compress vocals/normalize?

[lysis]

ok, i'm trying to figure out the best way to get my vocal level to be the same throughout. if you hop in the mp3 clinic you'll see what i mean. what's the easiest way to get your levels for vocals to be the same throughout when you're mixing screaming, singing, talking, all kinds of weird stuff. i assume doing a normalization across the whole track? any tips? i'm using pro tools with an 002 rack and some average mics (nothing incredible . . .)

thanks guys

 

[The Seifer]

Normalizing will only bring the peaks up to 0dB and the rest of the track will still be relative to that. You'll need a compressor or limiter if you want to even out the track by bringing up the soft parts and keeping the louder parts under control.

 

[mixsit]

... what's the easiest way to get your levels for vocals to be the same throughout when you're mixing screaming, singing, talking, all kinds of weird stuff.

Volume fader rides (with or without automation) are the first steps. That gets most of it done. You might not necessarilly want to expect to leave the fader in one spot and let compressors do it.
The rest to some extent is the final polish.

 

[lysis]

volume fader rides? not familiar with that . . . i played with normalizing and compressing last night and i've come to the realization i don't like normalization. lol (too many z's ) i did however get my levels very close to each other with my compression.

 

[Robert D]

volume fader rides? not familiar with that . . . i played with normalizing and compressing last night and i've come to the realization i don't like normalization. lol (too many z's ) i did however get my levels very close to each other with my compression.

Volume fader rides are simply the old fashioned, manual, move the fader up and down at the appropriate times. What you probably don't want to do is use one compressor setting to treat a whole bunch of different levels and make them come out at one level. You'll squash the pajesus out of the loud stuff, and leave the softer stuff intact, which will sound un-natural.
One method is to bounce the track to another track in real time while riding the fader of the original track. Another method is to break the track into seperate objects, either on seperate tracks, or on the same track if your software allows, and then adjust the level of the different objects to be close to each other in level, while still preserving a reasonable amount of their relative dynamics.
Save compression till all the sections are in the ballpark, and use compression to even out the momentary dynamics.

regards, RD

 

[minofifa]

how do you bring those soft vocals up? in my mixes i have found the compressor to be very effectiv in bringing those loud vocals down but the soft stuff is still to soft. Is there any way to bring em up? an expander perhaps?

 

[mixsit]

So..I'm missing something here. Three time this week the answer has seemed (at least on the surfice) to be, change the volume. Move the fader.
Robert, this is just a gag right? People still 'mix' right?
The old fashon way...
I rember all the little marks on the masking tape next to the slider. But we don't use those any more but..
I'm loosing it.
By by.

 

[starch]

There are a lot of ways to skin this cat. Riding the faders is, in many ways, the manual form of compression. I don't think 'normalization' will get you what you want as all this does is make the entire track louder. It would be similar to raising the fader. One thing you may try is to make cuts in your vocal track to seperate the 'loud' parts from the 'soft' parts. I am assuming it will naturally break the song in to verse, chorus, bridge parts. Then compress the groups so they are tamed but not squashed. You should then be compressing the soft parts seperate from the loud parts. Finally, mix those parts into the song appropriately.

I hope this makes sense. Breaking the parts up will keep you from having to smash the loud parts with compression just to bring the softest parts up.

Good luck.

 

[lysis]

well it's not even loud and soft parts that i'm having the major issue with. there's a word here and there that could be louder, but it sounds like he moved an inch back from the mic, little things like that.

 

[Ravenwing]

Volume Envelopes perhaps?

 

[mixsit]

Lysis, then it sounds to me like you would want to do some more detailed track volume automation. This is where you go in after the mix is fairly set and optimized, and add volume envelopes (or whatever digi' calls them) to fix all the small changes like that -sometimes right down to the word and phrase level if it's called for.
That won't necessarily fix tone issues for being off-mic if that's part of the problem but it can do wonders to the final polish.
Hope that helps.
Wayne