Here’s a way to seriously improve your productions without relying on sonic choices –
Editing better.
With DAWs, there is little reason to have extraneous noise or unwanted artifacts in the audio that could distract from the listening experience.
To drive this point home further, there are three major areas I think people should spend more time on.
Edit Silence, to be Silence
As a general rule, the quieter the parts that are meant to be silent, the louder you will be able to make your track, and the lower your noise floor will be. If there is click bleed, air-conditioning, or street noise in the “silence” of your vocal tracks, all of that noise is going to get louder as the song gets compressed. You may not even be able to hear this noise, but it is voltage that is being eaten up in your song, and subliminally, it still takes up space in the listener’s ear.
One of the reasons I love Pro Tools is because you can expand the waveform to visually see the noise floor if it exists.
Side point…if you do typically find that in between your takes there is a lot of extraneous room noise, it is likely a good idea to record elsewhere. While the vocalist may be louder than the room tone, it’s still background noise that is being captured and blurring the sonic quality of the source. This could be avoided with a lower noise floor.
Get Rid of Annoying Clicks, Pops, Squeaks
While these organic noises do contribute to the performance feeling “natural” in most instances, it is not natural when things are heavily compressed, and these sounds become loud and distracting. Finger squeaks while playing an acoustic guitar or lips smacks from a singer might not seem like an issue, but when the song is mastered, those noises could be loud and harsh enough to really shock an unsuspecting listener's ear. Be conscious of that in your editing work, and opt to clip-gain noises down or remove them completely.
Time things Better (if needed)
This is a conversation for another day, but the reality is that the majority of productions and overall sonics will improve when things are tighter and more in time with each other. This does not mean in time with the grid…it means in time with each other. You will get more punch, a tighter low end, and a greater sense of coherency if parts are edited together and maintain a better relationship with each other throughout the song. Having instruments like kicks/basses/snares consistently hitting with each other is going to create a better phase relationship throughout and make the music feel more solid overall.
Editing might not be the most glamorous part of the job, but it is something that will truly take your productions to the next level.
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-Josh