Doctor Varney
Cave dwelling Luddite
Purpose: Narration for audio books. Digital recording.
Sorry if I've been here before but it seems a long time ago...
I record dry. I think this is generally accepted, good advice. Perhaps for obvious reasons of flexibility of mixing afterwards.
Intention
I wish to apply a little compression during input though, to help even out the levels. Even with my abilities in narration, I often produce a spike, word or sentence, possessed of more volume than the rest. This prevents the rest from normalising properly to 0dB before saving. I think some people would advise to add compression afterwards, in the mix. Except, I got rather confused by just aimlessly knob twiddling and listening to the results.
A Bit Of Background
My reasoning for ignoring that advice is that I have to manually attenuate those spikes in the waveform editor anyway - and then normalise. Unlike other media, such as music for my own pleasure, time is money and speed is of the essence for creativity's sake. So, I'm looking for a way of getting a fairly even waveform recorded to begin with. One that I can keep using, for all the many recordings I have to make.
After priming myself with info on how a comp works and what each control does, I've found a great way to help me get an idea of what the compressor is doing, in a visual way. Two audio editor plugins, either side of a compressor, allows me to record a dry, pre-recorded signal from one, into the other, after the compressor. It's helped me get the gist of what each specific control does, by comparing the shapes in the re-sampled waveform to the original. Sorry if that sounds a bit insane... but it was interesting! I like to experiment.
What I wish for, is a gentle evening out of the signal to create a lively performance, which is easy on the ears, which has enough volume throughout, without too many dips or spikes. What I don't want, is a perfectly flat waveform with no creative variation. That would just be awful!
So Onto My Main Question
I've learned enough to make sausages out of porcupines - and a few other things in between. Which is progress, but not ideal. I've got a result I quite like, by selecting a 'Vocal' preset on a multiband compressor plugin but, ideally, want to get better at controlling things manually.
Can anyone suggest settings that you'd normally use to achieve what I'm after?
Some common controls on various compressor plugins I have, include:
I get what they are and what they do, but I'm not yet very good at using them all together. I can easily get lost in a knob twiddling frenzy and end up disappearing up my own arse.
Thank you very much!
Sorry if I've been here before but it seems a long time ago...
I record dry. I think this is generally accepted, good advice. Perhaps for obvious reasons of flexibility of mixing afterwards.
Intention
I wish to apply a little compression during input though, to help even out the levels. Even with my abilities in narration, I often produce a spike, word or sentence, possessed of more volume than the rest. This prevents the rest from normalising properly to 0dB before saving. I think some people would advise to add compression afterwards, in the mix. Except, I got rather confused by just aimlessly knob twiddling and listening to the results.
A Bit Of Background
My reasoning for ignoring that advice is that I have to manually attenuate those spikes in the waveform editor anyway - and then normalise. Unlike other media, such as music for my own pleasure, time is money and speed is of the essence for creativity's sake. So, I'm looking for a way of getting a fairly even waveform recorded to begin with. One that I can keep using, for all the many recordings I have to make.
After priming myself with info on how a comp works and what each control does, I've found a great way to help me get an idea of what the compressor is doing, in a visual way. Two audio editor plugins, either side of a compressor, allows me to record a dry, pre-recorded signal from one, into the other, after the compressor. It's helped me get the gist of what each specific control does, by comparing the shapes in the re-sampled waveform to the original. Sorry if that sounds a bit insane... but it was interesting! I like to experiment.
What I wish for, is a gentle evening out of the signal to create a lively performance, which is easy on the ears, which has enough volume throughout, without too many dips or spikes. What I don't want, is a perfectly flat waveform with no creative variation. That would just be awful!
So Onto My Main Question
I've learned enough to make sausages out of porcupines - and a few other things in between. Which is progress, but not ideal. I've got a result I quite like, by selecting a 'Vocal' preset on a multiband compressor plugin but, ideally, want to get better at controlling things manually.
Can anyone suggest settings that you'd normally use to achieve what I'm after?
Some common controls on various compressor plugins I have, include:
- Threshold
- Attack/ Release
- Input gain
- Ratio
I get what they are and what they do, but I'm not yet very good at using them all together. I can easily get lost in a knob twiddling frenzy and end up disappearing up my own arse.
Thank you very much!
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