MIX YOUR VOCALS - How to use COMPRESSION in CUBASE 9.5

today is episode number three of mixer vocals and we're going to talk about compression [Music] hey what's up everyone Chris here from mixdown online now Before we jump in if you're new here on this channel feel free to subscribe and to hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything and for all of you share and like all right so let's jump in [Music] okay now compression now the reason why I want to compress my vocal is basically to add energy and to control dynamics which is one of the main role of a compressor I want to make sure I hear all the words even if I did some volume automation before compression the vocal is still a dynamic vocal so the compressor will help me to keep that dynamic under control and also a compressor will help me to polish my sound and to add tone and color and this is what we're gonna look into today so now I'm first gonna show you what I would do if I was only gonna use one compressor in my chain okay I'm gonna open up the vintage compressor which is a stock plug-in out of Cubase this is similar to the 1176 that a lot of you probably know you can use any compressor to do that job your compressor out of your DAW will do the job and but I kind of like that type of vintage compressor so let's start by talking about the attack and release time because these settings are very very important now the attack time will actually control the the punch of your sound control the transients basically so if you have a fast attack that will cut off most of the transients your vocal will sound smooth and the peaks are gonna be under controlled with a fast attack but that will bring your vocal back in the mix and a slow attack will add more punch to your vocal by letting some of the transients through okay and the attack is basically the time the amount of time it takes for the signal to get fully compressed once the threshold point has been reached so now on this compressor I have no threshold if you noticed okay this is controlled by the input signal coming into the compressor so the more signal that gets in the compressor the more gain reduction I'm gonna get okay so this is how I'm gonna balance my threshold per se okay I'm gonna just use my the amount of input signal coming in to the compressor so let's have a quick listen to what we have to work with and then I'm gonna start by working on the attack [Music] okay now the attack is super fast I'm gonna activate my compressor and I'm gonna over compress okay just for you to hear what the compressor effect sounds like I'm gonna solo my track I'm gonna bring my ratio at an 8 to 1 ratio which will compress a lot but it's gonna help us to hear the effect now my attack is way down my release is way down as well and let's have a quick listen complication there's something in me now we're gonna listen to this again and I'm gonna bring up the attack time just pay attention to the difference it's my condition my complication there's something in me other position it's no intention this count ascension I'm singing clearly my EMPA so you notice that by slowing up the attack my vocal son is more punchy so now it's all a matter of balancing the attack time to get to get the compressor to control the dynamics and at the same time to even up the entire sound so let's listen to that again and I'm gonna try to find a sweet spot it's my condition my complication there's something in me a position it's no intention ok some somewhere around 18 the milliseconds is gonna do the trick now it is still over compressed I'm compressing at an 8 to 1 ratio the goal here again is only to hear the effect of the compressor so now there's a lot of gain reduction but it's on purpose okay so now let's look at the release time now the faster the release the more upfront my vocal will be okay and the more aggressive my vocal will sound and by slowing down the release my vocal is gonna be a bit more it's gonna be less aggressive to start with will sound a bit more natural but less in your face again it's a matter of what you want for your mix depending on the genre of music you're mixing so let's try the same exercise with the release time it's my condition my complication there's something in me out of position it's no intention this condescension I'm singing clearly my imperfection okay now you can tell that when the release goes way down the vocal seems to be like right in your face and now I have a lot of gain reduction in my ratio is quite high so I'm just gonna bring that down to a four to one ratio and bring down by the amount of gain reduction okay and try to balance that out let's listen to that again it's my condition my complication there's something in me position it's no intention this count ascension I'm singing clearly my imperfection okay let's listen to that again it's my condition my complication there's something in me other position it's no intention this count ascension as you can tell what a faster release time the vocal comes right in your face so this is stuff you need to pay attention to and that will depend on what you want to get as a vocal sound if I'm mixing jazz for example or folk music I'm probably gonna slow up my release time so my vocal sounds a bit more natural and more controlled but for a rock song or something a bit more aggressive a bit more punchy I like to have my vocal like right in your face so a fast release will do the trick so let's try to balance this out in the context of the music so big other position I'm saying [Music] my complication [Music] position this condescension I'm saying okay so that sounds pretty good so this would be the the type of settings I would use if I'm only working with one compressor but again this is something you need to experiment with so that will give you a very good start point as far as the ratio goes I tend to stay between two to one to a four to one ratio okay so keep that in mind start with these settings a star as a starting point okay and just go according to the song you're mixing now something I love to do though is to use more than one compressor and this is how I usually work so the first the role the first compressor in my case is going to be to control the dynamics and the second compressor will be more for tone and general control okay so let's start with the first one in this case so if I'm using two compressors I'm gonna be less aggressive with the gain reduction okay because everything is gonna add up the first compressor will focus on the peaks of the vocal in case I'm gonna control the dynamics with that compressor so I'm gonna bring my attack faster okay so let's go with something around a four to one or you know let's go for a five not a four to one but a 5 milli second of attack time okay I'm gonna keep my ratio high let's go to a eight to one ratio and bring my release you know bring it way away fast to 10 milliseconds and I'm gonna start with this now the amount of gain reduction will be to a minimum I'm gonna try to keep it at a 1 to 2 DB of gain reduction I just want to catch up the peaks and control the dynamics of that vocal tract [Music] there's something in me out of position it's no intention this condescension I'm singing clearly my imperfection so that is only job just to control the dynamics so with a faster attack and a faster release I'm just gonna catch up the peaks and get a bit more control over all the dynamics of my vocals now the second compressor can act as a tonal compressor to add tone and color to my sound so I'm gonna use in this case I'm gonna use the tube compressor again a stock plug-in out of Cubase but in between if you notice I have an EQ okay and I'm using that EQ just to to enhance the sound of my vocal so I added a bit of top and to my to my sound and just to brighten up the sound a bit and this EQ is in-between it goes after the first compressor and before the second compressor I talked about that in my previous video so if you want to check it out check the link on top so now let's go to my second compressor and this tube compressor out of Cubase will be similar to an la-2a that again probably a lot of you already know so let's have a quick listen to what that sounds like [Music] okay so what I did here basically my attack time is at around 24 milliseconds okay because I want to keep my vocal on the puncher side okay and I have a release time of down to 30 milliseconds so again this keeps the vocal pretty upfront and punchy but this is a slow type of compressor and I think that's one has a ratio of around three to one or so and if you are if you click on the high side this is more limiting okay so like that at low and I have a two to four DB of gain reduction on this one so this compressor is a soft knee compressor opposed to a hard knee compress weight so it makes the transition of the non compressed sound to a compressed sound way more smooth okay so it gives that compressor a smoother sound then the a vintage compressor okay that we worked with earlier so I'm just gonna bypass those two plugins those two compressors and just to compare with the dry sound it's my condition my complication there's something in me out of position it's no intention this count is sensor okay in the context of the mix [Music] out of position this condescension I'm saying okay so I kind of like what it does I love the balance of the two now you can switch those around you know some will use a tunnel compressor at first and then control the dynamics with the second compressor that can be done as well so experiment with that so that gives you a bit of an idea on using more than one compressor in your chain now let's talk about parallel compression this is another technique that I'm gonna use for my vocals or any other instruments now the concept is very simple you duplicate your track like I did right here so we get the same a vocal sound on a second track or you can use ascends and affects the channel track and send the signal to that track that is going to do the same so I have the same plugins inserted on that second track I just made a duplicate and gate to make that simple and the only thing that I changed I remove the compressors and I used the vintage compressor now I'm gonna try bypassing my two compressors okay in the one I have on my on my original track and work with the parallel compressor only now the goal here was to to keep the dry signal going on with a fully compressed signal so blended the two together adds like a lot of power to the sound you can also keep your your initial compressors if you want to okay but let's try it out by bypassing our our compressors on the original track and work with the parallel compressor only so I'm gonna solo my second track my compressed track and as you can tell this one is going to be over compressed and this is done on purpose [Music] okay I am killing the signal with a twenty to one ratio a six millisecond attack in it 50 millisecond release time and this is what I get so it sounds super compressed but now when you blend this with the original signal this is where it happens [Music] there's something in me out of position I'm singing so that is another way you can use compression on your vocals something I need to note is when we we're adding compression very important to check the esses out of your vocal sound okay all the civilians you know after my compressors I added the pro D s from fabfilter to control the esses and in some cases if I need to like on this one this is what I did I even added a another de-esser before my compressor okay so this is the kind of stuff I usually do just to control the esses that can that can occur at around 6 K to 8 K or even lower than that so depending on how aggressive your vocal sounds so the use of a de-esser will help you to control those SS so just wanted to mention that I'm probably going to do a video on that later on but for now this is gonna be it so there you go this is how I work with vocal compression I hope that was helpful if it was please like and share this video and again if you're new here on the channel subscribe and hit that modification belt I just want to make sure you don't miss anything now on the next mix your vocals video we are going to talk about saturation not miss it

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 41,532

Keywords: audio, audio engineering, audio mixing, chris selim, cubase, cubase 9, cubase pro, home recording, home studio, home studio mixing, home studios, mixdown, mixdown online, mixing, mixing audio, mixing tip, mixing tutorials, music, recording audio, steinberg, the recording revolution, tips, tutorial, MIX YOUR VOCALS, COMPRESSION, How to use COMPRESSION, How to use COMPRESSION in CUBASE 9.5, COMPRESSION in CUBASE 9.5, How to use COMPRESSION in CUBASE, COMPRESSION in CUBASE

Id: 4SWpohB4BYw

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 26 2018