It's the use of good mic's & pre's, effective use of compression, and eq (as needed).

I find that presence is accomplished by less reverb, not more (as you discovered). You use words like intimate, and present. To me that represents dry or almost dry. I find that reverbs kill presence, so I typically use delays when I want a vocal to appear in a bigger space, but not lose its presence.

Also EQ can make a vocal less or more present. For example, an overabundance of low end in a vocal can make it more mushy and less present.

It's very difficult to give you advice based on words like present. Hopefully I've touched upon something that can help.

Mixerman

I like to use a couple of tricks to get presence on a vocal. The first is to do a high frequency bump around 16k for some air. Make sure you use a de-esser. Then route the vocal to the mix bus and to a subgroup. Compress the life out of the vocal on the sub and mix it back in with the regular vocal. You may need to cut some low-mids around 200-300hz on the squashed vocal. Depending on how agressive you like the vocal, you can use the sub-group vocal to add a little clarity or to push the it way out front.

If you want some 'verb, make sure you roll off the top end and set a long pre-delay so that it sits far away from the vocal.

Hi again, and thanks for the feedback. I knew I would have trouble explaining what I mean, I don't have the professional vocabulary to describe what I mean in the terms you guys would immediately relate to.

Mixerman, you are right - dryer is closer to it, but the effect I am looking for comes just at the end of a phrase, when the backing is almost silent, as the word ends there is a "tail" of sound - no discrete echos but an "ambience" of the vocal that lingers.

God, I hope someone understands this BS.

Mark

Hi Lord Alvin,

Sounds like you could be on the money, I shall try it out tonight!

Thanks

Mark