effects of compression

  • Thread starter Thread starter coldoatmeal
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coldoatmeal

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Hi, first I would like to thank those on here who share their advice with us "newbies."

I have a problem with some vocals I recorded, and I don't have time to re-record them. The problem is that the levels vary too much-some times the vocals are buried, other times they don't sound like they are inside the song because they are too loud. And when I compress the heck out of them, they sound, well, compressed. What do you guys do when this happens? For example, is there a certain frequency you can boost to make compressed vocals sound more natural?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Oh, and for the future-how do you guys record vocals? (I guess I should ask this on the recording forum, but as long as we're on the subject...) We put tape on the floor for the singer to back up to when he sang loud and quiet. But he didn't like this because it took too much concentration, and many times there were just these little variances between how he sang each take...it was really hard to get an even sound. Should he not sing directly into the mic, above the mic...? I used at first an AT4033 but that seemed really harsh in certain small parts, so I switched to a 58-pointing slightly upward but at mouth level. His distance varied from one to three or four feet. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
 
Firstly - Leave the singer alone :D

Singing is enough to concentrate on without having to try fancy mic technique. The 58 will handle the level up close. Use a good compressor to start with to reduce the dynamics then go through the vocal line by line and adjust the gain to suit. Then compress again if necessary.

cheers
john
 
If you have the option, you can try to set up 2 mics- one close to catch the quiet parts and one further away to catch the loud parts.

Yup, I'll second what John said, as well. If the vocals are varying that much you'll probably have to go through and ride the fader to get it to sound right. Compress a little, but not enough to make it sound compressed, then move the volume up or down as you go through the song.

There aren't any magic bullets, unfortunately, that can fix widely dynamic vocal tracks. We are so used to hearing voices that you can't compress them much before we notice the difference.

Take care,
Chris
 
Does your recorder enable you to copy one track to another? If so, then you could record the best take possible, then go back and adjust the level as you are copying to another track via the mixer.

Cy
 
What you need to do is import the vocal track to a wave editor and level out the volumes to 0db or as I use -0.5db. You do this by choosing the sections that need it and use the normalize or gain feature of the editor. Try it, you'll like it. You're going to have to learn to do this for mixing and mastering anyhow. Don't forget to save a copy of the original track and do many saves along the way in case you screw it up. This may take awhile to do depending on how bad the track is.

When recording, I use a condensor mic with a compressor and record the signal as hot as possible without using any effects. If the vocals sound compressed then the settings are probably not correct.

It sounds like your singer just needs to learn to back off the mic when he is going to scream. If you're going to use the 58, have it about 6" away from him at his nose height and pointed to his forehead.
 
if you have automation on your desk, you could try using that
 
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