Outboard compressors to digital growing pains... help?

[ssseals]

Until recently, I've been recording on an Alesis Studio 32 board > ADATxt20 > EMU 1280 > Adobe Audition2. I would use the board's inserts to run my RNC compressor (as well as others) during tracking & recently felt that I was really starting to get the hang of it (comp settings) for my skill level. I've been recording for a while & feel pretty comfortable with concepts, but now I'm having problems applying them to the digital realm.

My board blew up at practice the other day & my tech says is pretty fried. I wanted to upgrade anyway, so I purchased an M-Audio Profire 2626 to replace my interface. I'm loving it so far & am very happy with the purchase as well as how easy it was to hook it up. I'm also looking at moving to Sonar for tracking.

My problem is that I'm having a hard time with the concept of giving up running my compressors in-line while tracking drums & vocals. From what I understand, I *should* just be tracking at a manageable level, then applying compression as needed. Sounds simple, but I simply haven't used digital compressors as much because I *try* to get my signal the way I want as it goes in.

When I sing, I like to "work" the compressor as part of the dynamics & how I respond to the compressor pushing back. I'm afraid of losing this & unsure of how to go about getting comfortable with this.

I have done many searches & read many things recently, so if you could simply point me to a thread that discusses similar topics, that would be great. Thanks in advance.

[NL5]

I'd either get an outboard preamp, or find an interface/pre with inserts......

[ssseals]

I'm just wondering what I'm missing, because most people seem to do everything "inside the box". I know there's no "right" way to do any recording, but I'd like to learn the common way so I can make a more informed decision, depending on the situation. Thanks.

[mixsit]

Originally Posted by ssseals

...My problem is that I'm having a hard time with the concept of giving up running my compressors in-line while tracking drums & vocals. From what I understand, I *should* just be tracking at a manageable level, then applying compression as needed. Sounds simple, but I simply haven't used digital compressors as much because I *try* to get my signal the way I want as it goes in.

When I sing, I like to "work" the compressor as part of the dynamics & how I respond to the compressor pushing back. I'm afraid of losing this & unsure of how to go about getting comfortable with this.

Well part of this is irrelevant- the tracking at good conservative levels part.. So moving on..
Both ways are perfectly valid and there's only that one primary hump in the learning curve' for not using comp on the way in and it sounds like you're past that so.. you would be giving up that flexibility.
Personally, I always tend to fall on the side of gear that doesn't box you in. Gives a bit of future proofing' also.

I'm just wondering what I'm missing, because most people seem to do everything "inside the box".

Not necessarily.
Just keep in mind the main reasons to not comp on the way in are just as valid; shortest, cleanest path, safest tracking, but still rather straight forward.
Have you not messed with the ITB comps yet?

You know you want both.

[oretez]

even though profire lacks inserts you should, in conjunction with software router (included with device) be able to patch the hardware compressor into the signal chain ahead of the A/D

If you use a compressor in similar fashion to how guitarists use stomp boxes you might continue to need to use outboard compressors for forseeable future

but there is nothing that says you cant track uncompressed vocals in parallel with compressed (theoretically, generally speaking, routing to two different channels)

reason for tracking 'dry' is that it presents you with greatest options for editing and mixing . . . but, particuarly if you are functioning as engineer and performer (and mixer and . . . ) there are times that itb is merely more time and headache. If you view everything you record as Sistine Chapell, once in a lifetime event, then you probably need to track as dry as possible. If you view recording more akin to newspaper than novel there are times that printing the performance (fx before A/D) is appropriate

nor is there any law that says you can't blend and mix approaches

the destructive FFT compressor (dynamics processing) in AA is pretty much as powerful a tool as you'll find, by the time you master available parameters you should have a pretty good idea of the limitations of compressing audio (not merely point control for attack release of time and amplitude, but up to six levels, six sets of different attack release(s) (time's universal), limited (potentially) by frequency band, and if you prefer you can draw your curves by hand. So while AA2 is not a version I'd recomend to anyone you'd be hard pressed to find a more powerful editor . . . .and a good tool for comparing relative benefits of compressing before and after A/D

[ssseals]

Thanks guys. I went ahead & bought an M-Audio Octane so I could have the option of outboard with its send/return funtions. This gives me 16 channels of Octane pre's with the Profire 2626, which is quite a step up from my previous alesis board pre's. I'll be trying out a few different software options also, so I'm going to try some different things.

I've used some itb compression, but usually I'll just use the limiter to tame any peaks. Not that my sound is stellar, but I'm usually happy with what I can get going into the computer.

Now that my signal chain is better, it's time to look at some different ways of doing things.

Thanks for the input.

[Ronan]

Originally Posted by ssseals

I'm just wondering what I'm missing, because most people seem to do everything "inside the box". I know there's no "right" way to do any recording, but I'd like to learn the common way so I can make a more informed decision, depending on the situation. Thanks.

Most hobbyist and some pros are doing this, but still almost all of the really top teir mixers in rocks are using analog consoles and outboard gear and even most of the big mixers in pop and r&b are integrating analog processing to their in the box set ups.