Vocal Chain

A vocal is the one track nobody forgives. This is the chain for it, in the order you would actually reach for it. ARCHANNEL The front end: gate, tone, compression and saturation on one signal path, so the first pass is one window instead of four. ARTUNE STUDIO Pitch correction for the session: key, scale, a twelve- note keyboard, and the controls a take needs when you have time to spend on it. Reports 16 ms, fixed. ARDESS Spectral de-esser. It works on the sibilant band only, and its detector was rewritten after a real vocal proved the first one wrong. AREQ Twenty-four band parametric equalizer with dynamic bands, for the surgical moves and the broad ones. ARCOMP Character compressor. The threshold is drawn straight across a scrolling waveform, so you set it by looking at the take rather than by guessing at a number. ARRIDE Automatic level rider. It writes the fader move you would have written - slow, musical gain, not compression. ARHARM Harmonizer. Up to four more voices cut from the take you already have, locked to your key and scale, formants kept. Reports 69 ms, which the host compensates. ARDIM Doubling and dimension. The mono sum is preserved - it does not fall apart when someone plays it in mono. ARVERB The space it sits in, with four room types and a freeze. One house style runs through all nine: the same panel, the same preset browser, the same A/B and undo. Bypass is bit identical everywhere. Every plugin ships as Audio Unit and VST3 on macOS (universal, Apple Silicon and Intel) and as VST3 on Windows, each with its own illustrated user guide and a factory preset bank.