compression. b4 or after?

[cliff richard]

at the moment im compressing my vocals on the way into my pc but i have the option to compress it all after recording. ive invested alot of time and energy in trying to fathom the art of compression, but i sometimes feel like im not capturing a true sound as im manipulating the sound on the way in, and once its recorded its set in stone and i cant undo what ive done. therefore is it ok to compress my vocals after recording, and if so are there any tips for recording this way?

cheers

 

[mshilarious]

There are reasons to go either way. You would tend to favor compression during tracking if:

1) The signal is too dynamic to comfortably fit into the range of the converters. That isn't usually the case with vocals.

2) You have a nice outboard compressor (better than the SW compressors), and you know what setting you'll want to use. Compression during tracking in this case avoids running the signal back and forth through your converters during mixdown.

3) You're using the compressor as a limiter to avoid exceeding 0dB into your converters.

Reasons not to compress during tracking:

1) You are using SW compressors. Since the converters are upstream of the compression, you don't gain anything as far as preventing digital clipping. Might as well wait until mixdown where you have more time to make such decisions.

2) The signal isn't very dynamic, and you aren't that experienced at using compression. In this case, you're better off minding the quality of the performance apart from the best settings.

 

[Massive Master]

I fairly regularly use *a bit* of limiting on the way in - Just the peaks, not the body. That lets me run a good signal and still be able to compress traditionally later without the pumping that could happen if I needed to compress a signal that was already traditionally compressed.