Billy Ray Cyrus

Billy Ray Cyrus is seen playing this guitar in the music video "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X, starting at 3:32.

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Billy can be seen using the SM7B throughout this performance.

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Bolooki explains his vocal production process, beginning with the microphone. "My favourite microphone is the Telefunken ELA M 251. I don't particularly love using vintage microphones, because I spend a lot of time with the pencil tool having to draw out the anomalies that they put in. If you super zoom in you will hear these weird electrical clicks and pops. However, The Record Plant did not have a 251, so we used one side of an AKG C24, which is stereo, going into a Neve 1073 [preamp and EQ] and then the Tube-Tech CL-1B [compressor]. I engage the 1073 EQ to cut out rumble below 80Hz. For the most part while recording, I ride the 1073 output knob. I record at pretty conservative levels, and will sit there and will manually adjust the level. It helps to get all the takes in line with each other from the get-go. It means I tell people they can't walk by my area in case I need to grab the knob real fast! I record the vocals already in mind with how I comp them. I'll have one vocal track set up in Pro Tools, and literally every single take will go through that. I basically collect all the material via that one track, and then I comp a lead that is just one long WAV file, without doing any doubles or backgrounds. If there are overlapping parts, I might have to put them onto different tracks. But for the most part my first goal is to get one long lead vocal comp.

"I comp with only a click track, and sometimes I'll put a low-pass filter on the beat, playing at very low volume, so you only hear the bass in the background. I'll have very little or no Auto‑Tune on the vocals, because it's easier to comp without Auto‑Tune, and zero effects. The vocal will be entirely dry, apart from that I'll add a ton of compression, to bring up all the room and microphone noises. When you comp with the high end only coming from the vocals, you select takes not only on performance, but also on tone, particularly if they're bright. The brighter ones tend to have the best emotion, too. They may not be in time or in tune, but those things are fixable. I'll also do a lot of clip gaining when comping. When you comp in this way, by the time you're done, it's perfect. If you make the vocal sound good with just a click track, you know you have nailed it. Very little EQ is necessary, and then all you have to do is add some tasteful effects, and your vocal rides, as well as tuning and timing. But you don't have to cover up any of what you did."

Used sparsely for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

"I comp with only a click track, and sometimes I'll put a low-pass filter on the beat, playing at very low volume, so you only hear the bass in the background. I'll have very little or no Auto‑Tune on the vocals, because it's easier to comp without Auto‑Tune, and zero effects. The vocal will be entirely dry, apart from that I'll add a ton of compression, to bring up all the room and microphone noises. When you comp with the high end only coming from the vocals, you select takes not only on performance, but also on tone, particularly if they're bright. The brighter ones tend to have the best emotion, too. They may not be in time or in tune, but those things are fixable. I'll also do a lot of clip gaining when comping. When you comp in this way, by the time you're done, it's perfect. If you make the vocal sound good with just a click track, you know you have nailed it. Very little EQ is necessary, and then all you have to do is add some tasteful effects, and your vocal rides, as well as tuning and timing. But you don't have to cover up any of what you did."

(...) "Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it." (...) Bolooki explains that he makes frequent use of Celemony's Melodyne as well as Antares' Auto‑Tune. "I usually use both. My process depends on the song. For this song, I actually didn't use Auto‑Tune on Billy's verse at all. I am really proud of how hard he worked in the booth and how little tuning was needed. The Auto‑Tunes I used on some of his chorus tracks are extremely subtle and purposely on slow, automated retune speeds along with automated bypasses so they only kick in exactly when needed with the least amount of correction possible. There was really no stone left unturned when it came to his comps. I spent a ridiculous amount of time tediously combing through all of his takes down to the syllable, so little to no Auto‑Tune was necessary in the end.

"I used Melodyne to keep the timing of his doubled parts together, since they were all recorded separately. I always have Melodyne as the first insert, then basic EQ, de-essing, compression, and then Auto‑Tune if needed. I don't use the stand-alone version of Melodyne anymore, because I like to have Melodyne and Auto‑Tune running into each other at the same time. When I have Auto‑Tune after Melodyne, I tend to not over-tune things, because for me Melodyne is basically just a timing tool. Pitch-wise you have more flexibility with Melodyne than Auto‑Tune, but each has their own strengths. Also, Melodyne purposely does not make things perfect, which I like. When you stack vocals and use Melodyne for adjustments, even corrected vocals will stay somewhat naturally out of tune with each other. So instead I focus mostly on timing in Melodyne, and keep Auto‑Tune on after it, set to a slow retune speed, and I use the Flex-Tune knob quite a bit to allow a lot of humanising."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview. The settings were taken straight from Lil Nas X's vocal chain, which can be found here.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Ray's left-handed model is featured in this April 30, 2019 blog post from the official ESP Guitars website. It recaps the guitar's use for the live debut of "Old Town Road (Remix)" at the Stagecoach Festival.

Apparently on the night of Sunday April 28, the biggest moment of the festival happened after the official headliners were on their way home. DJ Diplo was performing for the event's official after-party when he pulled rapper Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus onstage to perform the hugest pop song on the planet right now. "Old Town Road". Love it or hate it (and everyone seems to do one or the other), "Old Town Road" has been atop the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for three consecutive weeks, and the crowd went berserk to see its live debut.

Why are you reading about this on the ESP site? Because Billy Ray Cyrus has been a proud player of the LTD TL-6 Thinline guitar for a number of years, and that's what he was using to perform "Old Town Road" on Sunday night. The TL-6 is an excellent choice for anyone who loves the smooth and fast feel of an electric guitar with the great tone of an acoustic. Available in a variety of finishes (and a left-handed version, which is what the southpaw Bill Ray plays), the TL-6 is a high-quality instrument that includes top-tier components like a Graphtech NuBone-XB nut and saddle, as well as a Fishman SONICORE pickup and TL-3 preamp with onboard tuner.

Visible in this April 12, 2008 photo of Cyrus and this January 19, 2009 photo from the Kids Inaugural: We Are the Future concert.

In the music video for real gone, he is seen with a black es335 lefty model

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Bolooki explains his vocal production process, beginning with the microphone. "My favourite microphone is the Telefunken ELA M 251. I don't particularly love using vintage microphones, because I spend a lot of time with the pencil tool having to draw out the anomalies that they put in. If you super zoom in you will hear these weird electrical clicks and pops. However, The Record Plant did not have a 251, so we used one side of an AKG C24, which is stereo, going into a Neve 1073 [preamp and EQ] and then the Tube-Tech CL-1B [compressor]. I engage the 1073 EQ to cut out rumble below 80Hz. For the most part while recording, I ride the 1073 output knob. I record at pretty conservative levels, and will sit there and will manually adjust the level. It helps to get all the takes in line with each other from the get-go. It means I tell people they can't walk by my area in case I need to grab the knob real fast! I record the vocals already in mind with how I comp them. I'll have one vocal track set up in Pro Tools, and literally every single take will go through that. I basically collect all the material via that one track, and then I comp a lead that is just one long WAV file, without doing any doubles or backgrounds. If there are overlapping parts, I might have to put them onto different tracks. But for the most part my first goal is to get one long lead vocal comp.

"I comp with only a click track, and sometimes I'll put a low-pass filter on the beat, playing at very low volume, so you only hear the bass in the background. I'll have very little or no Auto‑Tune on the vocals, because it's easier to comp without Auto‑Tune, and zero effects. The vocal will be entirely dry, apart from that I'll add a ton of compression, to bring up all the room and microphone noises. When you comp with the high end only coming from the vocals, you select takes not only on performance, but also on tone, particularly if they're bright. The brighter ones tend to have the best emotion, too. They may not be in time or in tune, but those things are fixable. I'll also do a lot of clip gaining when comping. When you comp in this way, by the time you're done, it's perfect. If you make the vocal sound good with just a click track, you know you have nailed it. Very little EQ is necessary, and then all you have to do is add some tasteful effects, and your vocal rides, as well as tuning and timing. But you don't have to cover up any of what you did."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Bolooki explains his vocal production process, beginning with the microphone. "My favourite microphone is the Telefunken ELA M 251. I don't particularly love using vintage microphones, because I spend a lot of time with the pencil tool having to draw out the anomalies that they put in. If you super zoom in you will hear these weird electrical clicks and pops. However, The Record Plant did not have a 251, so we used one side of an AKG C24, which is stereo, going into a Neve 1073 [preamp and EQ] and then the Tube-Tech CL-1B [compressor]. I engage the 1073 EQ to cut out rumble below 80Hz. For the most part while recording, I ride the 1073 output knob. I record at pretty conservative levels, and will sit there and will manually adjust the level. It helps to get all the takes in line with each other from the get-go. It means I tell people they can't walk by my area in case I need to grab the knob real fast! I record the vocals already in mind with how I comp them. I'll have one vocal track set up in Pro Tools, and literally every single take will go through that. I basically collect all the material via that one track, and then I comp a lead that is just one long WAV file, without doing any doubles or backgrounds. If there are overlapping parts, I might have to put them onto different tracks. But for the most part my first goal is to get one long lead vocal comp.

"I comp with only a click track, and sometimes I'll put a low-pass filter on the beat, playing at very low volume, so you only hear the bass in the background. I'll have very little or no Auto‑Tune on the vocals, because it's easier to comp without Auto‑Tune, and zero effects. The vocal will be entirely dry, apart from that I'll add a ton of compression, to bring up all the room and microphone noises. When you comp with the high end only coming from the vocals, you select takes not only on performance, but also on tone, particularly if they're bright. The brighter ones tend to have the best emotion, too. They may not be in time or in tune, but those things are fixable. I'll also do a lot of clip gaining when comping. When you comp in this way, by the time you're done, it's perfect. If you make the vocal sound good with just a click track, you know you have nailed it. Very little EQ is necessary, and then all you have to do is add some tasteful effects, and your vocal rides, as well as tuning and timing. But you don't have to cover up any of what you did."

Used sparsely for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", notably for the outro whistle, as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview. An image of Lil Nas X's vocal chain specifies EFX+.

"I comp with only a click track, and sometimes I'll put a low-pass filter on the beat, playing at very low volume, so you only hear the bass in the background. I'll have very little or no Auto‑Tune on the vocals, because it's easier to comp without Auto‑Tune, and zero effects. The vocal will be entirely dry, apart from that I'll add a ton of compression, to bring up all the room and microphone noises. When you comp with the high end only coming from the vocals, you select takes not only on performance, but also on tone, particularly if they're bright. The brighter ones tend to have the best emotion, too. They may not be in time or in tune, but those things are fixable. I'll also do a lot of clip gaining when comping. When you comp in this way, by the time you're done, it's perfect. If you make the vocal sound good with just a click track, you know you have nailed it. Very little EQ is necessary, and then all you have to do is add some tasteful effects, and your vocal rides, as well as tuning and timing. But you don't have to cover up any of what you did."

(...) Bolooki explains that he makes frequent use of Celemony's Melodyne as well as Antares' Auto‑Tune. "I usually use both. My process depends on the song. For this song, I actually didn't use Auto‑Tune on Billy's verse at all. I am really proud of how hard he worked in the booth and how little tuning was needed. The Auto‑Tunes I used on some of his chorus tracks are extremely subtle and purposely on slow, automated retune speeds along with automated bypasses so they only kick in exactly when needed with the least amount of correction possible. There was really no stone left unturned when it came to his comps. I spent a ridiculous amount of time tediously combing through all of his takes down to the syllable, so little to no Auto‑Tune was necessary in the end.

"I used Melodyne to keep the timing of his doubled parts together, since they were all recorded separately. I always have Melodyne as the first insert, then basic EQ, de-essing, compression, and then Auto‑Tune if needed. I don't use the stand-alone version of Melodyne anymore, because I like to have Melodyne and Auto‑Tune running into each other at the same time. When I have Auto‑Tune after Melodyne, I tend to not over-tune things, because for me Melodyne is basically just a timing tool. Pitch-wise you have more flexibility with Melodyne than Auto‑Tune, but each has their own strengths. Also, Melodyne purposely does not make things perfect, which I like. When you stack vocals and use Melodyne for adjustments, even corrected vocals will stay somewhat naturally out of tune with each other. So instead I focus mostly on timing in Melodyne, and keep Auto‑Tune on after it, set to a slow retune speed, and I use the Flex-Tune knob quite a bit to allow a lot of humanising."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview. An image of the settings can be found here.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview. An image of the settings can be found here.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview. An image of the settings can be found here.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as is visible in this photo of the settings from this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview with mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki.

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Effect Rack (prior to its standalone release) was used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."