Discussion
Singer-songwriter-producers: today I am begging you to mix your vocals at least 6 dB louder. You know the words! You wrote them, you sang them, you can make them out even if they're marginal.
Get someone who wasn't involved in the songwriting or production to do a test listen for you. If they can't hear the vocals front and centre, they're too quiet.
Related advice: if your equipment supports ducking, use it to duck competing instruments under the vocals. Even a couple of dB makes a huge difference.
Ducking is the reduction of volume in one track/instrument so that another can be heard over it. At its simplest it can be done with a bog-standard compressor on the track to be ducked, using the vocal track as a side chain. You don't need to use fancy ducking plugins; I don't.
Consider ducking any instrument that occupies the 200 Hz to 3 kHz range, like guitars, pads, pianos, etc. because those are the instruments that will compete most with vocals.
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