Compressor for Live Recording

[Woody Blake]

Greetings, all. I'm hoping for some suggestions about compressors suitable for my live recording situation - both on the use of compressors and which ones are best for what I need. I record my 5-piece acoustic Latin jazz band (grand piano, sax/flute, vocals, hand percussion, electric bass) at home in my living room through a Mackie mixing board direct to a Tascam CD recorder. Two things I'd like to do is protect against overloads of the CD (top priority), and add some unifying warmth and ambience to the group sound. I imagine I'd be compressing the whole mix rather than individual channels.

Based on what I've read from previous threads here, the compressors that stand out are the RNC, the ART tube VLA, and the Behringer composer (tube version?).

The idea of tube circuits to add warmth sounds appealing, but I have no experience with these devices. Users of them please comment. Thanks.

 

[scraggs]

Hey Woody,

My 2 cents: I have an RNC and a Composer. Didn't know Behringer makes a tube version of that...mine is certainly not. Anyway, I kinda like the composer on kick drum and sometimes bass, but otherwise the RNC is much much better. I wasn't that taken with it when i first got it, but having lived with it awhile i now love it to pieces. Considering it's $200, the compression is really transparent, it simply does what it's s'posed to do. The "regular" and "supernice" modes are definitely different and both are very useable. If you're looking for a mangled super compressed sound (which you probably aren't, but...) it's good for that too. Concerning "warmth and ambience", I think that would have a lot more to do with what mics and mic pres you're using. So maybe tell us a bit about those.....

cheers,
scraggs