It just seems to level everything one step further. I finish that off with a compressor doing light conditioning. I like to cut the vocal track into smaller sections and vary some of the gains of individual phrases and level them up as per Craig's article on the Presonus blog. a young singer that is good but does not have a lot of control over very consistent levels. Firstly I think some prep is required on a vocal track that varies a lot in level. Vocal Rider is great for preventing the ends of words and phrases from getting lost in general.

I find this works as a starting point followed by a compressor doing light duties and then vocal rider for a final tweak. Something Sonar does not do unfortunately. And this is much easier in Studio One because the waveforms change height as you edit individual clip events. Read about that approach here: This is a Craig Anderton Studio One blog. I tend to edit vocals a bit first by cutting them up into smaller clips and tweaking them individually. It almost does such a good job that it sounds like no compressors are needed.

Or send the vocals to a vocal buss and vocal rider that overall. If there is more than one vocal you can insert a vocal rider on each.

Then you can send that to the side chain inputs of the vocal rider/s. They want you to create a buss that has all the instruments on it only. In side chain mode it factors in what the music is doing. The output level will be striving for the target volume set. Yes you can certainly use it to just level a vocal track.

Is waves vocal rider worth it