HEY! Blue Bear Dude!

[justharold]

Just wanted you to know that I tried out your "Exciting Compressor" idea for vocals. It is VERY cool! I mean, I have to be careful as to not get carried away with it. But it has helped me on a few mixes that I was having trouble keeping the vocal from getting buried.

A couple of questions though. You mentioned in the article that I read that you are to compress the h*** out of the vocals. Unfortunately, none of my compressors have a setting for "h***" (though I have found several that could be considered "crap"). Anyway, what would you consider some good settings to start, or possibly a good range of settings?

Also, you mentioned adding "tons" of EQ in the 5k to 8k range. Again, what would you consider to be a good range of gain?

You see...you have to understand something...

IF you leave me that much room for adjustment I just may get out of control. For "moderation" has never been part of my makeup.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Harold... while I appeciate the mention, and hope you do get something worthwhile out of my posts/articles - I'm not sure it was one of MY articles you read, in this case!

[justharold]

ooops...

I guess it wasn't you (he says, feeling rather foolish).

You should have taken credit for it and just ran with it. Everyone would have thought you were cool...

[nessbass]

I guess what you are referring to is a technique that's been used by motown engineers...

link1

link2

...right?

David

[TexRoadkill]

Often 'hell' and 'crap' are the same thing when it comes to compression and EQ.

If I want to really squash something with compression I'll use a ratio of 10-20:1 with very fast attack and release settings. With EQ if it's distorting the channel or is simply ear piercingly bad then it's probably too much.

When you mix the crap back with the nice pure signal it can end up being better then just the original signal. In the end your ears have to decide how much is too much.

[taylorguitarman]

What a difference this technique makes. I've been struggling with getting my acoustic guitar recording not to sound so muddy. I tried this and now they're starting to have the clarity I've been looking for. Definitely a good tool to have in the toolbox.

[Middleman]

Once you have mastered this technique you are ready to move on to the multi buss/frequency compression technique or the multi track frequency specific compression combination technique

It never ends....

[bsanfordnyc]

Damn I learn a ton from this website!

[volltreffer]

If you wanna compress really heavily, it may help a lot to use several 'compressors' in series (usually plugins)...

aXel