Originally Posted By: Bob Calver
Compressing vocals going in depends on your set up. Trouble is you can't undo it. using input controls to stop meters going into the red allows you to maximise the volume without clipping. I was always taught that the closer to the origin the highest possible setting makes for best signal to noise ratio, that is if you are using a usb interface or preamp (the first stage after the mic)you turn up as loud as possible without clipping and then in the DAW turn up the input volume to maximum without clipping so you maximise signal to noise. its logical if you think about it.

if you have a low signal going in and then boost it at the DAW stage you're turning up any noise as well as the signal.

as far as standing further away from the mic, some mics actually have a presence effect - for example close to a Shure SM58 boosts bass and many vocalists actually use the effect to enhance their vocals - simply swaying away for the loud bits (watch Tony Christie live doing Is this the way to Amarilllo!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69xk1aBEL_E

compressing a recorded track gives you greater flexibility although I do know with outboard effects some professionals do put a little compression on the input


Hi Bob, I don't understand what you mean by "Compressing vocals going in depends on your set up." or "trouble is you can't undo it." Maybe you can expand on your set up and the effect on the compressor in your setup. I normally think of vocal compression as an effect and independent of the signal chain. For instance, a signal chain is still complete and carries the audio signal regardless if a compressor resides in the signal chain or not.

You control clipping either analog or digital clipping through proper gain staging (see 90db's comment above). Analog and digital clipping are different and the proper gain staging is different between the two. Gain staging is different between recording and live broadcasting. A separate mix is set up to properly record a live show that has different settings for gain, eq and dynamics for the recording feed from the FOH or stage monitor feeds. The highest volume without clipping is not the proper gain stage for a digital recording. The noise floor for digital is much lower than the noise floor for an analog signal. Thus there is much more available headroom in a digital recording and the signal is normally 6-12db lower and more care must be taken to not have digital clipping. Because of the signal/noise ratio of the digital path, there is a lot of flexibility to work with lower input signals.

What you are calling a presence effect is actually called a proximity effect, an increase in the low frequency response when speaking closely into a microphone. Again, there is a difference in the desirability and benefits between live broadcasting and studio recording. Many singers employ the effect live but it is rarely desirable and more often avoided in studio recording. It is actually a poor recording technique for studio recordings because normally the changes in tone between close mic and the singer turning away or moving back from the microphone has to be 'fixed' in post processing. It is better to have less of these tonal and dynamic changes because it will take a lot more processing and time to correct. Live broadcasting is a lot more forgiving environment.

Note that your example of Tony Christie is a live recording visually but the liner notes to the YouTube posting indicate the audio has been overdubbed with a studio recording from a CD and synced to the video and is not a true representation of how that audio actually sounded nor did it reflect what the sound engineer may have been required to do on the mixing board to compensate for Mr. Christie's mic techniques.

A common way studios, both home, semi pro and pro increase the quality of their recording chain is to use a Channel Strip. A channel strip will have a high quality or boutique preamp, a compressor and an EQ. Using a channel strip along with a quality mic can make recording into consumer grade interfaces and digital recorders like the Zoom models, Tascam DP series recorders and similar models record high quality, professional grade audio.

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