Compressor making vocals too hard?!?!

[powderfinger]

I really like the way the RNC is handling 90% of my vocal sound...but the ss-- tt --- and ch sounds are very hard, for lack of a better term.....not siblant, but a little hard.....

my current settings are Ratio: 2:1 or 3:1, Threshold: -10 , Attack: about .3-.5 , Release: 1.0

Any ideas for settings that might help?? I'm still kind of an amateur with the compressor

[Jblount]

I am not an expert in te compressor arena, but you can take a 32 band Eq and do what is called side chaining it to the compressor, and take out those harsh frequencies. Someone else will probably explain it better and tell you exactly what to do.

[hasbeen]

Don't forget the pop filter/screen, compression exaggerates sibilance.

[powderfinger]

this is actually a hardware compressor, so i don't have the option to side chain it yet

[Tonio]

Originally posted by powderfinger
this is actually a hardware compressor, so i don't have the option to side chain it yet

Huh?
do you have a mixer or outboard eq? If so you can sidechain with the RNC, check out the back there is another connector.

[TexRoadkill]

The first thing I would try is turning the Attack to a little faster and make sure it is in Really Nice mode. It sounds like too much of the initial attack is getting through and that is overpowering the rest of the vocal phrase.

How much compression are you applying? How many lights are lighting up on the meter? In Really Nice mode you can go up to about 8db of compression before it starts to sound to processed.

Another trick is to take the output of one channel and run it into the input of the next channel. Set the first one up for gentle compression and the second one for hard limiting (high ratio, fast attack, slow release). That can really help to tame very dynamic vocals.

[powderfinger]

Thanks Tex....very helpful..........what does really nice mode do anyway?? the documentation that came with it doesn't really explain that too well.......do you use it much?

[TexRoadkill]

Really Nice Mode uses some type of slower knee compression that is much more natural and subtle sounding. I use it on everything unless I am trying to compress the hell out of something for a special effect. You definately want to use that mode for vocals.