Waves Vocal Rider Plug-in Reviews

I tried three different vocal rider style plugins and found this to be the better of them. Easy to setup and the automatic automation is excellent. Definitely greatly reduces the time leveling out the vox before adding compression.

Muy bueno,excelente funcionamiento

This is a great product. Easy to use, and it works.
Does what it says it will do.

This plugin has exceeded my expectations. Easy to use and play around with. Has vocals sitting beautifully in the mix. Having purchased at a nice discount didn't hurt either. Quite pleased with the purchase. Waves and Sweetwater do it again.

This is going to sound both dumb and interesting. Ever had a guitar solo that consisted of octave jumping? I had that issue with a project of mine and using CLA Mixhub with this plugin as an insert, I was able to fully tame and even out the volume. I noticed prior to using that in the car the volumes were perfect, but when I went lower in frets, it also applied to the volume. I tested using this as an idea and was dumbfounded. If you are looking for the perfect plugin, it's really hard. But having this baby for vocals or anything that may be smart to put it on, def worth having inside your library!

I Love This Plugin. I have a problem maintaining my vocal levels and this plugin is perfect!

Love it! Definitely takes a couple of time consuming steps out of the way. Make sure you use it as intended w sidechain of other music tracks input into vocal rider.

This plugin exceeded my expectations. It's not just for vocals. It works great on all tracks. With some thoughtful routing and side chaining, track by track, I was able to build the best mix I had ever done. I was fortunate enough to get this while it was on sale, but I would recommend it to anyone who wants to save hours of time.

This plugin is great to have. It balances your vocals so when vocals are high, vocal rider lowers it and etc.
Highly recommended.

Man this is some kind of plug in, it really does what it say, iam glad I found this plug in
I will be using it alot Thanks Wave keep up the good work

Earned a 5 star rating, even though it's not perfect. By not perfect, I really just mean it doesn't do everything in one plugin. It fills the spot between other plugins perfectly,though. As a recovering "plugin-aholic", I tend to use my DAW stock plugins in Studio One, Cakewalk, Samplitude, and have just kept a handful of "essential" 3rd party VST/VSTi's in my plugin folder. The Vocal Rider is my 1st new addition to the "essential" family in a long while, and it is well deserved. This jewel is the missing factor, sitting between classic compressors, EQ's, levelers. I don't mind comping and editing gain structure on every clip,but sometimes too much is too much--what I dig most about the Waves Vocal Rider is that it adds a human feel and vibe to tracks that no other plugin duplicates. Saves time getting the exact right sound/effect. This is an essential plugin for every level audio engineer, well worth the $$, plus it works wonders on signals other than vocals. ESSENTIAL

I find this plugin simple to use and enhances many aspects of the recording. I use it on almost everything. Bass, guitar, of course vocals. It has a very subtle amount of compression to me, depending on how you set it. The vst 3 in reaper works great.

After getting this plug, I started running past vocal recordings through it. It has a nice selection of presets, so you can start using it right away.

Especially at the sale price, but even regular price, this thing works way better than expected. It was a bit of an effort to find out how to work it properly, but a search for tutorials wasn't too hard. The side chain is what really makes it work, and finding the sweet spot for the controls. I find that a little bit of manual leveling in the waveform is still helpful, and a gate before the Rider. Use a compressor and EQ after the Rider, with just minimum gain reduction, and all is good in the world. A very natural and full vocal is the result.

Seems simple enough, but man does it make a huge difference! I love this little guy.

This is my first Waves Plug-in, and I'm loving it. A real time saver when mixing. The automation feature is amazing and the results are great. The automation is easy to adjust if there are some tweaks you want to make after the rider does it's thing. Get it!

I'm definitely way late to the game on this Vocal Rider plugin. It's 2016 and this thing has been on the market for many years. Up until now, for me, leveling vocals has been done with compression. Properly leveling a vocal with compression generally introduces other issues, like excessive sibilance, which then require more plugins to fix. Vocal Rider is quick and dead accurate, especially when used with the sidechain (always use this with the sidechain!). Minor tweaks can easily and quickly be done manually after you write the automation. Once Vocal Rider gets you most of the way there, you can then apply compression in a musical way, and not so much in a utilitarian way. Once you hear the results, you'll know how it makes all the difference. I never realized I "needed" this until I went ahead and tried it on a song that was just about finished. I just happened to be struggling getting the vocals to sit the way I wanted. I got rid of all my compression stages, dropped in Vocal Rider, set it up, let it do it's thing, then added some very minimal compression to taste, and it was absolutely perfect (to my ears). Yes, you can manually ride your own fader or manually pencil in the automation points, but let's be honest about the kind of tedium that presents. Even if you did do that, it simply would not be as accurate as Vocal Rider delivers. It's not only an incredible time saver, but it also serves up more precision while it's at it.

Greate plug-in, great seller.
Thank you Nick, thank you Sweetwater !

Easily my favorite Soundgrid plug-in. We use it with the Allen & Heath GLD80 Waves Soundgrid system. The GLD has excellent built in effects but it doesn't have anything like Vocal Rider. What this does for live backing vocals is amazing. Everything comes out smooth, intelligible and at a lower overall volume than you would use if you didn't have Vocal Rider. It's not a compressor. You can't get this effect with any compressor I've used. I love it.

I used to stack compressors to even out my vocal levels, sometimes it would color the tone a little too much and it was easy to lose the dynamics if I wasn't careful. When I am not looking for that coloration in my vocal tone, I reach for the Vocal Rider, very transparent while maintaining the emotion of the performance. Simply an awesome product.

If you want your vocals to cut through the mix like the pro mixes, you have to get this one!

This plug-in came in handy for taming the harmonica. It looks like a simple plug-in but I had to fidget with it quite a bit to reach a good level.

A quick and dirty way to normalize individual tracks. Especially useful for vocals or those runaway tom rolls. Fine tuning is still needed for a finished mix but this will save you a bunch of time.

Very useful tool to have in your arsenal.

I really love this plug-in. If you're not a professional sound mixer and just want to create a decent enough mix for your music recordings then this plug-in will do wonders for your vocal track's volume control and overall mix. No need to spend tedious amounts of time to adjust the volume levels yourself. This one does it automatically and does it quite well with minimal sound artifacts if any. I am now really looking forward to getting the Bass Rider plug-in.

If you want to control vocal dynamics well without coloring the sound with compression, this does the job perfectly.

Thanks saves me time and hard work

Just like someone riding the vocal, except they can predict the future. Really cool. I always had certain issues with compressors/limiters. This will automatically even out your vocal to whatever degree you want it to, and since it reads the waveform it"s not behind the signal like a compressor. I"m sure there are still times where a compressor will give you the sound that you prefer, but, for my money this does everything I want, because it keeps your vocal heard without compressing anything. Really cool idea!

Vocal Rider is a big time saver for mixing. It helps a lot when combining takes during the editing process and when your vocalist doesn't address the microphone consistently (when reading lyrics while tracking.

I'm using it on a clients song now, the lead singer was in and out of the Microphone and I didn't want to ride the fader. I'm diggin it.

Leveling vocal tracks is essential for getting vocals right in a mix. It's super tedious to do manually, so this plugin is just awesome for that.

It lets you output automation events so you can tweak leveling perfectly, while it does 98% of the job by itself.

Worth the money. I used this along with CLA Vocals Plugin and was able to get very impressive vocal recordings tracked in my not-so-impressive home studio.

Plugin works great and does just what waves say it does. Very easy to use!

Works as stated. Does s vocal with amazing accuracy!

It's not perfect, but it works - thank you Waves for saving me time making music.

That said, I use two computers daily, and apparently that's one too many for Waves. The solution is "easy." Just keep moving licenses "in the cloud" between the computers, or use a USB stick. Keep doing this indefinitely, it's your time.

Waves can conduct business any way they choose, and that's fine with me, but had I known that a purchase was (for all practical purpose) bound to a single computer, I wouldn't have bothered with Waves.

If you use more then one computer on a daily basis, make sure you understand how Wave's licensing works.

Rider does a nice job evening out levels but does not retain my overrides when I needed more dramatic volume. Waves support was nonexistent.

It's pretty solid. Although I think I need to get the hang of it more. Sometimes it tends to turn the vocals too loud. And sometimes it figures out the vocals were pushed too loud a little too late. That could be my music isn't mixed properly. Also there's a vocal and music sensitivity setting. I might not have that set right. But for starting off I think it helps with automation