vocal recording

[General Ermintrude]

Recording involves making a series of choices .In this case, making them sooner will increase the overall quality of the end item. The chances of making a major fuck-up are slim, unless you're doing stupid things with your compressor ('crazy' or 'weird' sounds, ie fucking about without a clue what you're actually doing to the sound). A good compressor should be able to shape the dynamic of the sound whilst remaining essentially transparent.

Drums sound 'fuller' because you're not wasting the majority of the dynamic range of your recording medium with the initial impact, you get more of the resonance coming through. The human voice has a massive dynamic range which benifits from a tad of compression, just to fit it to the medium. Another benefit of compressing whilst recording is that you effectively double the amount of compressors available to you, which is great if you're poor. And if you do fuck it up, chances are you'll learn from it next time.

Go on, be a man, take some decisions now and save endless hours of jerking off at mixdown.

[soundian]

wouldnt that be a limiter your describing? im pretty sure the previous explanation was correct for a compressor. an expander expands the dynamic range (by putting hi volumes higher' date=' and low volumes lower(?), im not sure on expanders though), where as a compressor compresses the dynamic range (by putting hi volumes down and low volumes up).

a limiter is a simple compresser, it compressese hi volume signals so they do not surpass a certain threshold.

that was my understanding of it all, im probably wrong.[/quote']

Expander- makes quiet sounds louder but doesn't affect anything ABOVE threshold.*

Compressor- makes loud sounds quieter but doesn't affect anything BELOW threshold

Limiter- Special case compressor. Ratio set at infinity to 1.

Now that's all clear, carry on.

*I've never used an expander in anger, don't see the point unless the recording was fucked initially and they're useless live.

[MTA]

wouldnt that be a limiter your describing? im pretty sure the previous explanation was correct for a compressor. an expander expands the dynamic range (by putting hi volumes higher' date=' and low volumes lower(?), im not sure on expanders though), where as a compressor compresses the dynamic range (by putting hi volumes down and low volumes up).

a limiter is a simple compresser, it compressese hi volume signals so they do not surpass a certain threshold.

that was my understanding of it all, im probably wrong.[/quote']

Thanks Ian..

I have been using compression for many years and have had quite a few Chart Hits!! you where describing the Expander Compressor which does do as you say. but the Expander ONLY lifts lower sounds below the threshold set. Compression quietens levels over the threshold which in turn raises the lower sounds when the output gain is turned up.

Mark..

[Guest lime ruined my life]

i see.

but compressors have gain in built dont they? (thats what the gain knobs for?), i dont know. i think i was kind of right, but proabably not.

thinking about how compressors etc work always hurts my head.

[soundian]

i see.

but compressors have gain in built dont they? (thats what the gain knobs for?)' date=' i dont know. i think i was kind of right, but proabably not.

thinking about how compressors etc work always hurts my head.[/quote']

After a quick scan at a couple of articles I can see why people are confused.

Compressors reduce dynamic range, effectively they make the loudest bits quieter, if these loudest bits are now too quiet you use the gain make-up control to bring it back up. One consequence of using the gain make-up control is to raise the uncompressed signal as well, so technically it does make the uncompressed signal louder, but only relative to the compressed signal.

Expanders expand dynamic range by making the quietest sounds louder but not affecting the louder sound.