dewhitt
Dave DeWhitt
This might fall into the category of Captain Obvious, but maybe not, so I have to ask...
Lately, I've been "manually compressing" my vocal tracks by going into the editor in Logic and increasing the gain on soft parts and reducing the gain on loud parts. I'm not talking about riding the fader, but actually using the editor to change the wave. The result is a smoother sounding vocal part (duh, compression), and visually a more consistent wave form without the normal huge range of peaks and troughs. The cool thing is, I can carefully control how much or how little I change each phrase, word, or even partial word. It takes some time, and it's tedious, but as long as I don't overdo it, I don't notice any artifacts or drawbacks and I'm liking the results.
Now, I'm pretty sure that if I knew how to expertly configure a compressor, and if I had a top-notch hardware box, or even a decent software compressor, then I'd probably be able to get the same results in a much easier fashion with a couple of turns of the dial. But I'd swear at this point that doing it manually like this is yielding better results than I get when I slap a compressor on the vocal track, do my best with the settings, and let it ride.
Am I crazy? Does anyone else do this with their vocal tracks?
Best,
Dave DeWhitt
SoundClick artist: Dave DeWhitt - page with MP3 music downloads
Lately, I've been "manually compressing" my vocal tracks by going into the editor in Logic and increasing the gain on soft parts and reducing the gain on loud parts. I'm not talking about riding the fader, but actually using the editor to change the wave. The result is a smoother sounding vocal part (duh, compression), and visually a more consistent wave form without the normal huge range of peaks and troughs. The cool thing is, I can carefully control how much or how little I change each phrase, word, or even partial word. It takes some time, and it's tedious, but as long as I don't overdo it, I don't notice any artifacts or drawbacks and I'm liking the results.
Now, I'm pretty sure that if I knew how to expertly configure a compressor, and if I had a top-notch hardware box, or even a decent software compressor, then I'd probably be able to get the same results in a much easier fashion with a couple of turns of the dial. But I'd swear at this point that doing it manually like this is yielding better results than I get when I slap a compressor on the vocal track, do my best with the settings, and let it ride.
Am I crazy? Does anyone else do this with their vocal tracks?
Best,
Dave DeWhitt
SoundClick artist: Dave DeWhitt - page with MP3 music downloads