Vocal Plugins For Logic Pro X

[Channing Rupnick]

Here are my six best free vocal plugins for your effects chain in 2022. Watch the video above to see them in action, and learn more and download them via the links below. You can also download this template to use my exact channel strip in Logic Pro.

There are a few reverbs from TAL that are available for free, but TAL Reverb 2 has a particularly simple-to-use interface and a powerful sound. You can control the room size / reverb time and EQ the effect right within the plugin with high, mid, and low EQ controls. It also has a knob for pre-delay, which is an excellent tool when mixing vocals for creating a strong reverb ambience without overpowering the voice.

Last but not least, PanCake is a tried-and-true panning plugin that creates movement from left to right in your mix and works great on vocal chops and backing vocals. Sync the panning to the BPM of your song, or draw in your own modulation curves.

There you have it! What were your favorite free vocal plugins featured in the video? Are there any other free plugins that you love using in your vocal chain that we missed? Let us know in the comments section of the video, and subscribe to the Splice YouTube channel for more tips, tools, and insights.

"Warm" vocals start with the singer, of course (assuming they project a 'warm' sound or at least one that lends itself to sounding warm in the track). OK, that aside, warmth starts with your choice of mic. Use the wrong mic and sometimes no amount of EQ or other processing will provide a satisfactory result.

Assuming you've selected an appropriate mic, the next step in the signal chain is your mic pre, and some mic pre's will indeed add a warm quality to the sound. Tube mics generally add "warmth" but that doesn't mean that solid state ones don't. What kind of mic pre(s) do you have access to?

Next, compression, reverb, delays (as you mentioned in your post). These have nothing to do with adding warmth. Compression reduces dynamic range; it can help an intimate vocal sound more "in your face", or make a loud singer's vocal sound more "dense" and sit better in a track. But they're generally not used to provide "warmth". And reverbs and delays add ambience.

If you want to do this right, forget about plugins entirely for now. I'd like to suggest that you start with an appropriate mic and mic pre that, without any plugins whatsoever give you approximately the sound you're looking for. Then, after the recording, if the vocalist's sound needs "help", look to EQ first to achieve the sound you're after.

You might want to try a tape saturation plugin to give the vocals a little hair. (Usually they also do a little EQ-type work, as well.) I wouldn't say you'll necessarily get "warmth" from it, but it can liven up sterile-sounding tracks.

If you just want to try something free--that can definitely get really hairy, and I think sounds pretty good on vocals--take a look at Massey's TapeHead. He gave up on developing a real AU, so released this one for free. If you really love it, you might consider "buying" the ProTools version to support him.

When most people say warm, what they really mean is rich in harmonics and (to some extent) harmonic distortion. A little lo-mid boost, Massey Tape Head, a little chorus and some 'opto' styled compression (I'm sure there are presets) will probably all help.

The Auto-Tune effect is probably the biggest decider when it comes to vocal processing. This is the slightly synthetic and quantised vocal sound that has been a chart staple in many dance and rap genres since Cher made the effect famous in the song Believe in 1998. As well-trodden and arguably worn out this effect is, you can't deny its continued popularity, and those predicting its demise have been many and all mistaken over the last couple of decades. With that in mind, then, an 'Auto-Tune' like plugin is a good tool to have in your armoury and at least four of our options will deliver it, from the simple AlterBoy right up to the one that started it all, Auto-Tune Pro.

If singing is important to your songs and recordings then there are plenty of software plugins available to assist your recording and editing endeavours. The best vocal plugins are many and varied and can be used to help make great vocal recordings, or turn bad takes into recordings that can be used in any mix.

Vocal processing plugins include general mix plugins for adding EQ solidity and sparkle to male or female vocals, or classic, colourful compression for a vintage vibe. For vocalists with tuning issues or for that contemporary 'Auto-tune' effect, there are automatic tuning plugins to help your vocalist hit the right notes or recreate the classic Cher-like jumping effect. Finally there are more esoteric and bespoke vocal processors that focus on specific tasks like de-essing or double-tracking.

If you have tuning issues or want that 'Auto-tune' effect then there are a couple of clear contenders, the most obvious being the daddy of them all, Auto-Tune Pro. It's managed to stay ahead of the rest by heaping in some wonderful and easy to implement features, over and above that classic vocal effect, and has almost become the 'Hoover' of plugins along the way. That said, if you want the quick, down and dirty version then Soundtoys' Little AlterBoy impresses us with its simplistic but beautiful approach to not only Auto-Tune style effects, but brilliant male to female and female to male formant editing and more.

Advanced view has a few extras like Create Vibrato, ideal for adding a bit of wobble via an LFO, plus options to set minor and major modes, edit across multiple octaves, and MIDI input editing features.

Auto-Tune Pro is the most powerful, usable incarnation of this standard yet, and easily maintains the software's position as one of the best retuning solutions available, and may well prove to be the ultimate pitch-manipulating toolbox.

Recent additions include a Melodic algorithm that allows editing of noise-based sibilants to be carried out separately from pitch-based parts. Vocal pitch editing is also now incredibly natural due to features like a Levelling Macro that balances quiet and loud elements, and even the tiniest of pitch deviations can be tweaked.

Double-clicking the spectral display creates a new EQ band, with its adjustable parameters appearing so you can easily tweak frequency, gain, EQ, plus the band's filter shape and slope. And of course there's a good variety of shapes to quickly adjust a signal's tonal balance.

Soothe is an automatic dynamic frequency editor, and designed to remove harshness from instrumental and vocal recordings. It uses spectral processing to detect unpleasant resonances, and dynamically attenuates them via numerous level-sensitive notch filters. You might think this sounds like an EQ, but the band nodes control the reduction sensitivity dynamically within their specific frequency ranges. If you raise a node on screen, it will notch out the resonances within that band more profoundly as the volume increases.

Soothe makes this a beautifully realised process and the plugin has been a big hit with producers around the world. The latest version 2 reduces CPU load and latency and has much faster rendering, plus a wider frequency range that covers the lower end down to 20Hz. It also comes with many more EQ options than the debut version.

VocAlign is a long-established market-leading tool that adjusts the timing of an audio file (Dub) so it matches that of a source (Guide). It works well with any audio and is used for many music and post-production tasks. However it is particularly in demand for vocals and speech, where accurate pitch and timing alignment can be crucial. VocAlign Ultra sits between the affordable but basic VocAlign Project and Synchro Arts' flagship processor, Revoice Pro 4.

If there's one plugin that comes up more often than any other in our producer interviews as an all-time favourite, it's Soundtoys' Little AlterBoy. This simple but cheap plugin only boasts a few controls but can deliver wide-ranging results on any audio, but is specifically aimed at vocals for both pitch and format editing.

The Formant option can, again very naturally, sweep a male vocal into a female, or vice versa. It's pretty incredible to hear it in operation because one of AlterBoy's main attractions is the fact that it does it with no nonsense, one dial with all the science bits hidden away. It just gets on with it, with brilliant results.

The central Modes are where things get even more interesting. After a simple Transpose option, you get Quantize, where notes are forced to the nearest semi-tone for that Auto-Tune like effect that has seemingly been a mainstay in so many genres for so many years. It works well and incredibly simply, although you'll probably get more finesse and tweakability out of the real-deal reviewed above. However, for no nonsense results, this is great. Finally here you also get Robot Mode, where the pitch is frozen to one note, no matter what the original input is singing. This pitch, and indeed the formant, can still be changed with the left hand dials.

There are two knobs, Pitch and Formant, controlling the central tone of the human vocal and the resonant frequencies that shape the timbre of the vocal. A Flatten button allows you to force the input to snap to a predetermined note, a speedy tool for building up augmented choruses and harmonies.

Experiment with the modulation and automation options, and vast creative scope presents itself. Automation can be a superb way of introducing vocal effects (such as sudden pitch drops) that activate based on the volume of the input signal, so the intensity of your performance can be the triggering factor.

When it comes to buying a plugin specifically for vocals, you need to decide what your needs are from the many issues vocalists have. It might well be that a simple EQ is all you require, just to bolster certain frequencies to give your vocal more body, or remove mid and high frequencies to reduce overall harshness.

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