@Shane Doyle it’s not a plugin issue but moreso from the source waveform itself. Due to the shape of the waveform the natural amplitude of the vocal slopes in instead of starting with a sibilant or soft peak that levels down into the valley. So it’s been tricky trying to even out the vocal take so that my vocal rider and compression will properly balance it for consistency.

@Shane Doyle I attached a screenshot of the vocal take in the post. The red waveform is the source. The culprit. You’ll see that the beginning of it is thinner and slopes up then gets thicker.

Groovy stuff. The vocals sounds dynamic and balanced but at times slightly inconsistent when I hear them in context with the kick drum. Was your intention to have them a bit behind the kick? The drums as a whole have either some over-compression or was it a matter of taste/style that you were going for a lofi effect? As for the guitars, they fit similar in character with the percussion. So if this is what you’re going for—awesome. Otherwise leaning back on your compression might take some excess grit off. Overall, a solid unique blend of rock, electronic and vocal ambience. Keep going 🔥

Digging the warm vibe. I think the kick could use some adjustment on the low end. An A/B test between it’s volume level or sub energy might be a good comparison. The cymbal sweep could be lowered just a tad, it’s not distracting but seems to peak a little hot. Other than that it sounds like you’re on a solid path.

I love it. Shreddage Jupiter and the Precision bass is part of my dual layer system for fullness. I work with budget instruments that don't sound the greatest but I love the raw expression and signal I get from my recordings and being able to still shape them. I'll then combine Shreddage and the Precision libraries with my recordings for a well-rounded thicker-full sound. I used my Ibanez Gio on my first album that came with artifacts and my second album presented resonance issues from my Harley Benton, so combining virtual instruments was icing on the cake. It's like balancing drum samples on a recorded acoustic performance to not replace it, but enhance it.

Here's my take. Within music production I like to consider two worlds of sculpting sound. Analog clay, and digital clay. Analog clay is any physical instrument you can record and later shape in the box. Digital clay can be done with software. However when it comes to software, to grab a ball of digital clay and shape a source from it's primitive is either going to come from a stock instrument, a sample library, a soft synth or anything that can be edited in midi. To consider ai digital clay is simply not true because you are not getting source material. For example, instead of manually processing the signal of a dry sine wave, with ai, you're generating a random output. Or maybe several outputs until you're satisfied. Which is fine, but personally I don't find it enjoyable to render a prompt until I'm satisfied with the output but to each their own. I love the process of creating music, I love shaping my digital clay.