The problem might be inside BiaB itself. I think you answered your own question. That is, when you record in BiaB, I think RB would not give the same issue.

The thing is, as you said, you got a rack with a compressor in it. Now I can not tell you for sure if it IS the issue, but it is worth to try it out. The compressor reacts on all audio going on, so the vocals you record, but also the realtracks. When your vocal is the loudest "instrument" which it often is, it will pull the instruments down with it, since the compressor acts on a certain threshold. Passing that threshold will make the compressor compress all signals with a given ratio. This means that if your vocal gets a lot of compression during the louder phrases your instruments get the same amount of compression. If you got them softer in the mix, softer than your vocals they might become too soft. Try recording your vocals and passby the stuff you got in your rack and see if it becomes a different problem.

As Mac allready said, a vocal will most of the times, practically almost always get a compressor to make the voice stand out and give you the space to turn the volume up for it. The problem you might get now (with the rackitems being bypassed) is that your vocal stands out on louder phrases, but will be too soft in the softer vocalparts. Since you cannot use a compressor seperately for each instrument/vocal, the compression in BiaB is mostly a thing that has not much use. It can be used for those that make their final mix allready in BiaB, just to boost the energy of it all, but it is really not suitable as a mixdown item in fact.

So you may record your vocal in RB. Import the file you created in and saved with BiaB into RB and record the singing there. I believe (I have seen the program, but I prefer to work in Protools or Cubase after my work with BiaB is done) that you can give each channelstrip there it's own FX and dynamics.

You mentioned that this is all you got and I therefore assume you don't want to buy extra stuff. But another way would be to download a multitracker from the net, there are plenty freebies that you can try out. Also some very cheap ones that I have been reading about which also might be pretty good stuff for it's money. Reaper is such an example. I hope you can solve the matter this way. If it is not the compression, well feel free to come back with the rotten tomatoes and force another answer out of this forum! Goodluck!

Last edited by abaudio; 03/25/09 08:32 PM.
I'll be back...