Is it a MUST to use a compressor for vocal recording?

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 12:21 am

What the heck are you guys recording wherefor you want dynamics and whatnot in the vocals anyway? Classical opera or somesuch? Laughing

Vocals are to be smashed up front and in your face at all times. Same goes for the instruments and percussion. Twisted Evil

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 4:24 am

Ah, hip hop! Laughing

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 11:33 am

Oh I heard some hip hop earlier today, drifting out of someone's open window.

My first thought is "where's the bass!"
I mean hip hop is bad enough but without head-thumping bass, it's an empty shell of failure.

Unless their room has lots of bass trapping and the air was being particularly dense so as to prohibit the movement of sound molecules...

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 12:22 pm

An open window is a pretty good bass trap.

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 4:54 pm

I did think yeah, the bass is dispersing, but they definitely had no sub. You need a sub or seven for hip hop. Enough to make the beat loud enough so you can't hear any of the other crap.

Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:37 pm

terryko wrote:

thanks all,
ar.... that shocks me

Rode NT-1A --> Grace Design m101 --> COMPRESSOR -->MOTU 828mkII --> PC Sonar

I only think compressor should be placed before the micpre... I never focus on "Digital clipping", thanks Gecko~

but in my practice,
I always get mic-pre clipping instead of digital clipping when going thru 828.

anyway, thanks for all of your info~~

I doubt it.
Your NT1 can not likely produce a signal hot enough to cause the Grace to clip. On the other hand, the Grace certainly can (and will) put out MORE than enough signal to way clip your 828.

Besides - it's not entirely possible (well...not entirely true..but) to use a mic into a comp then a preamp...

I did run a mic through a VariMu once and got great grungy results...but that's a bit different than what you're after.

Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2008 8:01 pm

Question, then.

A microphone can give an audible signal without gain from a preamp? I obviously don't know the workings of a microphone very well, but can anybody give me a basic idea of how this works?

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 7:22 am

StephenMC wrote:

Question, then.

A microphone can give an audible signal without gain from a preamp? I obviously don't know the workings of a microphone very well, but can anybody give me a basic idea of how this works?

Essentially the voltage and current are too low coming out of the microphone to be connected to a line input. Noise is easily introduced at low voltage and current levels without proper impedance matching.www.wikipedia.org is a great resource for these types of questions.

Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 6:40 pm

"A microphone can give an audible signal without gain from a preamp?"

Yes, you could do that. Here's why not to:
I run live sound. I have multiple mic inputs and guitar line inputs. The guitars require a -26dB pad, the mics require massive amounts of gain. I still turn the guitars down so the mics are audible. This is because the output of a mic is stupidly low, a line level signal is stupidly high.

A preamp is a circuit designed to take the low level input and make it louder in a noiseless manner. Just raising the fader/turning up the input volume causes a lot more noise.

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 6:48 pm

It is not a MUST to use a compressor.

It is a MUST to use your ears.

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