Why track vocals with compressor into a 24 bit system?

[casey campbell]

i must be the only one around here that thinks compressing anything on the way in is a bad idea and not necessary...

a great vocal chain is the following:

microphone
mic pre
interface

i find that people are obsessed with compression. it's a great tool, but overused...and usually by engineers who don't know how to use it! ha ha ha

here is the typical approach:

compress during tracking
compress during mixing on individual tracks
compress/limit the submixes
compress the final mix, which then goes to the mastering engineer...
compress/limit during mastering
compress at the radio station

oh man....

[thethingwiththestuff]

i find people are obsessed with putting guitars through horrible, high THD, low-fi amplifiers. amp non-linearities are a great tool, but overused... mostly by idiots! bwa hahaha

i dont understand this "authentic & precious" approach to recording. if you can't insert a compressor on a vocal without ruining it, you're not a "purist," you're a bad engineer who needs to learn his tools better and listen more objectively.

dont you think your 'typical approach' list ignores the reasons WHY compression is used in each of those steps?

[chris harris]

His post also ignores any justification for the blanket statements that: compressing on the way in is "a bad idea", and that it's "not necessary". Those are both pretty bold statements with no reasons given.

If "everybody overuses compression" is your justification for not using compression, that's called "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". And, it's just as misguided as overusing compression.

It's a tool, people.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i must be the only one around here that thinks compressing anything on the way in is a bad idea and not necessary...

c'mon.

compressing vocals a bit on the way in is a good idea because
1. it almost invariably helps the vocal sit in the track better. which is nice because then you can listen to a playback and focus on the performance rather than riding the fader all over the place. and more importantly,
2. most singers LIKE THE WAY THEIR VOCALS SOUND with some compression. the sound of lots of rock vocals that everyone knows and loves is DEPENDENT on tons of compression. go ask robert plant how he feels about the 1176.

likewise there's plenty of other times compression on the way in is a good idea...if someone's doing, i dunno, a toy xylophone overdub, and we listen to the basic sound and all we hear is the transient spiking 20db above the sustain (which is the part of the sound we really want) then yeah i am gonna squash the shit outta that transient and make it sound more like we want it to sound from the get go. why should i wait until later when i can hear it's wrong now?

what if i'm recording something like pedal steel, where the dynamics can be all over the place? if on the first run through of the tune i can hear that the dynamics are nuts, it's a bad idea to do something about it then and there?

or say we've already got a really dense mix happening and then the guitar hero has one more brilliant idea for some cleanish single note melody thing. i know from experience that thing, on its own, is gonna just die in the mix so why wouldn't i compress it some to help it sit? if i said i eq'd it (via the guitar, the amp, the mic, an actual eq, or all of the above) to be really midrangey to help it cut through the 46,000 other guitar tracks, would you say that was a bad idea? probably not, so what's the difference in using a compressor to help achieve the same goal?

i'm not saying i track everything through a distressor on nuke, or even that i track most things with compression. i don't. but a blanket statement like "it's a bad idea and not necessary" is just plain silly.

[Nick Franklin]

compress during tracking
compress during mixing on individual tracks
compress/limit the submixes
compress the final mix, which then goes to the mastering engineer...
compress/limit during mastering
compress at the radio station

oh man....

Yes, because tasteful and gentle leveling at each stage avoids your overly dynamic mix being crushed by the mastering engineer or the radio limiter.

If you haven't compressed your vocal on the way in you have to compress it a little harder in the mix. If you don't compress it in the mix you need to compress the whole mix a little harder. If you haven't compressed that the mastering engineer will have to slam it a bit more than usual to get the vocal to sit in the mix. If you convince the mastering engineer not to do it... well the limiter at the radio station will destroy it.

By the way, I presume we're all talking about making pop music here? Where even mixes dubbed as 'dynamic' have far less dynamic range than many other styles of music.

For me, the other reason to compress a vocal (or anything for that matter) on the way in is the same reason I apply EQ on the way in. It's because any decisions regarding tonality you can make early on, will make later decisions easier and ultimately better. If you've tracked your vocals completely clean, no comp, no EQ, even if you got the great singer and the great mic position, you wont know how to make other things sound to fit around the vocal until you get to the mix and start sorting it out, by which stage it is probably too late to fix it.

[chris harris]

By the way, I presume we're all talking about making pop music here?

Welcome to the board! Making pop music is typically not what we're talking about. But, all are welcome!

[Nick Franklin]

By the way, I presume we're all talking about making pop music here?

Welcome to the board! Making pop music is typically not what we're talking about. But, all are welcome!

Thanks for the welcome! Joined about 18 months ago but thanks all the same!

Let me clarify, by pop music I was using the more traditional definition of "pop" or "popular music" meaning music which is not purely orchestral in nature, jazz, choral music or instrumental music. I didn't mean music which necessarily sells in large quantities, or is heard on popular radio.

The reason I mentioned it was that the thread is about compressing vocals at the input stage, a technique that I believe is more relevant or useful in pop music (from big black to AC/DC to lady gaga) than in other styles of music.

Sorry for the confusion!

[vvv]

big black = "pop music"?

There's gotta be something wrong with that definition!

[Nick Franklin]

big black = "pop music"?

There's gotta be something wrong with that definition!

If you're brutal enough \m/

[lionaudio]

Big Black was the best pop music ever. Although I'm sure Albini would hate this thread because A) we are talking about DIGITAL... and B) he never tracked vocals with compression until Robert Plant made him do it...That being said, it has been ages since i've listened to Songs About Fucking and I have a new pair of ADAM p33a's so guess how I'm gonna spend my 4th of july evening?

[Nick Franklin]

Wow I did a good job of derailing this thread!

Songs About Fucking is a ripper though.

[Matt C.]

it's already been said, but i'll usually track vocals with hardware compression on the way in because i like to be able to listen back and have a usable signal right away instead of goofing around with plugins. and it makes monitoring way easier.

just picked up Songs About Fucking the other day, i think that completes my Big Black collection.

[joel hamilton]

"Here lies the difference between the automaton and all tools requiring continuous handling; its purpose is automatic and uninterrupted mechanical functioning. We are surrounded by an automatism toward which all branches of technology are developing. The greater part of our production tools work automatically. Our transport is automatized in the form of the ubiquitous railways, ships, motor cars, airplanes, elevators, and so on. Our light, water , and heating systems function automatically.
There are vending and food serving automatons, all of them designed for the task of repetitious performance with mechanical uniformity, just as a phonograph record repeats the same piece over and over. It is exactly this automatism that gives its peculiar stamp to our civilization and sets it apart from other eras. It is automatism by which our technology achieves its growing "perfection." Its signature is the independent and unchanging repetition of its apparatus."
-Friedrich Georg Junger
"the failure of technology (perfection without purpose)"
written in the summer of 1939.

This book has become my manifesto for all things engineering , audio, production, and art.

Enjoy.

[Jay Reynolds]

And heaven help any of us nut-jobs who intentionally make a comp pump and breathe as an effect.
Drum loop is exhibit A. I took a pair of stock apple loops and ran them through a dbx 106a at the same time:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2731144/Text.mp3

I know the Op is about vox. AMJS.

[casey campbell]

i find people are obsessed with putting guitars through horrible, high THD, low-fi amplifiers. amp non-linearities are a great tool, but overused... mostly by idiots! bwa hahaha

i dont understand this "authentic & precious" approach to recording. if you can't insert a compressor on a vocal without ruining it, you're not a "purist," you're a bad engineer who needs to learn his tools better and listen more objectively.

dont you think your 'typical approach' list ignores the reasons WHY compression is used in each of those steps?

why compress on the way in when you could do so in the mix stage?

i never said i don't use compression. i use it all the time (when mixing). i just said that compressing on the way in is not necessary. everyone knows you could work yourself in a box when printing effects/compression...

in mixing i think compression can be a great tool, but so is riding a fader/automation!

next point: tell me why compression is necessary in each stage of the record making process?

i was just answering the o.p.'s question in a round a bout way...saying that he doesn't need to worry about compressing a vocal on the way in. especially since alot of folks on here agree that recording at lower levels in the digital realm turns out better sounding mixes....