Yeah... Floyd nailed it.

The vox sounds overly compressed... in a few places you can hear the plosives and distortion.

Of course, knowing that cassette tape degrades just setting on the shelf, and not knowing what you had to begin with....it's hard to say exactly what the source of the problem is. Perhaps the tape track was overly compressed to start with. If it was, short of recording the vocal track again, you don't have a lot of options. If it's a clean track....read on...

You said you used compression on the vocal track.... well... go back and remove that. EQ it a bit brighter and crisper sounding.... cut the mids and lows since most females don't have a huge mid/low range anyway. Then push the level up a bit on the volume fader. When I use a compressor on a track it is generally a very light compression. Listen to the song on my soundclick site called Come & Go (Rose version).... try to get your vocal track to set in the mix like that one. I rarely use a compressor in a track for any reason. My compressor tends to be in the master buss and on the entire mix as a whole and very lightly applied. You just want to knock the highest peaks back a bit.

Lots of folks use a compressor to try to gain volume to bring a vocal track up in the mix. That's the WRONG way to do it. If you have a vocal that's struggling to be heard in the overall mix, and you have it's level fader to 0dB or higher..... DO NOT USE A COMPRESSOR to try to get it up to level..... take the opposite approach.... turn everything else down until the vocal sets nicely in the mix. You can always get the final mix up to volume but get the mix RIGHT first.... and if that involves turning everything down and starting again..... then that's what you need to do.

The song overall is good.... work on the 2 issues.... get the timing synced properly and get the vocal tweeked with EQ and levels and remove the compression. Then repost it.

Edit: if the track is bad to start with, remember, we have a few ladies here who would likely be willing to sing this for you.


Last edited by Guitarhacker; 03/27/15 02:11 AM.
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