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Hi everyone,

I’m interested in how audio engineers handle latency when using resonance control plugins on lead vocals.

I mix rap and melodic vocals, and I like using tools like Soothe 2 near the end of the vocal chain to reduce harsh resonances and make the vocal sound cleaner and smoother. The thing is, with lead vocals, even a small amount of delay can make the vocal feel slightly behind the beat, which is obviously not ideal.

I know some latency is normal with certain types of processing, but I’m curious how people deal with it in a real vocal mixing workflow.

I also know Soothe 3 has a low latency mode, but from what I understood, latency can still increase depending on the settings, so I’m not sure if it is always reliable for timing-critical lead vocals.

I was also considering Waves Silk Vocal Live, since it is made for lower latency, but even that still seems to have some latency, so I’m curious whether people actually use it for this purpose.

I’m mainly interested in the practical workflow engineers use for resonance control while making sure plugin latency does not make the lead vocal feel slightly behind the beat.

Hi, I’m trying to learn how to use reverb properly on vocals, mainly melodic rap vocals.

I use Valhalla VintageVerb and sometimes it sounds good, but a lot of the time I feel like I can’t make it sit correctly in the mix. Either the vocal becomes too washed out, too far away, or the reverb just sounds disconnected from the vocal.

I know people often EQ the reverb, adjust pre-delay, decay time, maybe compress or duck it, but I’d really like to see a practical example of how people actually set this up for modern melodic rap/trap vocals.

Most tutorials I found were either very basic or more for pop/cinematic vocals, not really modern melodic rap.

Does anyone have any good videos, tutorials, or mixing breakdowns where this is explained well?

Also, does it actually make sense to calculate pre-delay from BPM for melodic rap vocals, or do most of you just set it by ear?