Compression/Gating - Pre/Post?

[incursio]

Hi everyone - newbie engineer here.

I have a quick question regarding compression and gating.

Compression: Lets say I have a vocal track that peaks during one part - peaks with some slight distortion. At this point, if I compress this track during mixdown, all it will really do is lower the output level of the track during the 'peak', but the distortion still remains. Should compression be applied during recording, or should I just redo the track and work on getting a nominal/non-peak level?

Gating: Similar question - I have a lot of ambient noise in my home studio area. Should I apply a gate to a vocal track while recording it to help keep this stuff down, or will it work just the same if I gate during mixdown?

Sorry for the silly questions - but trying to get the beyond the bare basics ...

Cheers.
Scott

[Shailat]

Gate during mixdown.

If the vocals vary widley then use some gentle compression during tracking. Just make sure the compressor goes into work at the problematic spot/s only.

You can retrack without but if your going to be aware that you have to controll your singing in order to compress and your not experienced with this better to compress gently as it will effect your performance to hold back a bit.

[incursio]

Thanks for the reply, Shailat!

Assuming I use some a slight amount of compression while tracking, and some gating during mixdown to kill the background noise (especially in areas of silence on the tune), I am finally left with the concept of "normalization".

A number of people have told me to use compression on the mixdown of my stereo tracks to help normalize the song. I don't understand quite how this works - if compression serves to restrain the levels from going over a certain mark, how in the world doesn it bring levels up on the low end? Doesn't make sense to me.

Any thoughts anyone? Thanks in advance!

Cheers.
Scott

[Shailat]

Scott,
Go read an article I wrote as well as the article (it's linked there)
sonusman wrote and comeback to ask any other questions.
www.geocities.com/shailat2000/index.html

Goto the Compression article and after reading both it should clear up any questions you have








y

[incursio]

Interesting read, Shailat - and great examples, BTW!

So, if I'm reading all of this correctly ...

Let's say I add some slight compression to a vocal track (while i'm recording). Let's say that it is 3:1, with a fast attack/release - basically, that is 1db for every 3db over my threshhold (whatever that happens to be at the time, depending on the vocalist). Now, that takes care of "squashing" any unwanted peaks. Then, I can make the overall track a bit louder by adding the gain reduction in my compressor (however many db I need).

Am I lost, or am I getting it?

Cheers.
Scott

[Shailat]

A better way of saying it is that your compressor allows your vocals to increase 1dB only, for every time your signal goes over the Threshold by 3dB.
So if your vocals were 12dB over the threshold, your signal would increase 4dB only.

As for the atack and release setting you wrote.
It's dependent on the vocals and I can't write a setting like fast or slow but typicaly on vocals it's closer to a Med-fast attack and a Med-long release, and not as you wrote. But don't follow that as a bible !!!.

The gain part is correct. Only understand that you must feed your compressor a healthy sound level or else you will also bring all the noise in your signal (as well as possible noise comming from the compressor) up. Therfore you must gain stage before correctly and also make sure you are not using the gain button to raise your input level if it is weak.

Last - compression in theory sounds great and it is but carefull from over using it !
A 3:1 might not be needed on your vocals and the Threshold setting should be set to compress (in gentle compression) only when you need it.

Good Luck

[incursio]

Thanks much for all the good info, guys. I know this is one of those subjects that gets beat to death, but I do appreciate all the help...

Cheers.
Scott