Can't EQ vocals, Why?

Can't EQ vocals, Why? 

I'm no expert but you might want to look here for some tips: FWIW, my advice is not to EQ soloed. If I can't hear the band, I can't hear where the vocals poke out and where they are covered. Maybe a more experienced mixer knows what will work without hearing it, but if you are doing sweeps to find a sweet spot, my guess is that you need the rest of the mix in there. My other suggestion is that your first action be to cut rather than boost. Do your +12Db sweep, but listening for bad things that you want less of, then cut them (honk, mud etc). Then turn up the fader :)

Put some white noise through the real hardware EQ you liked... look at the result in a spectral analyzer... use ReaFIR to replicate that EQ curve... Perhaps? Then if some "grit" (i.e. distortion) is needed, try some distortion plugs to dirty it up some. Sometimes I find the dials on harware EQ's and even their close mimics in digital are misleading. Example... when I cut proximity effect with ReaFir... I set a point at 1000 hz and a point over at 20hz and just drag down the point at 20hz to taste... this creates a curve not unlike the cut on a U87 or 421. But... to get a similar curver on a 1073 sim... the low shelf set at 60hz (yeah sixty herts) and the HPF set at 200 - 300 seems to yield a similar result in the analyzer... Would have never guessed that an low shelf at 60 would have visible effect all the way up into the mids. Folks say "trust your ears" and I tend to agree, assuming accurate monitoring... but sometimes a quick look with an analyzer can tell you what it *really* is you are hearing despite what the dials might lead you to believe. Knowing what's *really* going on can sometimes save a lot of time and effort. Or more correctly, knowing what really causes the sonic effect you want, in detail, can save time and effort, and allow you to get "your sound" no matter what you might be using, or at the very least confirm you can't get there with what you have.

I wouldn't start out thinking that things need to be EQed. Make a mix just using volume faders. Decide what needs to be done from there. If an instrument is fighting with the vocal, and the vocal is the important thing at that time, I would first ask if the other instrument actually needs to be there. Is it playing too much and overplaying into the vocal? Next, if you decide you need that part playing along with the vocal, decide if a different sound might work without masking the vocal. If not, and you have to use that particular sound, then EQ it with the entire song playing, not in isolation. As to the other instruments being properly EQed because they are Reason Refills, this doesn't actually mean anything. Perfectly EQed for what purpose? To sound good soloed. Then they may interfere with other instruments in the mix. The refill maker doesn't know what you are going to do with those sounds. Make your own decision, or, rather, let the mix make the decisions along with your vision or the band's vision of the finished product.

Thank you all for your prompt response and very, very, useful info. Right, I was used to hardware EQ, pro room acoustics, and so on. I can totally see now that using a fairly well acoustically treated small room, Reaper with ReaEQ (or similar), things will sound different. It makes a lot of sense to cut instead of boosting (getting rid of the unwanted rather than boosting the wanted and unwanted as well). Also never to solo the vox or the track in question while mixing, but find its place in the mix in relation with the rest of the music. Which brings up another point which I completly overlooked. Using sampled instruments by Reason Refills one tends to think they need no further treatment since they were recorded (some) at facilities such as Abbey Road Studios using Neve desks and super expensive mics, yeah fine, but to make them blend with the rest of my music, I realized, thanks to your input, need to shape their sounds for them to sit well in the song. Again, thank you for sharing, and guess I'll just have to train my hearing (and way of producing) for this new and amazing technology.

Also don't forget the power of the,"Mono" button on the Master Faders.Although not a,"Catch-all" if you can get a good mono mix this can help improve the stereo mix depending on the material. Many pro Studios use a small,"Cube" speaker in the middle of the main monitors fed to Mono mix knowing that if they are good in that they have done a good job elsewhere.

pro room acoustics,.... the most overlooked thing, and yet the cheapest thing to fix, and yet no one does it until they've spent thousands on new monitors, dac's, etc.