If vocals feature heavily in your music, there are plenty of powerful plugins available to speed up your mixing workflow, enhance your recordings and help you to clear various commonly encountered production hurdles. Here are seven of the best…

iZotope Nectar 3

iZotope’s acclaimed all-in-one vocal processing suite takes the same modular approach as the company’s Neutron and Ozone mixing and mastering plugins, enabling 12 individual modules to be arranged in any order in pursuit of your perfect chain. Including two 24-band EQs (with Dynamic and Follow modes, the second tracking harmonics for harshness reduction), two compressors, a de-esser and a gate, as well as reverb, delay, distortion, modulation (chorus, flanging, phasing) effects, and more, it’s a veritable Swiss army knife for vocal production. And with the nifty Vocal Assistant feature automatically setting up a starting-point preset for you, based on analysis of the input signal, and the Unmask mode linking with other iZotope plugins or the included Relay to EQ other sounds away from the vocal, it’s a real time-saver, too.

Functionally comprehensive, easy to get to grips with and sounding splendid, Nectar 3 is a magic wand for the human voice.

Sonnox VoxDoubler

Comprising two separate plugins – Thicken and Widen – VoxDoubler is all about the creation of realistic double and triple tracks from a single vocal source. With Thicken, a stereo double is conjured, while Widen generates two mono doubles, positioned on either side of the main vocal. The width/spread of the added voices is adjustable, and you can dial in modulation of pitch and timing to make the generated double or triple tracks sound distinct from the source vocal, adjust their presence in the mix with the Depth knob, and tweak the high frequencies with the Tone control.

A brilliantly straightforward and sonically impressive package at a great price, VoxDoubler delivers utterly convincing vocal double/triple tracks that no one would be able to identify as artificially generated.

Antares Auto-Tune Pro X

The most famous and loved/hated of all vocal processors, Auto-Tune needs no introduction. Essentially an automatic pitch correction system that can cater to everything from natural-sounding fixing up of your wayward singer to the clichéd but still oddly acceptable extreme retuning effects with which it’s always been publicly associated, Antares’ money maker still feels like audio sorcery, more than 20 years after its invention. And with improvements made for the upgrade to the latest, ‘Pro X’ version in 2022 including a full redesign for the powerful Graph mode, the ability to edit multiple instances in a single interface, and native Apple Silicon compatibility, the company are clearly committed to keeping their flagship moving forwards.

Whether you hand the reins over in Auto mode, snapping the vocal (or other monophonic input) to your chosen scale or real-time MIDI note input, or take command of tuning and timing yourself in the powerful Graph mode, Auto-Tune Pro X always gets the job done, and to whatever degree of transparency you need. The quality and humanism of its pitch and vibrato modulation are truly exceptional, and while there will always be limits as to how far a vocal can be shifted before it starts to fall apart, Auto-Tune’s core algorithms are unarguably up there with the best of them when it comes to pushing that particular envelope.

A bona-fide milestone in music technology, and as relevant today as ever.

Waves CLA Vocals

Waves’ ever-expanding catalogue of plugins includes numerous ‘Artist’ vocal channel strips, but we have a particular soft spot for legendary rock producer Chris Lord-Alge’s contribution, as it just makes getting a solid and characterful vocal sound up and running so ridiculously quick and effortless. With each of CLA Vocals’ six modules – Bass, Treble, Compress, Reverb, Delay, Pitch (as in modulation thereof, for chorusing and doubling, not pitchshifting) – offering just a single fader for adjustment, and three preset ‘Color’ options configuring the algorithms under the hood, there’s no possibility of procrastination. And even though you’ll often find yourself swapping CLA Vocals out for more flexible alternatives when you get into the nitty gritty of mixing, for demos and rough mixes, there’s no faster route to effective vocals.

Celemony Melodyne 5

When it comes to the free manipulation of audio in the time and pitch domains, there’s arguably nothing to beat Celemony’s Grammy-winning software solution for sheer power, features and quality of results. The first plugin and standalone application to offer timeline/graph-based repitching of vocals and melodic instrumentation, Melodyne makes the process of tuning and transforming both monophonic and polyphonic (another first!) material fast and fluid, and also lets you go town reshaping vibrato, formants, sibilance, dynamics, breath sounds and more. Dragging notes and their graphically represented sonic properties around in the editor is wonderfully intuitive; and although the deeper, more sound design-orientated functions are rather more tricky to get to grips with, the overtone-shaping and morphing tricks that can be pulled off with them are something to behold.

Melodyne works great as a VST/AU/AAX plugin, but the ARA version dramatically accelerates workflow by building the Melodyne GUI into the DAW itself, and making the necessary audio transfer between the two instantaneous. A fair few DAWs now support ARA, including Logic Pro, Studio One, Cubase, Nuendo and Reaper, but the most eagerly awaited of them was without doubt Pro Tools, which finally ticked the ARA 2 box last year. Avid and Celemony did a superb job with it, too, gifting Pro Tools users seamless Melodyne-ing of individual clips or full tracks, with the editor integrated into the DAW via the new Tabbed Editors panel. All versions of Melodyne are ARA 2-enabled, and if you’re a Pro Tools subscriber, you’ve got the monophonic Melodyne Essential already built in – give it a go and prepare to be amazed.

Synchro Arts VocAlign Ultra

Getting multiple vocal tracks flawlessly in time with each other in any DAW can be a proper faff, but VocAlign Ultra relieves you of that burden entirely. Working as a VST, AU, AudioSuite or ARA plugin, Synchro Arts’ amazing software cleverly negotiates the complexities of routing any number of signals in for collective processing, then provides various modes of timing and pitch alignment, all of them supremely easy to operate. Previously known as VocAlign Pro, 2021’s update to Ultra added a ton of new tools, including not only the pitch alignment algorithms from stablemate Revoice Pro, (previously, only time alignment was possible), but also the new SmartAlign feature, which takes care of start point differentials, and controls for tightening or loosening the alignment.

Equally at home pulling layered BVs into line as it is matching up ADR recordings to the originals in post production, VocAlign Ultra is a must-have for anyone who spends significant professional time handling multitrack and/or dubbed vocals.

SSL Native VocalStrip 2

If you’re a fan of ‘that SSL sound’, Native VocalStrip 2 gives you a comparatively affordable way to lend it to your vocals. Native VocalStrip strays from the usual channel strip format with its Compander, De-Esser, De-Ploser and Equalizer sections, each of which can be placed anywhere in the signal path. The Compander enables reduction of unwanted quiet signal components (breath sounds, for example) prior to compression; the De-Esser and De-Ploser make light work of sibilance and plosive attenuation; and the Equalizer consists of high-pass (30-300Hz), high-Q peak (200Hz-10kHz) and low-Q peak (1-20kHz) bands. All very specifically vocal-orientated stuff, then, and with that trademark SSL precision and sheen, plus excellent visual feedback via the per-module displays, this is one that could easily become a fixture in your vocal mixing template. Assuming, as we say, that punchy SSL vibe is your bag.

What are your favourite vocal processing plugins? Let us know in the comments.