Question 1

How do I get drums to cut through a dense metal mix?

Accepted Answer

I use parallel distortion on the close mics—kick, snare, and toms—then blend it in under the clean drums. The distorted bus sounds kinda ugly solo’d, but it’s perfect once it’s tucked in. I filter lows so it doesn’t overwhelm the mix, and I avoid pushing drive so far that I lose transient information.

Question 2

How can I add vocal presence without making vocals harsh?

Accepted Answer

My go-to is parallel distortion on vocals with CrushStation, focused on adding upper harmonics instead of aggressive grit. I bring the send up slowly until the presence is obvious, then I back off a touch so it doesn’t feel like the vocal is sitting outside the mix. If sibilance jumps out, I’ll slap a de-esser right after the distortion.

Question 3

What do I do if the drum room mics sound bad or unusable?

Accepted Answer

If the room mics are trash (super common with home studio drums), I’ll fake the room by routing overheads into a room reverb like Eventide Tverb. I can choose close/mid/far “mic” perspectives and blend what actually works. In the video I mostly live on the mid room and mute the close/far when they don’t fit.

Question 4

How do I fix ringy toms or snare resonances without killing punch?

Accepted Answer

SplitEQ is the cheat code because I can EQ tonal content separately from transient content. That means I can cut the ugly resonances in the low-mids while keeping the impact and snap intact. It saves me from stacking a transient shaper plus a regular EQ and still losing the feel.

Question 5

How do I stop layered guitar tones from sounding hollow or phasey?

Accepted Answer

When I layer tones from the same DI (multiple amps/cabs), phase is the #1 problem. I use Precision Time Align and line everything up so it’s actually in phase. A trick I use is flipping phase and moving samples until it almost cancels, then flipping back—suddenly the low end and punch come back.

Question 6

How do I make a single mono lead vocal sound wide?

Accepted Answer

I’ll send the lead to an aux with the Eventide H910 and keep it subtle. It doubles the vocal by pitch shifting up/down and time shifting forward/back, which creates the illusion of width. Like everything else here: start at zero, then creep it up to taste.

Question 7

How do I keep delays and reverbs from drowning my lead vocal?

Accepted Answer

I sidechain-compress the vocal FX returns with Omnipressor so the effects duck when the lead vocal hits. That way I keep the immersive vibe, but the lead still stays defined and upfront. In the session I’m usually seeing a few dB of gain reduction (around 4–6 dB depending on what’s feeding the FX).

Question 8

How can I make vocal delays feel smoother and less pokey?

Accepted Answer

If the delays have too much attack even after EQ, I’ll put Blackhole after the delay. It adds lush space and width and takes the edge off the transienty “tick” of the repeats. When I bypass it, the delays feel way more distracting in the chorus.

How Eventide Anthology plugins can save your mix!

🛍️ Products Mentioned (18)

Apollo Twin X DUO Heritage:

RME MADIface USB:

Focusrite Scarlett 4th Gen:

Sennheiser HD-650:

Neumann NDH-30:

Neumann KH 120 II DSP:

Genelec 8040B:

IsoAcoustics:

M-Audio Keystation 61 MK3:

Mogami Gold Studio XLR Cable:

Furman PL-8C:

Softube Console 1:

Primacoustic London 10 Room Kit:

NEUMANN BCM-104 MICROPHONE

SONY ZV-E10

ULANZI Camera Cooling Fan

Tripod

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