Reply To: Using dual compression on vocal recording

[Nick D.Participant]

The slowest attack on the 1176 lets the initial transient through, but still very fast, the fast release is what gives it the aggressive feel. I think if your vocals seem choked then you are compressing too much of the transient, and not letting it recover quick enough. you don't want the 1176 to be doing constant gain reduction just catching some peaks and recovering fast. you can paly with the settings, but this is almost where I always leave them for vocals, and then adjust the preamp output and the 1176 input to get the desired gain reduction and what I want from the preamp. I don't have real 1176 or a real LA2A, but use the Warm Audio 76 and Chameleon labs 7802, with slow attack settings, trying to emulate how the LA2A works.

I do have UAD plugins, they are great and im a big fan, I just do not have the Apollo interface, and I feel like its a different balance working in the analog vs putting plugins after the fact. I really think for me it has to do with how the preamp signal goes into the converter vs how I push the preamp before the compressor, which is harder for me to get right with vocals going straight in. Out of all the analog gear I had, the vocal chain was one that I couldn't equal ITB on a majority of vocals.

I still think it may be a good idea to work with 2 different vocal styles on separate instances instead of trying to get all in one. Trying to do what you are doing on one track requires some good monitoring and excellent use of microphone skills to know when to back off the mic, and to hear what you are doing in real time, basically using your ears to know where you need to be and how distance affects your voice and when to push and pull your tone. I don't really have many pro singers coming in, and not everyone has a natural skill to understand the concepts of microphone use or do it well. It also seems natural for many when they want to be aggressive/ louder actually go towards the mic, instead of backing off. I think of hardcore/metal bands when I see them live, they will be signing a foot from the mic, then when they want to scream they stick it in their mouth, going from barely audible to +20dB input... Live engineering nightmare...

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Nick D..