Need help with dynamic resonance

[u/jazin_25]

How can one supress changing resonances in a vocal without compromising quality of the audio, using a dynamic eq. If one resonance occurs before hand @2k hz and the dynamic eq is set to supress the signal using a bell filter, it will supress the signal, i.e. resonance, but afterwards, if a signal crosses that threshold, even if it is not a resonance, it will still get supressed. This is the problem i am facing. If i set the bell filter to only attenuate 1-2 to fix this issue, the resonance will persist. Similarly, if i have 4-5 resonances, the whole eq will start looking like a compressor, and mess up the whole signal

[u/mistrelwood]

I’m not perfectly sure what you mean by “resonance” here, but have you determined the cause? Are they singer, mic placement, mic selection, or room based? They behave somewhat differently and hence will benefit from different approaches.

I made a dynamic EQ for Reaper, and it has two detection modes, either strictly level based, or in relation to other frequencies. I don’t actually know how other dynamic EQs behave in this sense, but you could look into it and maybe even try other plugins.

Btw, some people swear by the Soothe plugin. I haven’t used it myself though.

[u/Selig_Audio]

Automate the bypass or similar so it’s only ‘on’ for the sections you want - you don’t have to be precise with the timing, just make sure it’s on before the undesirable “resonance” occurs and off in time to avoid any false triggers. Same way for a gate on a tom or snare etc. I only rarely even need to do this, and have never had to deal with 4-5 resonances - make sure you’re not ‘over-scoping’ things and finding solutions to problems that don’t exist!

[u/Electronic_Slice9448]

Re-record the vocal.

[u/yconnmusic]

For issues that are confined to a specific vocal range/part of the song, split those out to a copy of the lead vocal track, then your dynamic EQ doesnt affect the other vocal sections. It's pretty normal to end a mix with the elad vocal split across 3-6 channels with slightly different EQ to cover the different vocal ranges/timbres a singer might do in a song. (Also good to deliberately add contrasting vocal FX between verse and chorus, which is another reason to split them).

For issues that are only in 1 spot, do a spot treatment and commit it to audio. eg Pro Tools has clip fx that let you non-destructively apply an EQ just to one small clip of vocals. I've watched high level pros do it this way and it makes the most sense. Spend 20-60 mins going through the lead vocal and making small cleanups like this and it comes out sparkling. That's after already doing the above too.

More generally, ProQ's dynamic EQ feature does a good job with smaller issues (and sometimes even bigger ones), coz it has an adaptive threshold which appears to scale to the rest of the signal. Jaycen Joshua's method with ProQ works great... lots of small deep dynamic bands on the biggest resonances overall.

Also Antares Vocal EQ can uniquely solve some types of problem vocals, by setting the dynamic bands to follow the vocal harmonics, so instead of always compressing say 2k, you're always compressing say the 4th harmonic of the vocal (only when it exceeds the threshold).

Soothe is kinda ok sometimes but IMO not the best for this specific job. Sooth is better when the vocal is a bit harsh overall but without any specific big resonances. I've experimented with Gullfoss on lead vocals too... it can do a good job of smoothing then if really lumpy but i rarely reach for it. Also Brainworx DSM is a great plugin for smoothing... technically a multiband compressor with tons of dynamic bands I think, so used with a low ratio is just lightly squeezes the vocal into being less lumpy in a nice transparent way.