Vocal Compression Mixing Trick

Mixing Vocals Compressor Plugin 1176 LA-2A Slate Digital FL Studio Pro Tools Cubase Ableton Vocal Mixing Compression Audio Mastering

#mixingandmastering #flstudio #audioengineer #musicproducer

[ErikPelyukhno]

I’ve been doing this intuitively!! Now I feel validated

[silverprimusboi]

VOCAL COMPRESSION ON A WHOLE NOTHER LEVEL COMING THROUGH MY MIND

[NOXBEATZ]

multi platinum mix engineer here, I NEVER do a fast attack first . I always like the peaks because it makes vocals feel real. On my 1176 I set the attack to 3 o clock and the release almost all the way to the right. Then I hit a Cl1b with about 3-4 dB of reduction with attack at noon and release at 9 pm. Works 95% of the time for all vocals for me.

Edit: I never knew prefacing my experience and knowledge in a passive and non confrontational way would result in so many of your soyboy fans getting triggered. Sheesh 😂 It’s called a resume and experience in context. I used to drive my attack all the way to the right on the 1176 and would often get clients disappointed with the peaks being shaved down that much more and noticed a higher percentage of them giving me less recalls after backing off the speed of the attack with the 1176 afterwards. Learn from me. Learn from the fact I’ve worked directly with Chris Brown, Eminem, and countless other big artists in the past. Learn from the countless times I had to recall my compressor settings and deal with it so y’all don’t make that same mistake. But if you like it then go off and do it. Your sound is your sound! But nah y’all just wanna be mad cuz I said I was a multi platinum engineer or get hung up on technicals and not general intention just like every kid I went to audio school with did when I took over front of house during every internship and they’d say the same shit while wrapping cables. 😂 . With all due respect, Get fucked ❤️

[mr.cutback]

What works really well is to use a slower attack and release first. This is because the goal of the first compressor is to take as much of the work away from the “limiting” second compressor. The second compressor having a faster attack and release will introduce more artifacts to the sound, thus, we want the peaks caught by the second compressor to be as short as possible in terms of time duration.

[obangamuzik]

This technique always works for me 💯💯💯

[twarzawtwarzsmakzycia]

Doing same with uad plug-ins
Peace
Works great giving clean vocals

[painengineer]

Yessir them tight vocals. I remember a while ago your tips were a bit dodgy but your stuff is getting good and these tips are good 👍 hopefully you get much more interaction

[andreasmetzger]

8:1 on the first one?? Holy fck
Alternative suggestion: Moderate compression (5-7db) on the first one, then go down to very soft compression on the last

[charlesjackson]

If only someone would build a dynamic clip gain wherein all the peaks and valleys in a waveform were marked and all one had to do is pull down or push up that waveform to uniformity.

[robdigital]

I do this but the opposite way. Starting with light compression gradually compressing harder. That way the compressor isn’t working as hard on the higher dynamic range parts of the vocal

[thewx]

Thanks bro been using r vox and the la2a for this recently but trying to figure out what the knobs actually do more specifically lol

[ManiacalMidget]

And if you want to add fx like reverb, delay, etc, send your vocals into a "send" track and add it there. If you try to add reverb to a compressed vocal it can cause a lot of issues.

[taylorbickford]

Always love your tips and tricks, keep killing it!

[simondanielssonmusic]

Here are my steps to creating natural sounding vocal compression:

1. Go in and manually turn down the volume of peaks, consonants and sibilants of the audio itself, wherever it is the worst. Don't get lazy with this step, if you do it properly you'll notice you won't need a fast-attack compressor or a de-esser. Listen with your ears, not with your eyes.
2. Add a hardclipper as the first plugin in the chain to even the peaks that remained after the first step. No more than a couple dBs of gain reduction!
3. Add a 80hz hipass filter, since the low bass frequencies would otherwise interfere with the compression in step 4.
4. With all the previous steps finished, you won't need much compression at all. A smooth LA-2A style compression with no more than 3 dBs of gain reduction will be enough.

Stop relying on compressors to make your vocals fat, it's just an old trend. Compressors are incredibly musical tools that can breathe life into everything, but because of that fact they can also sound unpredictable. Manually adjusting peaks and sibilants will ensure that you remain in the control of the vocal, and it will remain predictable. You should control the compression, the compression shouldn't control you!

[Aroh_music]

pro tip use volume automation instead of two compressors for natural sound vocal

[alessandrosummer]

I think with the 1176 you can get away with a lot more compression. I also think this compression can work for like a folk or acoustic track but definitely is too little for like a rock or pop track

[GriffinBlaze]

fet then opto is the standard for vocals

[DANYALLAYNAD]

I don’t know why this never made sense to me until now. I always tried each of these plugins individually then give up everytime then just use a Vocal Rider plugin. Definitely trying both of these in series next time 👌

[erkamau]

It Is Better the opposite order. 1176 compresses ALL the peaks over the threshold, Just because It has a very . fast Attack. With LA-2A the fast peaks pass instead through it not compressed.Try

[dtphenomenal]

Another thing I like to do is use a light analog compressor and gate on the way in then you don’t have to do that extra compressing.