I'm listening to a Roger Whitaker Christmas album and trying to ascertain
what I'm hearing, in particular his vocals, with the aspiration of coming as
close as possible with my modest home rig. I'm referring to the overall
effect, or presence of the vocal. The album, at least to my ears, sounds
superb. The instruments are crisp and clear and while plenty hot, you can
clearly hear the vocal, which has this big, warm, yet not overbearing sound
that conversely doesn't drown out the orchestra either.

It's always been my understanding that vocals are virtually always recorded
in mono. I've never seen a picture of a vocalist in a studio in front of
more than one mic. And clearly, his voice is tracked center compared to the
stereo field I can hear from the orchestra, yet it's a sort of an "enhanced
center" like it's coming from everywhere at once.

If I've described this enough for you to get the idea, how do they achieve
this sound? Another way to ask is what's done to the vocal to give it this
big, shimmering sound like that? I've been horsing around with recording for
a while and while can get it sound "good", I never seem to quite be able to
achieve the kind of presence that I'm hearing. Is it more than just reverb,
are there other tricks? And on the subject of reverb, is it likely that it's
added to his original track or done later during mixdown? This album was
recorded in '84 so I'm guessing it's not done digitally.

The tools I have to work with at the moment are a reasonably beefy computer
w/dedicated h/d, SB Audigy card, decent-sounding MXL condensor mic, Cakewalk
PA8, Soundforge 5.0, Alesis Nanoverb and Nanocompressor. Is there any
particular "magic" vocal enhancement software that would make all the
difference? I've heard of a "vocal expander" but have never used one and
don't really know what they do. Ultimately, I'd be recording either to
Karaoke tracks or a midi accompaniment converted to .wav. While I might not
be able to completely duplicate the sound of a major recording studio, I bet
I can come closer.

Thanks for any input.