Posted by keaves sharpi (68.49.139.120) on May 06, 2004 at 23:58:13:
In Reply to: recording question posted by Sambini on May 05, 2004 at 13:24:31:
>> So, when I'm recording vocals, I use a dedicated compressor....
a word of advice. Don't use anything when recording. You can always put it in later, but you can't take it out. That alone should help a lot.
>>and it seems now that I need to de-ess and then excite/enhance.
again, record clean.. It'll help avoid the need for even more processing later.
As a rule of thumb, I have everyone who steps in front of the mic yell as loud as they can, and watch my meters. Digital recorders give lots of headroom, so I just drop the gain so that their loudest yell doesn't clip. As long as I have a clean vocal recording, I find I can do minimal compression to flatten the peaks and get them into the mix pretty well.
>> So, my question is - Can anyone recommend a dedicated de-esser or enhancer that is decently priced? Someone told me that Behringer made a decent one. Thanks in advance.
The onboard fx should really do a fine job if you use them sparingly. As for behringer's stuff, it's good for the price, but chances are your roland can do just as good of a job. Try my suggestion. Don't use any limiting or compression when you record, but make sure that at their loudest, your vocalists never clip. Then use a heavy compressor (try 20:1) at like -4, then normalize. I can give you more specific ideas if you email me.
k