Looking for a nice vocal compressor

[tony moore]

My only outboard comp at the moment is a VLA. I love the sound of it but it's just not fast enough for bad singers. All other compressing is done "in the box" until I can afford an 1176...

I would love a distressor as well!

Sounds like your bases are already covered to me...

[Marlowe]

Mr. Dipity: I am looking for a somewhat colored new flavor. One especially good for vocals.

Tonedrone: My sympathies. I know that feeling. Getting the stuff I have now has been a long road.


I have been eyeing the 1176 but heard they were kinda lo-fi. Anyone feel that way or is that crazytalk?

[jrsgodfrey]

I'm confused.

Soundguy wrote, a couple of weeks ago:

"If you need to sound like every jerk engineer limiting room mics to sound like every hip dave sardy record, you cant go wrong with a distressor. Eventually you may get to the point where you realize that it uses IC's in the audio path like all the other crap out there and maybe you'll tire of it and wish you just bought a discrete 1176 instead."

Then this, above.

"distressor is always a goto for vocals... "

Which is it?

[Slider]

1176 is tops for me.
Greatest rock and roll compressor ever made.

I think you meant greatest compressor ever made.

dave

Your right!

[tony moore]

sounds like your taking dave's comments out of text...

he was talking about compressing room mics or overheads in the quote you lifted. and his comment in this thread related to vocals, which is what the orignal poster asked about. completely different topics in my world...

[jrsgodfrey]

Context seems the same to me.

http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopi ... highlight=

[MT]

Fight! Fight!

[The Real MC]

I don't have the budget for 1176s, but I really like the results I have gotten with my JBL/Urei 7110s.

[jrsgodfrey]

No, no. No fight wanted.

Thing is, I really value the opinions of working engineers, like Dave, who generally have little tolerance for gear, no matter how hi-fi or promising, that doesn't get the job done w/o too much fuss.

He seems to have mixed feelings about the Distressor, which, I suspect, may have to to with it being an "everything" box, and certainly also the ease with which it can be misued.

I would have gone out and bought one already, except that it seems like a tool that perhaps gives you too many options. We've all been the victim of too many options.

I no longer do this for a living (never really did for that matter) so I want to get something that will make me happy w/o a lot of tweaking and that doesn't cost too much.

[midiot]

distressor
Tube Tech CL-2A

[nick_a]

whatever you were saying about the 1176 being "lo-fi":

a) makes no sense, and
b) is way off base

it's a super super awesome piece of machinery.

[MT]

I would have gone out and bought one already, except that it seems like a tool that perhaps gives you too many options.

Funny, but that's exactly why I have put off buying one (that and the idea of the 1176).

"Seems to have... too many notes."

MT

[soundguy]

There are a lot of people overusing distressors for some cliche sounds, and thats my reaction to it. When you realize the topology of a distressor, it helped me to use it and has always been a go to for vocals but not much else. I like to track lots of stuff with an 1176, by the time I get around to vocals though, theres already a lot of tracks that have that bottom end and I usually want a vocal to sit above all that. Thats why distressors are cool, you can get a similar vibe, but its transformerless, so its going to sit above all that, so its less of a fight to make it all work. Beyond that, even though distressors have this reputation as distortion boxes (which is so silly IMO) they are incredibly clean and uncolored if you use them that way, which again, can be great for vocals. The control element is also waaaay better than an 1176 which can be a little stiff for vocals depending on what you are doing. If I had to pick one limiter, it woudl be the 1176, if I had to have a few, Im happy to have a distressor but am real tired of hearing room mics on nuke with that thing, that sound was cool the first 300 records I heard it on.

dave

[puffpastry]

I remember reading a thread over on The Lab forum about the Distressor's circuitry. One of the regular posters there had managed to trace out a schematic for the Distressor (all of the semiconductors in the Distressor have the labels erased). If I recall correctly, his claim was that the 1176 and the Distressor were quite similar. The Distressor seemed to be a proprietary line stage, the 1176's gain reduction stage, and some 74HC573 IC's for digital control circuitry.

I think that's interesting to note, given the discussion.

[fremitus]

i am quite surprised that no one has asked what type of vocal and what microphone he's planning on using. of course the suggestions are excellent compressors, but do they relate to the source?

so what's the source? what flavor of singer usu. determines my flavor of mic/pre/comp...