Can the vocals be saved

T

the edzell

New member
I'm working on a project where I had a loud singer. I had her properly compressed (so I thought) and the meters never hit the red. However when I got back into my studio and played it back it sounds a bit destrorted when she goes to the higher notes.

I know I should have been checking the meter on the preamp as well. It does sound better when I compress the vocals and run them through a limiter.

So the question now is can the vocal tracks be "saved" or do I just need to tuck tail and re-cut the vocals?
 
Ideally, re-track it. If the distortion is there there's not much you can do about it. If the project isn't that critical, do a rough mix with it compressed/limited as you said and see what it sounds like. If the band is happy then it's probably ok.
 
This is one of the unfortunate results of the urban myth that you should push as close to the red as possible and use a compressor to make sure you don't hit 0dbFS. The compressor probably wasn't fast enough to catch the transient peaks, which ended up clipping. You'd need a limtier, not a compressor, for that application. Better yet, just turn down the damn levels. There's no reason to be pushing levels that hot with modern digital recording.

As to how to fix it, there's really nothing you can do to get rid of digital clipping once its occurred. You might be able to mask it by applying more effects. If redoing the vocal is an option, though, I'd seriously consider it.
 
I "third" the other two responses. If you don't like the way it's tracked, re-cut it if at all possible. Instead of blending a well-tracked vocal into the mix, you are going to be fighting to camoflauge it. Better to start your mixing session knowing the track is as good as you can get it.
 
also...what could have happened (and something that happens a lot to me too) is the vocalist could have been overloading at the microphone. you can have the preamp down low, and a compressor or limiter on her voice....but high SPL levels can distort the signal at the microphone. a -10dB pad on a microphone can help this.
 
Most likely it clipped the preamp or the A/D converters. If the signal shows a meter in your DAW of 0 or above when the DAW application fader is at 0 with no porcessing, then you clipped the converter. Even then you may have also clipped the preamp and the converter. Some preamps will let you go well into the red without any really audible distortion, others will let you know immediately once they have clipped with a nasty distortion. Either way though it sounds liek a candidate for retracking. If your compressors threshold was set above 0 then there is also a chance that you clipped the compressor. With the current mics that are out nowadays it is really hard to actually clip a mic (at least on a vocal unless the singer is REALLY loud). Most mics will handle 140 db nowadays. That is REALLY HARD to do with a voice.
 
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