Vocal question

[King Elvis]

When recording vocals, should I print them with any compression or should I wait until the track is finished too see how it sounds first and then add compression. What are your thoughts on this??

[James Argo]

Controlling the dynamic range of a vocal signal is critical to getting “the sound”. As a matter of fact, this is where I see most amateur engineers having problems with their vocal sound. Most don’t use enough compression to smoothly fit the vocal into the track. And I don’t mean turning up your compressor’s ratio to 10:1 or beyond either. During tracking , I use multiple compressors (two or three at a time), all different brands, one even multiband, on all slightly different settings. These different units all work on the audio slightly differently, adding each their own character to the sound. I’ll also use a de-esser during tracking to control the high end. Another over
looked place to add compression to the lead vocal is during the final mix! But in some rare case, I'll leave it clean tracking without Comp / Eq. If you need to add a lot of top end eq, make sure you also de-ess. Remember the human voice is the most recognizable sound on the planet, so over eq-ing will be heard by the listener as unnatural, and on lower end eqs will cause a great deal of phase distortion...

[littledog]

If you are going to work like James, I suggest getting a Polaroid camera and taking snapshots of your rack and carefully labelling them. Otherwise you may never be able to reproduce all those different settings if you need to go back later and do some overdubs.

Personally, I would just use one good quality compressor set fairly light - just enough to keep the vocalist able to hear themselves over the music even during softer sung sections. Save the multiple compression complexity for the mix.

[Robert D]

Remember, if you squash the life out of the vocal on the way in, it's squashed for good. IMHO, it's best to apply as little compression during recording as it takes to keep the meters and the A/D converters happy. Make a safety copy of the recorded vocal, and then go to town with all the compressors you want till you find sonic bliss.
Cheers, RD

[Sennheiser]

Speaking about the Polaroid shot, I write down every knob setting on every piece of gear that was used on every mix for every part.

It takes awhile to record all this information, but sure makes life easier to go back and do a remix six months later.

I've never had any problems tracking a lead vocal with compression. It's the only thing I usually print while tracking. I've been doing it on my own vocals long enough to know how much to use during tracking depending on the song. If I didn't use it while tracking my needles would be swinging all over the meter scale. It's not that the vocal is grossly inconsistant, but there are passages that sometimes have to seem louder in places than in others but at the same time, not squashing the piss out of it.