Live Mixing Vocal Compression

You can use compression on vocals to just even out the performance and to create an effect.

Live mixing vocal compression.

I wish i could do that too. To achieve subtle natural sounding compression on your vocal it s best to use multiple compressors throughout the mixing process this is called serial compression. Let me state up front that there s no single setting you can use for every vocal track. In a live setting try dialing back the compression settings if you re using compression at all on your vocal channel and instead use the volume fader to control how the vocals sit in the mix.

But the truth is it s not that easy. There are no magic settings that work 100 of the time. Your vocals should sound 100x better than they did before especially if you followed all of the other vocal mixing steps mainly equalization first. Compression settings for lead vocals should be as natural sounding as possible.

Compressing a lead vocal isn t always easy but avoiding these mistakes will help you mix vocals that sound modern and musical. Some recording engineers think compression is a must for vocals. Many bloggers will tell you what the perfect vocal compression settings are. Heck it d certainly save me a few keystrokes.

At this point you re done. It evens out the often erratic levels that a singer can produce and tames transients that can cause digital distortion. Because humans are expert listeners any small unnatural sounding volume jump or dip will be noticeable and detract from the power of the melody and lyrics. Rather than using one heavy compressor with a 10 1 ratio that s applying 10 db of gain reduction it s better to use multiple compressors that each chip away at the.

There is no one size fits all formula to vocal compression. If you must use compression we recommend trying a ratio no higher than 3 1 for live use along with shorter release attack times.