Karaoke Forums

TV and such are all post compression.

Concerts are totally different also. On stage monitors are not compressed to let the artist hear themselves naturally. What is compressed is in the final mix to the audience.

Recording I would compress everything post performance to not hinder the singer. When compressed people tend not to sing naturally. Vocals are not supposed to be the same volume though out the entire song.

I use gate's all the time. The main times I use compressors is on inconstant drummers that are all over the place with their kick drum level.

Wow. Mr Dye.
Never ever thought I would agree with you.
I am seriously surprised.

Monitors are often pre main console, the compression happens on the main console via vocals first, then there may be a compressor/limiter on the final mix as well.


Obviously not a lot of experience with recording? All vocals are compressed to some degree.

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With this I agree.
My annoyance is that too often the karaoke track is.

You have a total misunderstanding of compression and what it does! Your vocals will not be "made to be the same volume" with compression as your vocal level approaches the limit set there will be a gradual reduction in the output properly set you would never even notice it.

Depending on what system and how it is setup the majority of vocals in the monitor mix are also compressed with live sound on stage, our board processes compression, EQ, before it goes to the aux outs, we normally leave the vocals dry going out the monitors, but some singers like a little effect on the voacls as well.

Compressing the entire mix doesn't level the singer and unless you are keeping the vocals down or back in the mic then an overall compression could effect the entire mix if the singer pushes hard enough to activate compression.

compression on drums enhances the sound of the kick (I like to use a little on the toms as well) it is a matter of setting the attack and release correctly, (play around with it a little and you will see what I mean.

OK consider a concert situation with broadcast (think in terms of the grammys, super bowl, etc) and live recording. A split snake provides a whip to monitor world, a whip to the broadcast trailer, a whip to the recording engineer and a whip to front of house. Four completely separate signal paths so how the monitor engineer sets his mixes, doesn't affect the broadcast mix, doesn't affect the recording mix, doesn't affect the Front of House mix.

Broadcast compression is not only applied on the main mix, granted that's where it becomes more important. However, you want everything to sit together nice on something that has to be compressed that hard at the end, then you better be compressing anything with a big dynamic range like Vocals. Otherwise, send that summed mix with vocals going from very quiet all the way up to screaming into the final mix or mastering (for recording) compressor and each time that singer hits a big note you lose the rest of the band as the compressor kicks in. Broadcast and recording use more stages of compression than any live sound application.

Also your generalization of monitors not being compressed is not always true either and a good monitor engineer knows how to use compression to his advantage. The monitor engineer's credo is "Everything louder than everything else" because in the end that's what the musicians end up asking for. So to give that lead singer enough volume to hear their quiet passages without your wedges smoking when they hit a big note, you use compression. Suddenly now you have a very happy lead singer.

Liquid, I'm not sure where you get the impression that compression makes the entire performance the same volume, it doesn't (unless seriously over used and the results would be horrible). I explained before how compression fits 110dB of dynamic range into a system capable of reproducing only 90dB of dynamic range. That's the true use of compression as far as sound reinforcement (obviously guitarists and some other musicians do use it for effect as well but that's a whole different topic involving effects pedals).

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

you can't fix some of that by using a separate equalizer on the music?

You can't fix bad music or bad recordings with an EQ!

Sure you can.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mythical-Harry-Pott ... 3749wt_952

OK so maybe I jumped to a conclusion that was not warranted.

I stand corrected with the proper tools perhaps anything can be fixed!

we normally leave the vocals dry going out the monitors, but some singers like a little effect on the voacls as well)

i wouldn't sing over a P A. thats dry...and why should i...like compression there's not an artist out there that doesn't use some type of effects... effects to a degree can only help, and in karaoke it can help alot...this is coming from a singer's point of view....jmo ...
if used right i love compression if not i hate it...the people that know how to use it are even have it are far and inbetween in my neck of the woods..

I tend to keep the mic about 1 to 1 1/2 inches from my mouth because that's the sound I like for my voice. I can sing softly and I'm usually much more on pitch, more relaxed and have a better tone (proximity effect) that way. So when I've set the compression up on my rig, it works out just fine.

However, when I go out and sing on other people's rigs they sometimes will set the compression up too tightly for me. Once I back off the mic a bit things work ok, but if I didn't have to worry about that it would be nice. On the other hand, I sure am grateful when the compression clamps down hard on a screamer.

I am talking about live band setups when refering to the monitors the vast majority of people in a band seem to want the vocals dry on the monitors, from time to time I get one that wants a little effect in the mix.

When you're doing 3 and 4 part harmony vocals it's a lot easier to hear yourself and others when the vocal foldback doesn't have the added distraction of delay and 'verb.

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