TC-Helicon VoiceTone Correct - Manual (Page 28)

Understanding Live Engineer Effects
28
The best we can do to optimize clarity and intelligibility
while reducing muddiness is to intelligently limit low
frequencies without making them sound thin.
A vocal running into a PA without EQ usually sounds
quite dull. A sound engineer will often add high end to
give sizzle to the vocal using a two or three band EQ.
When you add a bit of high end with this type of EQ,
instead of adding sizzle it actually adds “tin”. With these
types of EQs you need to really crank the high end
before sizzle boost kicks in. Unfortunately this makes
the overall vocal sound much too bright.
To get more sizzle on a voice, people often turn the high
EQ past 3 o'clock, and then to compensate for the
excessive brightness, they then turn up the bass. This will
make the vocal sound somewhat spectrally balanced, but
unnatural and lacking detail. As well, turning up the bass
like this increases the low frequency energy of the vocals
and makes them sound extremely muddy everywhere
except directly in line with the PA speakers.
3. Excessive Sibilance
This is only a problem with some singers. It is when
"ess", "ch", "sh" and "t" sounds are too loud compared
with the overall vocal sound. With some singers this
sibilance can seem to almost rip your head off. This
natural sound of the singer coupled with the super
bright breathy EQ of a lot of today's pop music makes
the problem even more pronounced.