Compression setting stuff for very dynamic vox.....

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UberGawkman

UberGawkman

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How do most of you commonly use compression for vocals? What I used to do was just find a point in the wave form where it started to get excessively loud, use that as a general threshold point, then use a moderate compression with a fairly fast attack and a medium release. It did tame the signal, but the problem is that in our particular vocal style, there's lots of dynamics, emphasis on syllables, etc, so the loss of dynamics really takes away from the character of the vocals. Also, if you're not careful, you can hear the effects of compression. Plus, you would still get a bunch of stray transients that would "jump out" at you.

Then I tried something something much different that worked a lot better. Instead of setting the threshold at around -5 to -15 db with a 4:1 (loud vocalist), I instead set the threshold REALLY LOW, like between -40 and -50, set an immediate attack and super slow release, with a compression ration of 2:1 to 2.5:1. It worked a lot better because the believability of the dymanics stayed the same- it was as if the dynamics as a whole were scaled down, but they still had the same proportionality.

Of course, the catch is that you want to keep the threshold well above the noise floor or you will bring it up. Like, if noise is around -50db, you'll want to set your threshold at -40.

This is probably a "no duh" to all the mix veterans out there, but I found this really interesting that such a simple technique held the answers I was looking for.

Anyway, I did all this in a song that was just kinda thrown together... Joemeek preamp with a Shure SM58, guitars done direct then run through Cakewalks amp sim. Drums and bass were sound fonts (song was recorded on SB Live).

http://pluh.com/reviews.php?ID=140 (there's a link to download an mp3 for "The Dumb Song")

Anyway, listen to the word "toilet" at about 54 seconds in "well, your toilet overflowed". Before compression, this word really jumped out too much, but after compressing the vocals at about a 2.3:1 (it was somewhere between 2 and 2.5) with around -40db gain reduction, it retained the cool emphasis, but was a lot smoother.

Thoughts? Comments? Oh, and yer all dumb. :)
 
High UberGawkman!

I'm sure some guys will jump in who know more than I do, but I (did not hear your sound - SLOW modem connection today) have some proposals:

I don't exactly see why your threshold has to be above noise floor, it is the reduction of dynamics above noise and the make up gain that bring the noise up, IMHO.

You might wanna try to use a slower attack to have more emphasis on the beginnings of syllables. This gives a voice more power. It might be necessary, to tame plosives with a limiter in front of the compressor, though.

Hope I could give you some hints. I often used a slight dynamic reduction over a wide dynamic range (though only something like -36 to -24dB threshold, usually). What I like very much, is a very short release for vocals, as it brings up the breathing... Might that also be interesting for you ?


aXel
 
volltreffer said:
I often used a slight dynamic reduction over a wide dynamic range (though only something like -36 to -24dB threshold, usually)
aXel
Click to expand...


Yeah, that's what I was trying to say!!! It should be noted that vocals were tracked with some compression to keep from clipping... but not much.

I haven't tried a fast release before, though.... I may mess with that tonight. When you say fast though, how fast? Like, below 100ms?
 
If it sounds good then you must be doing it right.

Once you understand what the different knobs do it's good to forget about the numerical values and just tweak till it sounds right. Sometimes I'll end up with a 20:1 ratio at -30db and if I was just going by theory I would say that is too much compression. But fuck it. If it works it works.
 
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