unusual male vocal compression

I don’t have it, but imagine Waves Vocal Rider will be transparent sounding. My concern with a plug like this is losing the dynamics and impact from a vocal performance, but also, I have a hardware compressor, a Dynamics Toolbox by Safe Sound Audio that has a “peak ride” feature similar to WVR which I use to keep vocals more stable as I record them but I do not flat line anything ever ever ever. This usually follows a tube compressor that I have set to respond slowly which does impart its sound as it compresses. The reason I write this is that if you automate levels to a “T” with a plugin like WVR impact and the dynamic content of the performance can suffer and tuen to “BLAHHHH”—skip track— next! With a compressor that has increasing character as it compresses more, that character comes in with that punch of the vocal. The gain reduction of the vocal to “Level It” is replaced with character from the compressor, so what you lose dynamically is replaced simultaneously with character, so is something lost? Is something gained?.. Does the performance stance of the vocal in the mix get retained while controlling its level? Some compressors make a sound stand out more as it compresses them even though it may be crushing its dynamics.

Just some food for thought! :mrgreen:

So you compress on the way in to tape … not once, but twice? “I’m not worthy!”

Some random thoughts: Maybe the reason pop music sucks nowadays is because it HAS been Wave Rided/Vocal Rided to death so there are no dynamics?

What I do is I record without a comp, then phrase by phrase (sometime syllable by syllable) increase or decrease the waveform size/volume on the track. Hopefully I am keeping the necessary dynamics while evening out the excessive ones. I suspect the people that sing into your mics, Tom, have better vocal control than the ones that sing into mine.

Then I run them through my compression, for character and a little more levelling out.

I did ask the Vocal Arts forum guy, and he said you can dial in how close or far to “flat line” it would work. I actually wonder though whether it would be better to do it by hand like I do - after all, how could the software know that one word in the phrase is meant to be whispered softer than the words on either side of it?

I suppose the people at Vocal Arts would say one could always edit after the fact to “add in” dynamics …

I think that’s the key issue; software can’t know, and basically you take the life and character out of a vocal performance by doing that automatically. I use tube compression on the way in and try to do as little as possible (which could still mean quite some)in the mix later.

Two very well respected posters here (Tom Woodcrest and ArjanP) who compress on the way in. Advice I’ve heard since 24 bit interfaces have become more common is to bring it in “dry”, keeping options open, and then compress to taste after that. I wonder why you guys aren’t doing that?

I think I know the answer … with enough experience you know what sound you are aiming for, you know your equipment well, and there’s no reason from a time management point of view to do something twice when once will be just fine.

But … in case there’s another reason … I thought I’d ask!

Thanks!

Well, for me, it’s partly taming singers’ dynamic range in the analog domain, but more importantly it is a matter of sound; My TLAudio Ivory sounds better than most compressors I’ve heard in the digital domain (disclaimer: that leaves many very expensive ones unheard/ unbought) and sometimes I use the Voicemaster because of its sound for certain vocals.

On a sidenote: I also support the idea of getting the sound right at recording, which saves a huge amount of time that one is not tweaking afterward. That’s also the reason to limit vocal takes to three, maybe four. Then it’s decision time, and unused takes are erased. Keeping options open is fine, but the current digital tools having extreme and limitless possibilities can interfere with my time not being limitless…

I can’t agree more. My most loved moments are looking at a session and seeing little to no corrective processing. It makes me giddy when the faders are up and everything gels as is. It makes the production of the mix that much easier.


So anyway, As far as this compression thing goes for the O.P. Today’s session had this exact thing going on. 3 female vocalists in a song sung 90% in harmonies. The ranges were wide and guess what? Two of the women’s lower octaves sounded way too different than their upper octaves! Tone wise, that is. lol So I duped the tracks and separated the lower octave stuff from the upper octave stuff. The channel settings were duped with the track duplication then I plopped an eq on it, whittled a complimentary curve and whammo… everything was right as rain and it took very little time. I was chuckling when this came up today. :mrgreen:

Thanks for the respect, Alexis.

I think I know the answer … with enough experience you know what sound you are aiming for, you know your equipment well, and there’s no reason from a time management point of view to do something twice when once will be just fine.

I never think of it as time management. For me, I just have tools to create things, subtle or crazy outside the box. I know what sounds good to me and I go for it then. Heck, I not only audition 3 to 4 mics on a singer, I audition the same amount of chains through preamps and compressors till I get as close as possible to what I and the artist get giddy over. One time I recorded a vocal for a punk band using a u87 into a tmp8 transformer preamp. I rode the bugger in and out of soft clipping every take. In my head I thought, “I cant believe I am doing this and there is no way I will be able to clean this mess I am making up!” but I didn’t care because it sounded friking cool in the song! :laughing:

Wanted to thank the poster who mentioned WaveRider. The SOS review was enough to make me back off on the WVR
purchase, and then there are some PT reviews of it. Sounds like a better plugin for sure. I hope they make this available to other DAWs soon.

As to the idea of using compression vs. volume, given the option, I would use volume. And that’s because my mic pres do a pretty good job of things with just a touch of limiting to begin with.

That was me, Mr Roos - you’re welcome!

I am waiting for the VST version to come out. I’ll demo it and see if I can save time with it without sucking the life out of my tracks.