I’ve created some presets of the effects I usually use on vocal in Ardour, distributing them here as screenshots. Presets aren’t something that should be treated as perfect settings for your needs but could  be a place to start. As the saturation is highly dependent on the signal level of your tracks, adjustment of treshold for compressor and blend/dry/wet for reverb/delay effects is the first move to be carried out.

To get a reference to the processed examples, first take a look at  the raw unedited vocal track.

SC4 mono: Vocals with presence
I wouldn’t have thought of using this high ratio of compression on a vocal track. But, by letting the attack off a bit, allowing the early amplitude peak to pass trough uncompressed it actually keeps some of the natural sound.

Try out:
For more natural sound:

• Increase attack time
• Decrease ratio

For more presence:

• Decrease attack time
• Lower treshold

SC4 mono: Light compression
These settings gives more dynamic sounding vocals compared to the earlier preset. I’m adjusting the treshold only to touch the loudest parts of the track, leaving the main part unaffected.

Try out:
For more uniform compression:

• Increase release time

For more presence:

• Lower treshold

Delayorama: Short Vocal Delay
The delay effect can be used as a trick to add some fatness to the vocals. The delay range should be set to somewhere between 0,08 – 0,15 (s) and the saturation of the effect should barely be hearable in the mix.

delayorama.ogg

Reverb
Here’s a collection of reverb presets that I find suitable on vocals.

C* JVRev: Short reverb

C* JVRev: Long reverb

longreverb.ogg

GVerb: Long tail

longtail.ogg

Preparations: The tempo is something you should already have set before you came to the editing part of your recording. If you’re importing loops you can use BPMdetect to find it and with the metronome adjust the project tempo.

Grid

With the grid you can define the points for your editing and the resolution can be set with beats and bars for fast and accurate editing. You can see it represented by the vertical lines in the project window. With the signature 4/4 we get four editing points within one bar if the grid is set to beats. To get more accuracy, adjusting the grid to beats/4 gives us 4 editing points within a beat and 16 within a bar. The most accurate we can get is by choosing beat/32 witch gives us 32 predefined editing points within one beat.

If that just isn’t good enough for your needs then you can turn the grid off to find an absolute point.

Split

To split a track hover the mouse pointer over the area where you want the separation to occur. Then press the key “s”. When the track is split we get two parts, which in Ardour are called regions. You’ll see they individually get different names.

Trim

At the bottom of a region there is a coloured area. By hovering it you’ll discover a double arrow. Dragging it along the base line will let you adjust the size of the region.

Fades

There are fade boxes in the top corners of a region if you hover it. They enables you to handle fade in/outs.

If you have regions overlapping each other the default Ardour configuration will apply a crossfade between them to smoothen the transmission. However this functionality can be disabled in the options menu, crossfades → active.

Layers

If your regions are overlapping and the crossfade functionality is switched off, only the top layer will be played  throughout the overlapping section. To control the playback the regions can be brought to the top or background layer under the region menu.

Gain

The fast way of adjusting the volume of a region is by accessing the region menu where you find the function boost and cut gain. This will change the gain of the whole region.

If you want a more dynamic change there is the possibility to automate the volume change. If you right-click the region and look under it’s individual name, you can make the volume line visible by choosing “envelope visible”. Draw the desired gain curve with the drawing tool and make the automation active or inactive by turning it on and off with the function “envelope active”.

This is my first “real song” fully recorder with linux software.

Key software has been:
Ardour
Rosegarden
Hydrogen
ZynAddSubFx Software Synthesizer
JAMin
And my dist is Ubuntu Studio

Find out more about the release