Care to expand?
Fig 8 picks up room/backside -comes up in compresion make-up gain(?) What about the time effects?
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Monitoring just fine at CathouseSound
SP Tech Continuum AD
assuming I understood your question correctly...
Yes. Compression will definitely bring out any ambiance the mic picks up, so in a sense, it's telling of how good your room and equipment have to be.
When I say 3D by using a good figure 8, I'm really emphasizing the "good" in that statement. For example, a U87 in figure 8 compared to a CAD in figure 8 are two completely different things. The timbre, color and overall balance of mics like that just give an awesome illusion of really being inside a performance from the get go. Not saying you can't do it with a cheaper mic, but it's just giving you the notion, "you never treat two mics the same, so the ears are your guide".
You can record figure 8, with a solid mic that beautifully emphasizes everything directly in front of it and assuming you have a good space to track in, you can still compress the hell out of it with little reverb effect.
It's really all about your mic, preamp and space at that point. Certain preamps actually deemphasize ambiance by viture of the kind of components they are built with. I won't really go into that, because it ends up being more of a listening test thing.
Also, it depends on the genre of music. If I know ahead of time that I'm going to be working with a heavy mix with tons of shit to balance (like metal or something), I'd prefer the dryest vocals possible. So in that case, probably no figure 8. But if it's something light, that breathes well (like jazz, folk, blues, etc) then figure 8 can really set up the mix really well.
The time based thing ends up being simple with practice. When I say time based, I'm implying the use of stuff like pitch shifting, delays and reverbs to put your vocalist within a space. Not anything revolutionary, but essentially, thats what you're hearing in a commercial mix.
Even when vocals appear dry in a mix, there's probably a really short reverb and or delay going on there to help it pop out of a mix. Someone who is still learning to listen for that kind of stuff won't be able to pick it up. Again, it's a practice in application type thing. Same goes with EQ, the darker the vocals, the more distant they will appear in the mix.
Put simply, give the vocals just the right amount of verb, EQ delay and pitch shift, either all or in part, and you've got vocals that seem to pop out of the mix and slap you in the face. It's such a tight rope walk at times, but easy with practice.