Hardware - vocal compressor pedal?

[JD01]

I've got those Antares compressors that you pointed me in the direction of a few months ago but I couldn't quite get my head around them... I got a bit of option paralysis - had no idea what one to choose and they all seemed to have options and buttons on them that I didn't understand.

In the DAW I just use a few Focusrite compressors that come with the purchase of the 2i2. I use the Scarlett which is a simple "4 knob" compressor and also sometimes use the "Red 3" which is a slightly different interface but is probably very similar really - bubba rates this one.

I mainly use the GearBox compressor/sim for just taking the spikes off on the way in and giving my voice a slightly nicer tone I still compress it and mess about with it more later. I'm pretty new to vocal processing though - I've only really been able to sing to a level I'm happy with and can repeat take after take in the last few months.

That's all fine, but whatever you're doing is not working for you, right? You're looking for solutions. If you wanna keep doing all that, then you'll probably be better off doing separate quiet/loud takes. IMO I'm not seeing anything in your process that would be made better with a hardware compressor going in. But it certainly doesn't hurt to try it if you want.

Having heard your vocals on bunches of your mixes, if I were you, I'd try to get the cleanest clearest take I can. That would start with finding a spot in your room that isn't jamming a bunch of ambient noise and reflective crap back into the mic. Maybe even make some sort of home-brew vocal booth. Make a fucking pillow fort out of couch cushions or something. Lol. With a clean take, you can compress the snot out of vocals with software compression and it'll still sound clean and clear...but leveled out.

Yeah - it doesn't work that well and its a bit of a faff. Every time I adjust something in Gearbox, I have to save the preset so that I can do back to it later if I'm working on the same song. You can't monitor live with the UX2 - the monitoring has to come through Gearbox so it makes my computer slow and occasionally it stutters a bit during takes which throws my timing out and is obviously annoying as fuck.

Having thought about it more today it seems that what I am trying to do is replace the UX2 Gearbox annoyance with a little outboard box which will do the bits I liked from GearBox but without the annoyance of having to actually use Gearbox!

I've actually started hanging towels and stuff up around the room - I sing facing straight at the curtains which have a duvet over them and have a duvet over the door behind me and stuff. I don't mind having a bit of distortion on the vocals, but one of the tracks I did was a little too much in the verses.

[Greg_L]

Yeah - it doesn't work that well and its a bit of a faff. Every time I adjust something in Gearbox, I have to save the preset so that I can do back to it later if I'm working on the same song. You can't monitor live with the UX2 - the monitoring has to come through Gearbox so it makes my computer slow and occasionally it stutters a bit during takes which throws my timing out and is obviously annoying as fuck.

Yeah, get rid of that shit. Gearbox is poo.

I've actually started hanging towels and stuff up around the room - I sing facing straight at the curtains which have a duvet over them and have a duvet over the door behind me and stuff. I don't mind having a bit of distortion on the vocals, but one of the tracks I did was a little too much in the verses.

Distortion on vocals is fine, but you're gonna wanna add that later too. You don't have anything that will add the good kind of distortion going in. Not many of us do. I really think you should focus on just getting the cleanest driest takes possible and doing the rest later.

[liv_rong]

Why do you need to monitor with the plugins for vocals? I can understand for a guitar plugin or something but why not just record your take then compress after? What am I missing? I don't have much experience with vocals btw, I'm kind of following this thread for some learnings as well.

[Farview]

That does work, but the problem I have with using really low gain and chopping up the track is that you end up introducing a fuck load of noise to the quieter track... which is exactly the opposite of what you want in the quieter sections - don't know if you've heard my music, but the quieter sections tend to be just singing along with the bassline and drums - when I've tried this, listening carefully, I can actually hear the hiss come in before I start singing.

A compressor will do the same thing. All it is doing is turning down the loud stuff, so the hiss will be brought up with the low stuff.

Make sure that if you are using analog emulation plugins, turn off the "analog" switch, which is all the hiss and hum of the original piece of equipment. Waves is bad about this, once you put 10-15 instances of an 1176, la2a or even an SSL channel in a mix, the hiss becomes deafening.

After reading a little further, I noticed you are using and AMP SIM????!!!! for recording vocals. That's where the hiss is comping from. Stop that.

If you record just the vocal, without going through a bunch of useless garbage, you will not have the noise problem. Any ambient room noise will be a problem with or without a compressor. If you turn the gain up to record the quiet parts, or if the compressor brings up the quiet parts, it will be the same thing,

[JD01]

Why do you need to monitor with the plugins for vocals? I can understand for a guitar plugin or something but why not just record your take then compress after? What am I missing? I don't have much experience with vocals btw, I'm kind of following this thread for some learnings as well.

I actually quite like the sound I get from the Gearbox sim and I haven't worked out how to achieve a similar sound without it yet.