Compressing Vocals

[amarshism]

i love a slow attack fast release on aggressive vox

 

[Drummerrrrr?]

Just as a rule of thumb anything faster than 50uS will not make any difference to the sound or speed of the compressor, for all audible frequencies, 50uS or less has effectively a 0 attack time, or in other words, is a brickwall.

The 1176 is fast, almost too fast.

And you can quite easily distort at that speed!

 

[mva801]

Do you REALLY need 4 stages of compression, 2 eq's and a de-esser? Jesus. You might be over-processing. Usually for screamed vocals I'll just record into PT with the distressor. Maybe throw a CLA76 on there after. And an eq. I'd look at simplifying things. Id try the 76 at 4 or 8:1, attack around 3 (a bit on the slower side) release at 7 (Fast). Then you can saturate for a little grit. Maybe try an L1 or L2 style limiter to control any errant peaks.

I think it's easy sometimes to just start throwing extra plugins on when they're not giving you what you want. But more is not always better!

 

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

Thats a huge signalchain for vocals, mine is usually mic, preamp, 1176, delay/reverb. Can hardly remember the last time I had to eq a vocal track.

 

[GearMan2point0]

Here is an example of what my signal sounds like on his vocals.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Well, whatever gets you to where you need to be, I guess! The clip sounds ok to me.

That chain is a bit lengthy though. I think my usual chain is Comp - EQ - Comp - Saturation - Limiter.....or something close. I do find that slamming vox with a limiter and having that meter stick in one place usually works out pretty well for me.

 

[GearMan2point0]

Yeah, I definitely like to add L1 to the "Vocal Folder" to tame the peaks. I guess I just need to look at it again and maybe eliminate any excess plug ins.

 

[Via Noctis]

I typically used something along the lines of Rvox (light GR) into desser into cla76 (light GR) going finally into vocal rider. But after reading thread of what you guys are using maybe I'm over doing it too. Although I remember a thread along time ago from catharsis and his vocal chain and he had a lot of compressors too. At least 3 I think. Can't find the thread though.

Edit. As far a EQ I usually first try to go between my 414 or my sm7b to see which suits the vocalist best then play with the impedance switch in the preamp, if all goes well I don't use EQ.

 

[GearMan2point0]

I typically used something along the lines of Rvox (light GR) into desser into cla76 (light GR) going finally into vocal rider. But after reading thread of what you guys are using maybe I'm over doing it too. Although I remember a thread along time ago from catharsis and his vocal chain and he had a lot of compressors too. At least 3 I think. Can't find the thread though.

Edit. As far a EQ I usually first try to go between my 414 or my sm7b to see which suits the vocalist best then play with the impedance switch in the preamp, if all goes well I don't use EQ.

Yes, I've seen many people via UMF and other websites who used 3-5 compressors.

 

[egan.]

I think the thing is that in a typical analog chain I'll compress on the way into protools and then have a comp or maybe comp + limiter on the mix which is why you'll see 3 or 4 comps on their vocal mix. Most compressors really shit the bed when asked to do a ton of reduction. Point being a lot of guys are recreating the traditional stages all on the mix. On an aside, tuning and timing is way easier on vocals that have already been evened out a bit IME. Compressing post tuning can bring out fluting that wasn't audible before and also I believe the pitch detection is generally more accurate on less dynamic tracks. YMMV.

 

[Mooch]

I've always been a fan of H-comp on vox. Usually run that with a de esser and have yielded good results.