 has the Waves VX1 Maserati Vocal Enhancer, and that was, again, a plug-in I inherited. It is set to a very compressed, bright vocal sound that I brought in and out to add some sparkle to the sound when necessary. > > "Bus 6 has the main reverb in the track, which you are hearing in the pre-chorus and chorus, and which is a Lexicon Plate plug-in on the 'VocalPlate2' preset. It's a really bright, over-the-top plate sound that is not trying to blend in but that's actually brightening the vocal up a lot. It's loud and wet. Busses 16 and 29 are different stereo delays: the Waves SuperTap was already in the session and I kept it, and the other is a standard Logic stereo delay that I use all the time on vocals. Bus 3 is the Logic Bitcrusher, which gives the vocals a grainy sound. The vocals already had an aggressive sonic quality to them because of the 251-TG2-1176 chain, and the Bitcrusher enhanced that. It's nasty, there's nothing nice about a bit-crusher, and it adds a bit of attitude. I used it on some of the background vocals as well, like in the second verse, where you have the pitch effects. You can hear it in the very processed harmony vocals that come in. That was something we added when we were doing the final vocal comp and arrangement. It gave that second verse some more life and helped the track build. The background vocals are a very big part of the hook vocal sound as well, and, for example, track 140 has many effects on it. That actually contains the vocals of the demo singers. Nicki's lead and background vocals are dominant, but in the chorus the background vocals from Mohombi and Wayne Hector added to the crowd feeling. The chorus vocals are really big in this track, and they were part of that.”

Disfunktion posted this photo on their Facebook fan page which shows them utilizing the Waves Renaissance Compressor Plugin with this caption: "Studio day!"

Used on Shakira vocals for "Hips Don't Lie".

Used for the vocals on "Save Room", as stated by mix engineer Tony Maserati in this March 2007 *Sound on Sound* interview. An image of the settings can be found [here](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/news_large/s3/imagelibrary/i/insidetrack11b-sFL4heAQ_HhS.Cd4Wb47C8kMXsKnTvel.jpg). > **Vocals: McDSP Filter Bank E6, Waves Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance EQ, L1 Ultramaximiser** > "The song has two lead vocal comps, on tracks 48 and 49. You can see that I'm using a lot of plug-ins on those: I'm doing a lot of drastic stuff. They were probably recorded on two different occasions with two different engineers who didn't take the time to match the performances by using the same microphone and signal chains. I get really pissed at this lack of effort on the part of recordists — there are standards in engineering. John Legend is a phenomenal vocalist and before he comes into your room to record, you should reach out to other engineers who have recorded with him to find out what they used — especially, of course, the guy who recorded the song that you're going to be overdubbing onto! That's what I did, the first time I recorded John. > "We liked the lead vocal, it had an energy that we did not want to give up, but it's not recorded consistently. You can even see on the screen that the levels are all over the place. So I spent a lot of time and energy pushing and pulling all over the place to compensate for frequency anomalies and to make the two takes sound the same, as well as to force all the energy out of the vocals that is in there. On track 48 I have a Filter Bank EQ that's pushing a ton of bottom and taking off some top. The Renaissance Compressor is trying to make sense of that, levelling things out a bit with a really slow attack. > "I don't normally use the L1 Ultramaximiser on a lead voice, but it was probably already there, and I'm using it to get some intelligibility and energy from the vocal. The Renaissance is boosting above 9k and the McDSP is cutting around there as well. I think it's because I'm compensating for the L1, which is doing something I'm not entirely happy with. A lot of what I'm doing is simply compensating for a poor recording. > "Lastly I throw on the R4 Renaissance EQ, probably because after mixing for a couple of days, I felt that it needed a little bit more top, and I did not want to change my settings on the outboard, which was probably my GML 8200. I'm also EQ-ing on the board. So I'm being heavy-handed, also with the effects on track 49, in trying to match these two tracks. I was really fighting until we got something out of it, and I think we accomplished that. The end result sounds pretty good."

Used for Quavo and Offest's features on Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Apeshit", as stated by producer Stuart White in this September 2018 *Sound on Sound* interview. > The first four aux tracks feature SoundToys effects, namely Little Microshift, two EchoBoy delays, and a delay from the Little PrimalTap. Next are a Hall Reverb aux and a Church Reverb aux, both using Waves’ RVerb, an EMT plate from Audio Ease’s Altiverb, four aux tracks with the Waves H-Delay and various other plug-ins on them as well, and four more reverb auxes with the Avid Revibe II, two Avid D-Verbs and another RVerb. > White: “I use the Little Microshift in pretty much every mix, with the left-right micro pitch-shift effect that’s similar to the classic effect in the Eventide H3000 shift where you pitch one side down six cents and one side up six cents to create width. It’s a good way to get your vocals wider without them being out of phase. It thickens up vocals, and is kind of like a doubler. I do quite a lot of filtering on some of the EchoBoy delays, for example with the Waves REQ, and I am adding colour with the SoundToys Devil-Loc, which is great if you want to colour the delay so it is separate from the main vocal, and compress it with the UAD LA3A and mix that in to taste.” > (...) “The Migos vocals came in as seven audio tracks, with the Avid D-Verb on each of them. Putting a D-Verb on a track before EQ is not something I normally do, but it sounded great. So I adjusted them a bit, but otherwise left them as they were. The tracks also came in with the Aux track above, and the EQ3, with a high pass at 60Hz and notches at 430Hz and 1.41kHz and a high boost, the Waves API 2500 compressor, the RComp, the Waves Q10 EQ, following a slightly similar curve to the EQ3, the Waves De-esser, the Waves Aphex Aural Exciter, and the Avid Dyn3 expander/gate. I added the EQ3, with another high-pass filter at 144Hz, and the RComp, with a ratio of 10:1.”

At the minute 20:35 we can see Renaissance Compressor from Waves.

Used on Flo Rida and T-Pain's vocals for "Low", as stated by mixer Fabian Marasciullo in this *Sound on Sound* interview. > "There were lots of vocals and I chose not to bounce them down, because I prefer to process every individual bit separately. It uses more DSP on the computer, but you have more flexibility in the way you can treat sections, and hence more depth in the overall vocal sounds this way. The 'Lead' and 'Dbl' tracks are the main verse vocals by Flo Rida, he's doubling himself like many vocalists will do. Flo has a keen melodic sense when he's rapping. The A, B and C auxes separate the three different parts of the verse. The 'Whine 1, 2, 3' backing vocals only occur in the third verse. Underneath 'Aux 4' are T–Pain's backing vocals. 'Main Hk1,2,3,4' are all T–Pain doing a unison of one note. > > "As is usual for me, I began the mix with the vocals, set against the rough music bed. You can see the latter in the left pane track window in the Edit Window, where it's called 'T_Pain_5 LO'. Of course I later muted that track. After having cleaned up and EQ'd the vocals I worked on the drums, and then the synths. I then brought the vocals back in to get their levels in relation to the music and do some automation. > > "I used the Waves Renaissance Channel on the A, B and C auxes. I use the RChannel on all my vocals. It's basically a combination of the RCompressor, the REQ, and the RVox, all in one, and it's great. For this record I used a pretty cool preset called 'CloseWarmVox', and I tweaked from there. You can see that it rolls off at the bottom and it has a little touch at the top. I almost used it as a filter on this particular song to get clarity in the bottom, add some high and have a bit of compression. I also used it on T–Pain's vocals.

Used on Cardi B's vocals for "Bodak Yellow", as mentioned by mix engineer Evan LaRay in this February 2018 *Sound on Sound* interview. > In his mix of ‘Bodak Yellow’, Evan LaRay used almost identical vocal chains on two auxiliary busses. The ‘Vox 1’ chain includes FabFilter’s Pro-DS de-esser and Waves’ C4 multiband compressor, plus the Waves CLA Vocals plug-in and SoundToys’ Decapitator saturation processor. > The main ‘Hook’ and ‘Verse’ vocal tracks have similar plug-in chains, incorporating the EQ3 seven-band, Waves CLA-76 and Waves De-esser, though the ‘Hook’ also has FabFilter’s Timeless 2 delay. LaRay explains, “The EQ on the ‘Hook’ has a high-pass, around 100Hz, and I’m also cutting 3dB at 300Hz, because the vocal sounded a bit muddy, and again 3dB at 4kHz, because there was a piercing frequency there. The CLA keeps the peaks in check, and the de-esser again takes some higher frequencies out, at 4270Hz, and the Timeless is another favourite plug-in. I think in general the FabFilter plug-ins are extremely dope. I wanted the ‘Hook’ vocal to stand out from the ‘Verse’ vocal, so I used a stereo delay preset, and then tweaked that. The presets on the FabFilter plug-ins are pretty good: you just run through all of them and then choose the best one. In this case I lowered the width and the wet value of the stereo delay preset, and that sounded good and gave the hook its own space. The three plug-ins on the ‘Verse’ track do pretty much the same. > “The ‘Inout’ tracks that are below the ‘Hook’ and the ‘Verse’ are vocal doubles. They are words or lines we use for emphasis and additional power on these lines and words. They come from one of her original vocal takes, which I just cut and cleaned up. Both ‘Inout’ tracks have the Waves RCompressor, just containing these words and lines so they don’t overwhelm the ‘Hook’ or the ‘Verse’ vocal, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q2, taking out some high frequencies, again to make sure it doesn’t clash with the leads, and also cutting below 200Hz. And there’s a delay on these tracks to put them in a slightly different space from the lead vocal tracks. > “In addition to the two ‘Inout’ tracks, both the ‘Hook’ and the ‘Verse’ tracks are also accompanied by an ‘Ad Libs’ track, which were some ad libs Cardi had recorded with Mike over at Krematorium. Mike had also set up a separate aux track for these ad libs, which is ‘Vox2’, and I liked that and kept two of the plug-ins he had on that: the [Avid] Sansamp for some distortion and the SoundToys Panman. I then added the D-Verb and the [Waves] CLA Vocals. I adore the CLA Vocals. I use it on every track I work on. When I don’t use it, the vocals sound completely different. I’d love to know what exactly it does! Finally, the inserts have the Waves L1, just to control the peaks. > “The other tracks — ‘EXF1’, ‘EXF2’, ‘EXF3’ and ‘EXF4’, are because I prefer to create a new track if I want to have a specific effect on specific words or phrases. I prefer doing that to automating the effects on a track. Automation is great, but I tend to only do volume automation. So I copy audio to another track, and then put the effect on that, and in this case I created four different effects tracks with four different delays. ‘EFX1’ is the main one, and has the same three plug-ins as the Verse tracks — EQ3 three-band, CLA76 and Waves De-esser — just with the EQ3 cutting more of the high frequencies. Then there’s an eighth-note ping-pong delay from the Waves H-Delay, and then a D-Verb set to ‘hall’ with 7s decay and a 15ms pre-delay. ‘EFX2’ has another H-Delay delay, ‘EFX3’ the Timeless 2 delay, and ‘EFX4’ again has the H-Delay plus a D-Verb.” > All the main vocal audio tracks go to LaRay’s ‘Vox1’ aux group track. This, he explains, has “A FabFilter Pro-DS de-esser, then the Waves RCompressor controlling the peaks, the Waves C4 multiband compressor boosting the high end and containing the lows in her voice, so it doesn’t cut through too much, and Waves CLA Vocals. Again, it’s really making my vocals sound good. I push the Pitch fader to stereo, spank it on the compressor, also push up the treble to brighten it up, turn the reverb down to ‘tight’, and lower the delay by 9dB because my own quarter delay is my main vocal delay, and it sounds great. There’s also a SoundToys Decapitator, to add more harmonic distortion, and then there’s the Waves RVox. That was supposed to be the final plug-in on the insert, but then I realised the vocal was still peaking too much once she began rapping loudly, so I put on the L1 [limiter] to control that.” > The ‘special sauce’ in Evan LaRay’s mixes comes from a parallel aux channel containing a blend of compression, saturation, EQ and other processors. Key ingredients are Waves’ PuigChild compressor and PuigTech equaliser. > The ‘Vox1’ and ‘Vox2’ tracks also each have a Trim plug-in on an insert, and sends to the ‘Verb’ aux and to the ‘ELR’ (LaRay’s initials) track. “I put the Trim on all my tracks at the end of the vocals, and at the end of the beat, because the vocals actually began distorting in places. These two tracks were too hot, and I wanted to make sure they had a good level before going to the ‘Sub Print’ track. I have the ‘ELR’ aux track in every session. It’s most of all parallel compression, but I also always try out new things with distortion, exciters and things like that, and I label that ‘ELR’. In this case it really is the ‘ELR’ track that makes the vocals cut through the mix. > “The compression on the ‘ELR’ track comes from the Waves PuigChild 670, which is a great compressor, and it’s compressing a lot, so the vocal stays right there in the middle. The signal is then going to the PuigTech EQP-1A, which is boosting some low end to add some warmth to the vocals, and some 5kHz, and then the Waves Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter, set to AX Mix 6, for some added crispness and clarity, then the EQ3 seven-band to control the low mids, and another De-Esser cutting 4398Hz, to finalise the vocal sound. The L1 also helps keep the vocals in the same place. Finally, the ‘Verb’ send on the ‘Vox1’ and ‘Vox2’ tracks goes to the ‘Verb’ aux, which has the Waves RVerb, and that pretty much glues everything together.”

Used for "How to Talk", as stated by mix engineer Kesha Lee in this December 2017 *Sound on Sound* article. > “The intro track was a voice note Uzi had recorded on his phone, and he played it in the booth on his phone, and we recorded it through the mic like that. It sounded really telephone-y, which we wanted, but I tried to take out some of the highs with the Waves OneKnob. All audio vocal tracks apart from the intro have Antares Auto-Tune as the first plug-in. Uzi hears his Auto-Tuned vocals in his headphones while singing. We used to just have it on default, with a Retune speed of 20, but lately he has been like: ‘Give me more Auto-Tune!’ so now we have the Retune Speed set to anywhere from 12 to 5. The ‘D’ after Auto-Tune is the Waves De-Esser, the ‘Q’ the Avid EQ3 seven-band, and the ‘1’ is the Waves C1 gate. All vocal audio tracks also have sends to the delay and the reverb aux tracks. The delay aux track has the Avid Mod Delay II set to half notes, with feedback at 43 percent, the Waves Renaissance Reverberator, set to ‘Hall 1’ reverb, with the highs cut on the reverb EQ, and the Waves S1 stereo imager. The reverb aux has the Renaissance Reverberator. > “All audio vocal tracks go to the vocal aux track. I had two vocal aux tracks in this session, because I wanted to try something different, using plug-ins I don’t normally use. That’s why one of the aux tracks is muted. The vocal aux track that I did use has the Waves De-Esser acting around 4230Hz, then the EQ3 seven-band which has a high-pass at 96.4Hz, and I’m dipping out muddiness at 200 and 500 Hz. I’m also adding some high end at 6.52kHz. I don’t normally add EQ with the seven-band, but Seth would add some high end on Future’s voice and that worked well, so I tried it here. Next is the Waves Renaissance Compressor, to keep the dynamics in check, and then the Waves SSL E-channel, on which I am again dipping out various frequencies. The latter plug-in is more for colour and character. The Waves CLA-3A is more for the sound, and the RN Digital Detailer made Uzi’s vocals sound fuller and wider. > "The final plug-in in the chain is the Nomad Factory MCL-2269 limiter and compressor, again for the sound and for more volume. We always go for a warm, full, loud, in-your-face vocal sound, also because we like the vocals to be louder than the beat. I always turn the beat down 1-2 dB. There are no plug-ins on the master track, because I used to work for a producer who didn’t want that, as the mix would go to the mastering engineer. So I’m still used to doing it like that. I turn the master volume down anywhere between -7 to -9 dB before it goes to mastering, so they have room to work with.”

Im Musikvideo "Eloah" kann man bei 0:56 den Renaissance Compressor sehen.

Used on SZA's vocals for "All the Stars", as stated by producer Matt Schaeffer in this May 2018 *Sound on Sound* interview. An image of the settings can be found [here](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/news_large/s3/imagelibrary/I/IT_05_18_10A-wi2HH19YH4QlPMH7xUtuKV6H_QGWMjq5.jpg). > There are 12 SZA vocal audio tracks in total: two for the main hook, one second verse lead track, and nine verse backing tracks, which in fact provide emphasis and overdubs of single words. All SZA audio tracks have the Antares Auto?Tune 8.1 plug-in, the two hook tracks each also have the FabFilter Pro?Q2 equaliser, and the main SZA verse track also has a de-esser, while the backing vocals have two instances of the Waves RVerb and one of the same company’s H-Delay. Apart from Auto?Tune, most of the processing is done on the ‘SZA ?’ aux, to which all SZA audio tracks are sent. > Schaeffer: “The inserts of the sum track for SZA’s vocals consist of the EQ3 seven-band, Waves RComp, UAD Pultec EQP1A, UAD 1176E, Waves De-Esser, UAD LA2A, another Waves De-Esser, the Pro?Q2, yet another Waves De-Esser and the SoundToys MicroShift. The De-Essers affect 11400Hz, 15032Hz and 2000Hz respectively. I like stacking de-essers set to different frequencies. It works like narrow multiband compression. Sometimes I will in fact use a multiband compressor, like the Waves C4, but if the vocals have very specific harsh frequencies, I prefer to use several de-essers. They also are helpful as I like boosting high frequencies in vocals; here, the EQP1A boosts 16kHz. The EQ3 has a high-pass at 216Hz and cuts at 695Hz, and the Q2 lowers the high end to some degree. When a frequency bothers me, I usually sweep through [with a band set temporarily to boost] to find the frequency and then I cut. The MicroShift provides a little extra width and a slight ambience with the delay parameter, without actually making the vocal sound too stereo. > “The sends go to auxes called ‘SZA Verb’ and ‘DVerb’, both of which have the DVerb and EQ3 seven-band, two ‘SZA Delays’ with the Waves H-Delay, and the ‘SZA Chamber’, which has the Waves RVerb and again the EQ3 seven-band. I put an EQ after the reverb, because I don’t like too much low end in reverb. You get a cleaner sound by taking it out, and you make space for actual instruments to take up that spectrum. The delays are both set to eighth note, and one of them is set to ping-pong delay and also is automated to only come in on certain places.”

Used for Quavo and Offest's features on Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Apeshit", as stated by producer Stuart White in this September 2018 *Sound on Sound* interview. > The first four aux tracks feature SoundToys effects, namely Little Microshift, two EchoBoy delays, and a delay from the Little PrimalTap. Next are a Hall Reverb aux and a Church Reverb aux, both using Waves’ RVerb, an EMT plate from Audio Ease’s Altiverb, four aux tracks with the Waves H-Delay and various other plug-ins on them as well, and four more reverb auxes with the Avid Revibe II, two Avid D-Verbs and another RVerb. > White: “I use the Little Microshift in pretty much every mix, with the left-right micro pitch-shift effect that’s similar to the classic effect in the Eventide H3000 shift where you pitch one side down six cents and one side up six cents to create width. It’s a good way to get your vocals wider without them being out of phase. It thickens up vocals, and is kind of like a doubler. I do quite a lot of filtering on some of the EchoBoy delays, for example with the Waves REQ, and I am adding colour with the SoundToys Devil-Loc, which is great if you want to colour the delay so it is separate from the main vocal, and compress it with the UAD LA3A and mix that in to taste.” > (...) “The Migos vocals came in as seven audio tracks, with the Avid D-Verb on each of them. Putting a D-Verb on a track before EQ is not something I normally do, but it sounded great. So I adjusted them a bit, but otherwise left them as they were. The tracks also came in with the Aux track above, and the EQ3, with a high pass at 60Hz and notches at 430Hz and 1.41kHz and a high boost, the Waves API 2500 compressor, the RComp, the Waves Q10 EQ, following a slightly similar curve to the EQ3, the Waves De-esser, the Waves Aphex Aural Exciter, and the Avid Dyn3 expander/gate. I added the EQ3, with another high-pass filter at 144Hz, and the RComp, with a ratio of 10:1.”

Used on "A Lot", as mentioned by producer Maddmix in this March 2019 *Sound on Sound* interview and as visible in the aux "All Vox" in a downloadable photo of the "A Lot" Pro Tools session (available in [this .zip file](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/assetlibrary/i/inside-track-maddmix-protools.jpg.zip?e.NufXPkJ6AA9d08Z4nh0YmAafFdQF5n)). > "'All Vox' has the Avid Lo-Fi and Waves RCompressor. I take the Sample Size down to 15 [bits] with the Lo-Fi, which is a trick I learned from Jaycen. It works like a form of compression, and makes the vocals a bit more up-front and louder. The RCompressor is set to a ratio of 2.56 and is there to keep the vocals in place. 'All Drums' has the Acustica Diamond, in a special edition made for Dave Pensado. I felt that the drums needed a little more 100Hz, so I boosted with that plug-in. I like the way it works on the low end. I also used the Lo-Fi on here, on the same 15-bit Sample Size setting as with the vocals."

Used on Flo Rida and T-Pain's vocals for "Low", as stated by mixer Fabian Marasciullo in this *Sound on Sound* interview. > "There were lots of vocals and I chose not to bounce them down, because I prefer to process every individual bit separately. It uses more DSP on the computer, but you have more flexibility in the way you can treat sections, and hence more depth in the overall vocal sounds this way. The 'Lead' and 'Dbl' tracks are the main verse vocals by Flo Rida, he's doubling himself like many vocalists will do. Flo has a keen melodic sense when he's rapping. The A, B and C auxes separate the three different parts of the verse. The 'Whine 1, 2, 3' backing vocals only occur in the third verse. Underneath 'Aux 4' are T–Pain's backing vocals. 'Main Hk1,2,3,4' are all T–Pain doing a unison of one note. > > "As is usual for me, I began the mix with the vocals, set against the rough music bed. You can see the latter in the left pane track window in the Edit Window, where it's called 'T_Pain_5 LO'. Of course I later muted that track. After having cleaned up and EQ'd the vocals I worked on the drums, and then the synths. I then brought the vocals back in to get their levels in relation to the music and do some automation. > > "I used the Waves Renaissance Channel on the A, B and C auxes. I use the RChannel on all my vocals. It's basically a combination of the RCompressor, the REQ, and the RVox, all in one, and it's great. For this record I used a pretty cool preset called 'CloseWarmVox', and I tweaked from there. You can see that it rolls off at the bottom and it has a little touch at the top. I almost used it as a filter on this particular song to get clarity in the bottom, add some high and have a bit of compression. I also used it on T–Pain's vocals.

F1y Syn shared his project files with Logic Pro X at Splice, In the list of plugins, we can see that F1y Syn uses Waves Renaissance Compressor Plugin

Used for Jones' vocals on Gorillaz's "Charger", as mentioned by recording engineer Stephen Sedgwick in this July 2017 *Sound on Sound* interview about the production of *Humanz*. > “Grace Jones’s vocal tracks were sent through the Roland RE201 Space Echo. I also had hardware compression on her, and then printed her vocals back in Pro Tools and added a Waves Renaissance Compressor just doing a bit of level control. Again, I just had fun with the Space Echo, and did loads of different passes. It’s more fun to use your hands like that, and you come up with stuff you would not do with a plug-in. All of a sudden the delay will hit a dirty bit of tape and you get a little glitch in there that repeats. These are the little bits of magic that you can’t get from the software. I presented what I had done to the guys and they edited it. You can still see this in the muted parts where I had done things they did not use. Tracks 75-77 are a reverse reverb on some of Grace’s vocals, leading into some words. I did these in Pro Tools. I would have taken her first word, printed it with a long reverb on it, probably just from the [Avid] D-verb, reversed it, and then put a UAD Dimension D on it to make it stereo.”