I've got Grace, now I need style

[basschair]

Haha

So my Grace 101 finally arrived, and I'm ready to get back to my voice work. Now I need some advice. I'm working on recording some unaccopmanied monologues. One particular reading requires the widest possible range of dynamics, and I'm a bit worried about busting into the red zone. I know that it's usually a pretty good idea to record clean and process later, but I feel that it would be best to do a bit of the brickwall limiting here.

First off, can this be done in real-time? Second, can any/all of you who have the experience give some suggestions on settings for limiting/compressing? I'll be recording through an AKG C414B-ULS and a Rode NTK (alternate takes) with a Royer metal mesh pop screen, through the Grace 101 and into the 001. Again, this will be absolutely unaccompanied vocal monologues, with this particular reading ranging from whispers to yelling. I will be backing off from the mic ("working it") for loud passages, but I want to make sure there's no doubt that I won't clip.

Thanks for the help!

Paul

[daryl bowden]

Well, I know you don't have one, but the Apogee Rosetta has a "soft-limiting" feature that I find extremely useful for this sort of thing. Basically you just set up as you would normally and if your singer goes into the red, it just limits it, instead of sending the clipping signal on to the 001. Of course if you really push it,it will still clip, but I find it to be one of the best features of the rosetta. I know this is kinda irrelevant in your case, but figured you might like to know in case of a future purchase.

[finalcut]

Check out this link. It is from Sweetwater Musics support section. They have all kinds of great info!
http://www.sweetwater.com/insync/sum...?article=vocal

Good luck.

[BradLyons]

I certainly recommend the Rosetta for a couple of reasons.... the main being it just sounds KILLER and will bring new life to your A/D conversion. You really won't understand just how much of an improvement it will make until you hear it. The SoftLimit is great, but you really should get a limiter. An affordable one that really sounds great is the Summit TLA50 tube leveling amplifier. This is a little half-rack module that will not only warm the sound up a little bit, but provide a very musical "squashed" sound that isn't over-bearing. It enhances the tone and smoothens it out as well... very cool piece and VERY affordable. Here is a link to it on our website.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/TLA50/

[finalcut]

Wow Brad. I did not know that you were from Sweetwater. Let me take this opportunity to say that you guys at Sweetwater are the absolute best at everything you do - including the sales and support of Pro-Tools. Keep up the killer work!
Carl

[lesbrunn]

basschair,

First off, can this be done in real-time?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">If you're talking about doing this in PT, you can send your audio into an aux track with a limiter inserted, and route the output of the aux track to an audio track for recording.

lesbrunn

[Camilo Orozco]

If you're talking about doing this in PT, you can send your audio into an aux track with a limiter inserted, and route the output of the aux track to an audio track for recording.

lesbrunn

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I believe this is NOT true. You have to add the limiter BEFORE hitting your A/D stage. So it must be a hardware compressor/limiter.

[basschair]

Thanks for all the suggestion guys! It sounds like a hardware limiter would be the best choice for what I need to do. Unfortunately, I've gotta hold off on something like that for now. I guess I'll have to "work the mic" very carefully. Unless of course someone can suggest another way to go. Without hardware, how can I compress (softly) the vocals while recording, rather than recording and then compressing to maximize the total signal (which would be done through Waves L1 later). I'm probably totally missing something obvious, but so far I haven't had to take this approach before.

Thanks again!

[da BaSsTaRd!]

the reason hardware works better is becuase you can push the gain in your hardware before it comes into the digital world.

you could try this:
1) create aux track with input set to your microphone. put a send on that track to bus 1. use this track to monitor your a/d gain stage (coming into PT).
2) create an aux track with input set to bus 1. put a send on that track to bus 2. put your compressor on this track.
3) create an audio track with input set to bus 2. this is the track you will record to.

the problem with doing it this way is that the input gain is the same as if you just created an audio track and recorded the microphone, then added a compressor to that track. your best bet is to worry about the volume later and just concentrate on getting a good, clean, dynamic signal to begin with.

[Shannon Dunn]

Limiting will do you no good once it has passed the A/D converter. You must use a hardware limiter before the conversion, so you don't get any clipped bits of information. There are several good units for Under $500.oo out there. I like the dbx stuff personally, but it's just a matter of preference.