How to Mix Vocals in FL Studio With Only Stock Plugins

“There’s so many plug-ins and there’s so many ways you can affect music that people sometimes start putting things on things just because.”

Learning how to mix vocals in FL Studio usually starts with a letdown: you record over your beat, press play, and it sounds like a thin, harsh demo floating on top of the song. It’s tempting to think the fix is a folder full of expensive plugins, but it isn’t. Max, the founder of Mix Elite, mixes vocals with a chain where every plugin comes with FL Studio, apart from one optional free extra. Each step below has his settings and a screenshot from the video, so you can do it tonight without buying anything.

Max’s stock FL Studio vocal chain, in order

Fix the recording first, then shape it: even out the volume, clean up noise, tune, EQ, compress, de-ess, add reverb, and set the balance with the beat last. De-ess after compression, because compression brings harsh S sounds up. A vocal chain is the list of effects your vocal runs through, from top to bottom, and the numbers on the mixer track above match steps 4 to 8.

1. Even out the volume with automation, then consolidate and normalize the clip.
2. Clean up breaths, mouth clicks and background noise.
3. Tune the vocal with NewTone.
4. EQ with Fruity Parametric EQ 2: cut below about 100 Hz and dip the low mids.
5. Compress with Fruity Limiter, at a ratio around 5:1 and up to 20:1 for heavy accents.
6. Add OTT at about 20% (free and optional, but not stock).
7. De-ess with Maximus, using its high band from about 6 kHz.
8. Add reverb with Fruity Reeverb 2, ducked by Fruity Peak Controller.
9. Sidechain the beat so it dips about 2 dB whenever the vocal plays.

Two of these depend on your edition of FL Studio. Maximus comes with Producer Edition and up, and NewTone comes with Signature Bundle and up. The free trial has them all.

How to mix vocals in FL Studio, step by step

Give the vocal its own empty mixer track first: double-click the clip’s title bar and set TRACK in its channel settings. Then work through the nine steps below in order. Steps 1 to 3 fix the recording, steps 4 to 8 add plugins to the vocal’s mixer track, and step 9 sets the balance with the beat.

Listen with the beat playing after every step. A vocal that sounds right on its own can be wrong in the mix.

Step 1: Even out the volume before any plugin

Start before a single plugin. Max says the first thing in a high-quality vocal mix is a high-quality recording, and the biggest part of that is a volume that stays even through the whole song. Your compressor and de-esser react to how loud the vocal is, so an uneven vocal gets uneven treatment.

Play the vocal and watch the meter. Where a line comes in too loud, turn it down. In Mix Elite’s video, one loud part comes down by about 4 dB, and where a line drops, it goes up a little (1). To draw this, right-click the volume knob of the vocal’s channel, choose Create automation clip, and shape the line.

Close enough is fine. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but this step is crucial.

Consolidate and normalize the clip

1. Select the vocal clip in the Playlist and press Ctrl + Alt + C to consolidate it.
2. Click Start in the window that opens. Consolidating renders the clip and its volume changes into one new audio clip (2) and mutes the old one.
3. Double-click the new clip’s title bar to open its channel settings.
4. Turn on Normalize (1), which raises the whole clip as loud as it can go without clipping.
5. Check that TRACK points at your vocal’s mixer track, because a new clip goes to the Master by default.

Step 2: Clean up breaths, clicks and noise

Listen through for breaths and mouth clicks you don’t want. Decide on each one whether you want it or not. In the example vocal from the video, there was nothing worth removing. Some breaths are worth keeping. A breath before a line sounds natural, so turning a loud one down with the clip’s volume often works better than cutting it.

For steady background noise, like a fan, traffic or a computer, Fruity Limiter has a simple noise gate. A gate turns down everything quieter than the voice. Turn GAIN (1) to the left for more gating, then set THRES (2) above the noise but below your quietest words. Set it too high and it chops off the ends of words.

Step 3: Tune the vocal with NewTone

Pitch correction pulls notes that are a little sharp or flat onto the right note. FL Studio’s built-in pitch corrector is NewTone. To open it, click the small menu in the top-left corner of the vocal clip and choose Pitch correct sample.

It’s extremely easy to use. CENTER (1) pulls every note toward the middle of its pitch. VARIATION (2) smooths out wobble, so the notes sound even more perfect. TRANS (3) changes how fast the voice moves from note to note. Too much sounds robotic.

You can also pick your song’s scale in NewTone’s menu and turn on Snap to scale (4), so any note you drag lands in that scale. When it sounds right, choose Send to playlist as audio clip (5) to put the tuned vocal back in your song. How much tuning a voice needs depends on the singer, and our guide on how to tune vocals like a pro goes deeper.

Step 4: EQ the vocal (cut the lows and the mud)

An EQ (equalizer) turns certain frequencies up or down. Low frequencies are the deep rumble in a sound, and high ones are its hiss and air. Fruity Parametric EQ 2 always comes next, and it does two jobs:

• Band 1 (1) becomes a high-pass filter at about 100 Hz. A high-pass filter cuts everything below that point, so the rumble and noise are gone.
• Band 2 (2) takes the low mids down a few dB, so the line slopes gently down toward the bass.

That makes the vocal sound less like somebody recorded it for a podcast. How far to go depends on your mic. Trust your ears.

Here’s a rough map of where things live in a voice:

• Below about 100 Hz: rumble and noise. Cut it.
• 100 to 300 Hz: mud and boxiness. Dip it a few dB if the voice sounds heavy. For female vocals this range sits a little higher.
• About 5 to 8 kHz: harsh S sounds. Max’s de-esser starts near 6 kHz.
• 10 kHz and up: air. A small boost adds shine, but too much gets tiring.

Step 5: Compress the vocal with Fruity Limiter

Look at a raw vocal and you’ll see random peaks all over the waveform. That’s just how voices are. To make every word clear and easy to follow, you need compression, which turns the loudest parts down so the loud and quiet parts sit closer together.

1. Open Fruity Limiter and click the COMP tab (1).
2. Lower THRES (2), the threshold, until it only grabs the peaks.
3. Set RATIO (3), how hard those peaks get pushed down, to about 5:1, or as high as 20:1.

Which one depends on the sound you want. A lower ratio keeps the vocal more dynamic, and a high one gives the squashed, modern sound. The video uses a high ratio for its rapper, who hits a lot of loud accents. Aim at the peaks, and stop once the vocal sounds even.

If you need a lot of compression, split it across two compressors in a row so each one does part of the work. That sounds more natural than one compressor doing everything. There’s more in our guide on how to compress vocals.

Step 6 (optional): Add OTT for a modern sound

To make the vocal sound more modern, add OTT next, a free multiband compressor from Xfer Records. Multiband means it splits the sound into low, mid and high parts and works on each one, pushing quiet details up and loud ones down. That glues the vocal together even more.

Mix in only about 20%. It adds a nice color, but it’s optional, and it’s the one plugin in this chain that isn’t stock. It’s the slot marked 6 in the first screenshot.

Step 7: De-ess with Maximus (no extra plugin)

Compression and OTT bring up harsh S sounds. Those sharp S and SH sounds are called sibilance, and a de-esser is the tool that turns them down. FL Studio has no plugin called a de-esser, but Max says “you definitely don’t need any third-party de-esser.” The best one, in his view, is the one you build yourself in Maximus.

1. Open Maximus and click HIGH (1), so you only work on the top band.
2. Turn the HIGH frequency knob (2) until that band starts at about 6 kHz.
3. Pull the band’s curve (3) down so it squeezes only those high frequencies, and listen to the S sounds shrink.

Every singer’s harsh range is a little different, so move the frequency until it catches their S sounds best. Two warnings. Don’t overdo it, or the vocal loses its brightness. And set the threshold so it grabs only the harsh sounds, never normal words. Maximus also has de-esser presets you can start from.

If one harsh frequency still pokes out, go back to your EQ, find it, and dip it a little. That’s exactly what Mix Elite’s video does after adding OTT. Our post on 5 easy ways to treat vocals in FL Studio has more ideas.

Step 8: Add reverb that ducks out of the way

Reverb puts the voice in a space, like a room or a hall. Max is blunt about the usual way of adding it: “the worst thing that you could do to your vocal is just put the reverb on it.” Plain reverb blurs the words until nothing is clear.

The fix is to sidechain the reverb to the dry vocal. Sidechaining means one sound controls another. Here the vocal turns the reverb down while the singer sings, and the reverb opens up in the gaps.

On the vocal’s mixer track, add Fruity Peak Controller after your other effects, then Fruity Reeverb 2 after it. The Peak Controller follows the vocal’s volume.

WET (2) is the reverb’s level, and it’s the fader you’ll link next.

Link the reverb to the vocal

1. Right-click the WET fader and choose Link to controller.
2. Under Internal controller, pick Peak ctrl – Peak (1).
3. Open Mapping formula and choose Inverted (2).
4. Click Accept.

Inverted flips the link, so the louder the vocal gets, the quieter the reverb gets. Now the reverb hides every time the singer sings and fills the space when they stop. Do it this way every time. Then set the overall reverb level by ear.

Step 9: Duck the beat about 2 dB under the vocal

This is one more crucial step. Without it, the chorus sounds like one beat and one vocal simply dropped on top of each other. Max puts it this way: the vocal and the instrumental are “not talking to each other.” The fix is to let the vocal push the beat down a little whenever it plays.

Make a clean copy of the vocal

First, make a copy of the processed vocal without its reverb:

1. Bypass the Peak Controller and the reverb for a moment.
2. Select the vocal clip and press Ctrl + Alt + C.
3. Keep Enable insert effects (1) on, so the copy keeps your EQ, compression and de-essing, and click Start (2).
4. Consolidating mutes the original clip, so select it and press Alt + Shift + M to unmute it, then switch the reverb back on.
5. Give the new copy its own empty mixer track (set TRACK in its channel settings), and turn off that track’s send to the Master.

You never hear the copy. It only drives the sidechain.

Set up the sidechain

1. Route all your instruments into one mixer track, except the drums. The video names it SIDECHAIN.
2. Select the copy’s mixer track, right-click the small arrow at the bottom of the SIDECHAIN track, and choose Sidechain to this track.
3. On the SIDECHAIN track, add Fruity Limiter and click COMP (1).
4. Right-click SIDECHAIN (2) and pick the copy’s mixer track.
5. Lower THRES (3) and raise RATIO (4) until the instruments dip by about 2 dB whenever the vocal plays. About 2 dB is plenty.

Now the vocal takes the instrumental down a little every time it comes in, the same way it ducks its own reverb, and that leaves room for the voice in the whole mix. The drums aren’t on that track, so they don’t move at all.

Why do my vocals sound buried under the beat?

Usually because the vocal’s volume jumps around, so quiet words drop under the beat, and because the instruments fill the same space the voice needs. Fix it with stock tools: even out the volume, compress the peaks, cut the rumble and mud with EQ, keep the reverb ducked, and sidechain the instruments about 2 dB down whenever the vocal plays.

Work in that order, because each fix helps the next. An uneven vocal gets uneven compression, and plain reverb blurs the words until the voice sits behind the beat. The sidechain from step 9 is the last piece: the vocal takes the instrumental down a little every time it plays, which makes a lot of space for the voice. Leave the drums off that sidechain, so they keep hitting.

Which stock plugins do you need to mix vocals in FL Studio?

Five stock plugins cover a full vocal mix: Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to clean it up, Fruity Limiter to compress it, Maximus to de-ess it, Fruity Reeverb 2 for space and Fruity Peak Controller to duck that reverb while the singer sings. Add NewTone if the vocal needs tuning.

• Fruity Parametric EQ 2: cuts the rumble below about 100 Hz and the mud in the low mids.
• Fruity Limiter: compresses the peaks in COMP mode, gates background noise and runs the sidechain in step 9.
• Maximus: works as a de-esser on its HIGH band (Producer Edition and up).
• Fruity Reeverb 2 and Fruity Peak Controller: add space that hides while the singer sings.
• NewTone: pulls notes onto pitch (Signature Bundle and up).

For a crisp, professional sound, how you use them matters more than how many you own. Compression makes every word clear, the de-esser keeps the S sounds smooth, and a small EQ boost at 10 kHz and up adds air.

Common vocal mixing mistakes in FL Studio

• Putting reverb straight on the vocal. It’s the worst thing you can do to a vocal, because it blurs every word.
• Skipping the volume step. Uneven input means your compressor and de-esser work hard on some lines and barely touch others.
• De-essing too hard. The vocal loses its brightness.
• A de-esser threshold that catches normal words. It should only grab the harsh S sounds.
• Judging the vocal only in solo. A de-esser that sounds heavy on its own can be just right with the beat playing, so make the final calls with the whole mix on.
• Leaving the vocal and the beat apart. The 2 dB sidechain from step 9 is what makes them sound like one song.

Save your chain so you only build it once

Once the chain sounds right, save it. Select the vocal’s mixer track and press Ctrl + Shift + S to save the mixer track state, and next time you can load the whole chain onto a new vocal in seconds. Treat it as a starting point, not a final answer, because every voice and every mic is different.

If you want the bigger picture, like recording, layering and mixing vocals in any program, read our guide on how to mix vocals.

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