Close, but don't light that cigar just yet
ecktronic said:
I started thinking about why compressing vocals can make a vocal sound fuller and warmer even with just plug-ins.
Am i right on saying that when you compress a vocal it brings the loudest frequencies down, so that when you apply the gain make-up the quieter frequencies are louder than before compression. So this would bring up the lo mids to give a fuller warmer sound. Vocal frequencies are loudest at the hi mids yeah? Like 1k-5k?
I know it isnt just that simple, but this is the basics of what happens, isnt it?
You are close, but there is one assumption that is just a bit off...
You are basically correct that compression "tightens" (lowers) the dynamic range between the loudest sounds and the quieter sounds so that when you then bump up the output gain or overall volume, the quieter foments are boosted in volume.
However, vanilla compression (we're not talking about multi-band compressors here) brings the loudest sounds down
regardless of frequency. While some of those loud sounds might be high-frequency transients, many of them are also low frequency pops, proximity rumbles, etc.
There are probably two main reasons that compression adds "warmth" to vocals. The first being that the most pleasurable sounds to come put of the human throat are those that are easiest for the vocal chords to produce. And those tend to be ones where the vocal chords aren't being pushed to the limits (some operatic voices excluded; perhaps.)
The second, and perhaps larger, reason for compression adding vocal warmth is the distortion added by the compressor circuitry itself. When such distotion sounds bad, it's called noise. When such distortion sounds good, it's called coloration. Engineers tend to prefer a limited set of mics, preamps and compressors for use on vocals because the type of coloration they add to the signal happens to be very complimentary to most human voices. Iron like tha LA2a, the 1176, the U47, etc. are famous to the point of cliche for use on vocals because the "tube-like" syle of distortion they apply to the signal actually can make the human voice more pleasing sounding than an exact reporduction without such "coloration" would.
G.