I first came across the Little Labs VOG back in 2018, while helping put together the Reverb 500 Series Buying Guide. After doing a little research and cruising YouTube for some demos, I decided I absolutely needed one in my life. I’m somewhat of a low-end junkie and I was pretty baffled that I hadn’t heard of it yet, especially since I owned a couple Little Labs products already.
I often find myself looking to beef up hooks and choruses during the mixing phase, and for that my first instinct is usually to reach for my trusty Moog Sub Phatty. However, I’m consistently presented with this issue: There are a lot of bands out there that would prefer you not add any instrumentation to their music. Hey, I get it—they’re the artist, right? That’s where the VOG comes in.
The VOG is shorthand for "Voice of God"—which gives you a pretty good idea of what it does. It adds low-end heft to just about anything you put through it, and the results can be divine.
I distinctly remember the first time I used it on a mix for a band. They hired me for an EP that somebody else had engineered during the tracking phase. I found that I could print my Sub Phatty track through the VOG with a pretty ignorant amount of resonance amplitude, and bury the track way, way low in my mix. What this did was achieve that extra low-end impact during the choruses of their tracks (which were in dire need of some extra umph), without adding any audible instrumentation to their songs.
There’s really nothing quite like the VOG, especially when you’re using it on not one but multiple low-end instruments in your mix, like kick, bass guitar, and sub synth. You can find the sweet spot for each by toying around a bit with the VOG's Frequency knob and the Center function, which will enhance them at different frequencies. When I do this to each of these instruments, I often find myself getting a much more cohesive low end in my mix, as they’re not all battling for the same space.
But it's not just bass-heavy instruments that can benefit. When used sparingly on a snare drum, the VOG does something really special. It can make you feel the low-end impact of the snare in your chest, without having to turn the snare up any louder. This leaves much more space in the center of a mix to focus on other sources that require their home to be in the midrange.
Oddly enough, I've also found the VOG to be useful for close, dry, intimate vocals, the type that requires 99% of a listener's attention. A little bit of the VOG goes a long way in keeping a listener's focus squarely on a vocal, when the song requires it.
As with any new piece of equipment, it's best to get acquainted with the VOG through trial and error. Pop open a session you know really well and just start fooling around, run everything through it, twist some knobs and see what happens. That said, the VOG is easy to overdo, so be careful with it—especially if you’re working with headphones, smaller monitors, or don’t have access to a subwoofer in your home mixing setup. The amount of bass resonance you’re dialing in is more felt than it is heard, so it’s imperative to test your mixes on a lot of different sets of speakers. Personally, the car test is always an enlightening experience for me after I think I’ve completed a mix.
When I first integrated it into my setup, there were several times where I went way overboard. It’s very easy to get too excited by what the VOG is able to do, especially when you’re dialing something in when a track is solo’d. My advice here would be to dial in your VOG settings when your entire mix is playing back to make sure you’re not just eating your mix alive without knowing it (and eventually having to dial it back later).
Other than that, test it out on everything, find what you like the most, and you'll soon hear just how much the VOG can bring out of your tracks.
The Little Labs VOG is available as a 500 series module or a desktop unit.
Matt Jordan is a producer, engineer, and mixer—and Reverb's affiliate manager. Learn more about his music projects here.