In this free video tutorial Production Expert team member Julian Rodgers uses a combination of Sonnox Oxford plug-ins to add polish to a vocal.

The vocal has a little too much thickness, a possible solution might be to use the Sonnox Dynamic EQ, in this case I decided that a static EQ was fine and the Sonnox Oxford EQ using the Type 3 Neve-ish Q/Gain dependency was just the right with a little cut in the lower midrange. A little HF boost using a bell filter at around 6K added the necessary crispness. A touch of compression to level using Sonnox Oxford Dynamics completes the gain based processing.

Oxford Reverb

The dry vocal needed some space around it and when looking for a Hall reverb I’d usually favour a Lexicon Random Hall as as well as sounding great, I really like the the effect the modulation effect introduced by the Spin and Wander parameters.

One of the biggest strengths of the Sonnox Oxford Reverb is that it is very flexible algorithmic reverb. Because it is so flexible it doesn’t have a particular sound associated with it and it is this flexibility and lack of a perceived personality, which means that when looking for a character reverb, I’ve often looked towards more obvious “one trick” plug-ins. Everyone should check out the Oxford Reverb as it offers enough control to create the reverb sound you’re looking for, whether it is a plate, a room, a hall, whatever.

Hear the effect of some of the less well known parameters in the tail section of the Oxford Reverb has in this example.

All of the Sonnox Plug-ins have a reputation for quality and transparency. To some “transparent” means characterless but I’d argue that this is unnecessarily negative. Actually these plug-ins offer control which leaves the character the sound already has intact.