Solid state vocal limiter / compressor

[53mph]

Thanks for that Mazz. I'm still undecided on spending so much money for an out of the box processor. Some of those big guys look like they require a pretty steep learning curve.I'll probably play it safe and get a low end unit to play with before making the $500+ leap to a big boy.

[edteja]

The Personus I have is okay. At first it was my only pre and I had no complaints, but the way the universe works, I acquired another tube pre, the Behringer tube ultra gain 2-channel. Now I almost never use the PerSonus anymore. If you want to experiment, make me an offer.

[squids]

Well, jes throwin down my bit and it's totally not in the budget but did some work last week using a Duende SSL and have mercy.......that sucka can really make a recording pop. My voice has never sounded betta, ever and I've been doing studio stuff since I was a girl. I'm spoiled but it's way outside what I could afford. Would be a lifetime purchase for a busy engineer.

[milfus]

channel strip and rack too, like the aphexx aural exciter, i actually have a rack mount of that one.

[mazz]

There's a Duende Mini too: http://solodeals.amazonwebstore.com/Duen....source= froogleIt's still 795, though. The thing is, it's not real time due to the nature of the way it works over the Firewire Bus. Lots of latency, not for live recording but probably amazing for mixing. Sounds like squids had fun with it!!Cheers,Mazz

[milfus]

ah yeah, gotta set your latencies all up in the daw, one place I was mixing, there was 9 diff sends and returns, because there was that many diff offsets, was crazy

[squids]

As Mazz said, it won't do everything well, like live recording but you can work some of those bugs out like milf talks about. The only thing is, most of the bands that go to Tommy's studio don't do it live.....they're not all in separate booths doing separate things all at the same time. They generally come in one at a time and lay down their stuff. Anyway, it was fun, mazz. And part of what made it fun (besides the endless male-female jokes Tommy and I have based our relationship on (so immature!)), was how great my voice sounded. I've generally got presence when I sing but this thing coulda done it for me without me even working. It really brought out all the nuances in my voice that don't get heard a lot, fleshed it out in ways you can't have unless I'm sitting in your lap crooning to you. Brings up the intimacy level. Anyway, like I said, way out my range but I'm hopin one of my forum pals will hit it big and get one and I can ask them to fix me up on somethin.....that'd be the bomb. Of course, they'll be big and won't have time or I won't be able to afford them. Ah well. Another brill plan shot to smithereens. hahahahah

[silvercord]

awesome info here...learning much on this thread..and Mazz thanks for all of that infoim sure that musta took some time to do: )58mph..i bought an bbe compressor/expander and sent it backthe same day (bleeeeecch!) my view of it seemed to be sharedwith any review of it online i could find...i bought a t.c electronic c300 and felt the same way when i recorded with it, even with tons of tweaking...since i didnt really have a ton of money to shelf out fora real darn good upper lower upper higher middle end gear;),i find it better to do post recording, making enough headwayto have room for different compression plugins/settings after the fact of recording. but i do indeed use that t.c. c300 compressor for something...i use it as a gate when recording...just enough to kill the "SHSHAHHSHAHSHSHSHSSSHS-honkhonk-SHSHSHSHSHSHSHS"s (i then didnt have to edit or 'noise bed' reduce it from the daw)and i use the other channel of the c300 to serve as a subtle desser..doesn't seem to rob too much from the vocal eq spectrum though(the Rode NTK i use is really up on the sibilant end-_-)so even if you cant make a purchase for a compressor/limiterthat would break the bank,tons of options out there, and like the one i got..thankfully it hasa use if i dont want to just compress or limit~hope at least some of this serves as some kind of help: )peacegeoff

[mazz]

Jun 14, 2008, 9:45pm, milfus wrote:ah yeah, gotta set your latencies all up in the daw, one place I was mixing, there was 9 diff sends and returns, because there was that many diff offsets, was crazyIf I'm sending out to an outboard FX and bringing it back in analog, I'll just go ahead and track the return when I get the effect the way I want it. Then I can compensate for any latency by sliding the track. Sometimes I'll even put a plugin on the track for further effectage.For hardware plugins such as Duende, the DAW should do the latency compensation automatically during mixdown. I don't know about every DAW out there but the one I use (DP) does with my UAD-1 card (which is another really cool unit but, alas, not real time either).If I'm mixing a large number of tracks, I'll bump up the latency buffer settings since I don't need to monitor anything live during mixdown.

[milfus]

yeah generally, but a send/return was needed for each latency, as diff racks had diff ones, and the studio was set up poorly, had to do math every time i touched the patch panel and adjust the latency, otherwise I would have had to print the track every time I used any of the gear, and of course one of the band members was a "producer", so I got to listen to him and his ideas about how I should use a cathedral reverb on his voice, and I generally placate and show them there idea, and then show them mine.most places have a rule about musicians in the mixing room, but now and then, wooo. no offense to any musicians out there, just you know, remember most of the guys at the console went to college/worked for YEARS to do what they do, it is doubtful you can out mix them.