Five vocal chains and one variant, built from stock plugins — every value measured, not described. Native for REAPER, one macro plugin for every other DAW, and the whole recipe written out so you can rebuild it by hand. There is no secret plugin. The order is the product.
The finished lead vocal. Every stage measured: 97 Hz high-pass, bells at 240 and 520 Hz, presence +5 dB at 4 k, front comp −18.1 dB 3:1, glue −21.1 dB 1.75:1, de-ess 5.9 k+ at 7:1.
Delay sits at −24.7 dB wet, reverb at −26.2 dB — about 6% and 5%. That restraint is the trick.
Tune, two real compressors and a genuinely wet tail — delay −5.2 dB, reverb −6.9 dB, room 200. Forward and aggressive.
Honest note: its three EQ stages are flat (bands parked at 24 kHz) and its multiband and de-ess sit at plugin defaults. It works as a tune-comp-wet chain, not the ten-stage monster the stage names imply.
Sing through it while recording and hear no delay — measured, not assumed. Gate −42 dB, 1 ms / 249 ms, leveler −20 dB 2.5:1, peaks −9 dB 6:1. Verb and slap are cans wet — headphones, not the record.
Byte-for-byte VOX TRACKING with exactly two changes: the cans verb and cans slap are bypassed. Monitor with the headphone candy, print without it.
Gate −42 dB, surgical EQ from 90 Hz, control comp −20 dB 2.5:1, de-ess 6 k+ at 6:1, density −12 dB 3:1, limiter ceiling −0.3 dB. No sends — the printed file is the record.
This one shipped unconfigured for months. Dialed and verified 2026-08-20.
The automix stage — −28 dB, 2:1, 60 ms attack, 1200 ms release — rides the level instead of squashing it. Set it and never touch a fader. Podcasts, voiceover, demos.
Also shipped unconfigured. Dialed and verified 2026-08-20.
Every chain was loaded into REAPER and read back
parameter by parameter. That corrected the catalogue. Pearl Vocal turned out to be
identical to PEARL VOX — zero differing parameters. AXIS PEARL VOX is the same
file as Future Vocal HARD. And VOX SHIP (also saved as Post Malone Vocal) and
VOX Crisp Auto hold the right plugins in the right order with every knob at a rail —
compressors at threshold 0 and ratio maxed, gates at +6 dB, which would choke a vocal outright.
Confirmed three ways: read live in REAPER, decoded from the saved state blobs offline, and
cross-checked against the chains that did store real values. They were saved before they were
dialed, so they are left out rather than sold as presets that do nothing.
| Your DAW | What you use | How |
|---|---|---|
| REAPER | The FXChains — exact, native | Options → Show REAPER resource path → drop into FXChains/. Restart.
Right-click any track's FX list. |
| FL Studio, Ableton, Logic, Cubase, Studio One, Bitwig |
The PearlVox macro plugin | VST3 everywhere, AU for Logic. The whole chain as one plugin, every stage a knob.
Engage off for an instant dry A/B. |
| Any DAW, by hand | Free ReaPlugs + the stage order | Cockos gives ReaPlugs away free — the exact plugins these chains are made of. Install, build the order above, save as your own preset. |
| Anything at all | The written recipe | Any EQ, any comp, any gate. Every frequency, gain, Q, threshold, ratio, attack and release in SETTINGS.md. The topology is the product. |
| Platform | Do this |
|---|---|
| Windows | Copy plugins/windows/PearlVox.vst3 → C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\ |
| macOS | Run plugins/mac/PearlVox-AU-installer.pkg, or copy the AU/VST3 by hand.
If Gatekeeper blocks it: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine on the plugin. |
| Linux | Copy plugins/linux/PearlVox.vst3 → ~/.vst3/ |
Then rescan plugins in your DAW.
Because there is no hiding the sauce, and pretending otherwise is a lie. Everyone selling a vocal preset is selling ordinary plugins in a particular order at particular values. The skill is the dial-in — riding those knobs on this voice, on this song. That part can't be zipped. So here is the order, here are the values, here are the files. Take it, learn it, beat it.