De-Nasalizer plug-in?

Recording, Mixing and Producing
#1

I’m recording some original music by a church worship band. The lead singer has a particularly nasal voice. Does anyone have a magic plug-in or technique to make a vocal less nasally?

It’s not so bad when he sings softly and lower pitches, but becomes more pronounced as he sings harder and higher. I’ve a attach a sample (the first is a rough mix, the 2nd is the raw vocal)

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

#2

I’d try good ol’ EQ as a first step - somewhere between 500 and 700hz maybe.

#3

I haven’t heard the sample yet, but the plugin you’re looking for is an EQ :wink:

Do a high Q sweep until you find where it is it’s worst and pull that frequency range back until you’re happy with it. You’ll likely find that is somewhere in the 1-2K ballpark. Some will probably also suggest boosting a bit of lows and also highs in addition. I would only do that if necessary.

In addition, mixing in a bit of an overdrive plugin may work to add a bit of excitement in the highs also.

#4

good luck getting rid of that with EQ. Actually, good luck getting rid of that at all. It does get very nasally. The only thing I can think of that will possibly be able to tame this is a formant shifter, or maybe something like antares AVOX, although I haven’t had much luck getting AVOX to sound natural, but it’s been many years since I’ve tried.

edit: I guess it’s called Throat EVO

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#5

Thanks, I’d been looking in the wrong place. I’d been playing with deep notches at much higher frequencies (5-6K). A notch around 2K does seem more effective. But I also added a -3db shelf at about 5k to reduce some of the scratchy harmonics.

The overdrive suggestion was a good one. I inserted a DATube plug. I expected it to exaggerate the scratchiness, but it seems to smooth it out.

The effect overall is a bit muffled, but sounds much better to my ear. Thanks!

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#6

Well, I know this is how the guy sings, and I can’t really fix it. I was just hoping to mitigate it a little.

Haven’t tried a formant shifter yet. I think there’s one built into Cubase’s Pitch Correct plugin (which I’ll probably be playing with anyway, to deal with the singer’s pitch errors). I’ve heard of Throat EVO, but don’t know much about it. Probably won’t spend the money unless I get reliable feedback from someone that it works miracles.

Thanks Boz

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#7

This seems like it might do something like you need:

http://www.waves.com/plugins/manny-marroquin-triple-d#manny-marroquin-triple-d-tutorial

#8

I have some SERIOUS sinus issues and struggle with this daily. As a singer it is hit and miss. There are many techniques but the easiest is to take one of 2 options.

  1. Don’t care willy Nelson and Neil Young blazed the “nasal trail” :wink:
  2. Have the singer plug their nose and sing. If you open the back of your throat you can you can get rid of most nasalities even with your nose plugged.
#9

I have this problem with my voice. I have tried changing the formant slightly on the offending words. I was fairly happy with the result. But I e thought of trying to shift the formant on just those nasal frequencies. Not sure if that would be any better. Would there be any easy way of doing this?

Btw I don’t mind this guys voice.