Vocal Compression How To - Behringer X32

hey there my name is Drew brashler and I want to help you feel more confident in your production gear no matter where you're starting from today we're going to be talking about compression and vocals if you missed my video on eq'ing vocals from last week make sure to go check that out as I have a link right there but today we're going to be talking about compression so I have the same audio pulled up from last week that I was talking about at the end of the video so let's go ahead and give that a quick listen [Music] you are good to me [Music] all right let's go ahead and turn the band off and let's give this one more listen after me good to me I can hear your voice calling out for me you are good to me so the first thing that I hear when I listen to this is the words I and light both of those are very pointed and they come straight through the mix the rest of it is pretty good on the Dynamics wise but those two words at a really high volumes out of a PA would just make your eyeballs hurt so what can we do about this well there is compression that we can do so compression is going to allow us to take those really loud transients like the eye and the light or those really loud words and just tame them down so the idea behind compression is any transients or very loud Peaks we can actually take that and lower that down to the remaining level of the rest of the vocal so if you imagine this vocal there's I and then light and those two words are pretty high and then the rest of the words are pretty even on the vol volume wise so what we're going to do is we're going to take the eye and the light and we're going to reduce the Dynamics of those down and then we can bring up the rest of the vocal up and you'll notice that my two vocals here are sitting at like positive 10 and about positive eight and so by doing compression we're going to be able to take the whole vocal up in gain with all of the lower words that we hear so I'm going to go ahead and turn down the vocal 2 and we're just going to focus on the first vocalist so our vocal one here that I have I have it selected and the first thing that you're going to want to do is press view on the dynamic section and that's actually going to pull that over on the right hand side and the next thing that we want to do is we want to enable it which we can either do by pressing this button right here or we can press it by pressing active up here now there's a couple different compression settings that we have on this screen and I'm going to explain all of them right now so the first thing that we want to talk about is threshold and threshold is going to be the point where our compressor will start activating and affecting the channel and we can go ahead and change this ratio up to 100 to 1 and I'll talk about the ratio here in a second but I'm going to go ahead and turn this this threshold down and we can either use this ratio this threshold knob right here or we can actually use the threshold knob that's over here on the left side of the console now we will notice this yellow ball here and if I go ahead and play some audio into this we will see that bumping around and so that yellow ball is where the volume is you so our ratio is going to be how much compression is going to actually happen when the audio hits that threshold so with a ratio of 1 .1 to 1 that means for every 1.1 DB above the threshold it will only go up by one and so if we change this to a threshold of two to one every 2 DB above that threshold point the output of this compressor will increase by 1 DB if we change this to 3 DB or a three to one ratio that will be that my vocalist will have to sing 3db louder than my threshold point for the vocal on the output to go up by one and so if we change this to 10 to 1 that means that my vocalist will have to sing 10 DB louder than that threshold point for it to go up by One DB so you can see that if we went up to a hundred to one or a 20 to 1 or 100 to 1 that that is what we call a limiter because my vocalist would have to sing 100 DB louder than whatever I have my threshold point for it to go up 1 DB which is theoretically impossible because there wouldn't be enough Headroom on this microphone for that to actually happen so that's what our ratio is is it allows us to vary the amount of compression that actually happens on this channel in combination with the threshold the next thing that I want to talk about is actually on the second screen in here so we're going to press our layer button down to be on Layer Two and that is the knee the knee allows us to round out this little Point here so with a knee of zero that means that we have a very defined compression threshold point if we take this knee up to a five you'll notice that this rounds out very significantly and what that means is that my threshold points about right there on the screen but what will happen is it will start gradually applying compression before it hits threshold point so depending on the vocalist I will set this anywhere from a 0 to a three on the knee depending on how much compression we want to have happen on the softer notes so that will just give a smoother transition and if you're brand new starting out to compression I would suggest having your knee being a little bit higher like a knee of three and that way your compression threshold point if you're not perfect to being able to set that will be a little bit more gradual throughout that audio section that you're doing so we're going to go back up to our layer one section here and we're going to talk about our attack hold and release times so the attack time on this compressor is the amount of time that it takes this compressor to apply attenuation or lowering that volume once that audio meets that threshold point so if we have an attack time of say 100 milliseconds right there once your audio reaches that threshold point which we have set right here then it will take a hundred milliseconds before it starts applying muting or the amount of ratio that we have here to that channel so if we have this attack time let's say down at 30 milliseconds it's going to take 30 milliseconds of time before it applies full attenuation on this channel the next thing that we have is our hold time now once that audio goes back down below that threshold Point our hold time is going to say to this compressor we are going to continue attenuating this channel for this set amount of time before we follow into the next thing which is the release so this hold time I would suggest if you're brand new to to compression to setting this as fast as it will go for the whole time so 0.02 but if we have this set at say 20 milliseconds once the audio reaches that threshold point and goes below the compressor will stay compressed for 20 milliseconds before it hits the release time to finish out your compression cycle here so I would definitely suggest having this at 0.02 if you're just getting into compression that way you can try start training your mind to hear these things happen now the release time is the amount of time that it takes to release that attenuation on the outside of the hold time so audio reaches that threshold point on the downswing of that channel and then we get that hold time and then we get the release time so that release time is how long it takes for that audio to be not attenuated anymore by this compressor so if you're just diving into compression the one thing that I suggest is um doing a virtual sound check so make sure to record your whole band and play it back into the board otherwise your vocalist are really not going to like you anyway so what we're going to do is I would suggest setting your ratio to 101 and turning it down significantly and so what this will actually allow us to do is this will allow us to hear the attack time and the release time pretty nicely so let's go ahead and play some audio through this and start training your ear on how to hear this compression [Music] okay so obviously I am doing a lot of compression here on this vocalist but what I'm wanting you to listen to is the attack so I'm going to vary this down to a very fast attack I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me okay so next I'm going to set this to about 30 milliseconds and we're gonna see the difference in sound this makes now when you're hearing compression and you're thinking of the attack you're wanting to hear the first note that comes through when he says I and light so Focus your ears on eye and light on this passage here I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me now I'm gonna go ahead and put this attack down to one millisecond and we'll give that another listen I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me okay so what I want you to hear is that if we don't have a fast enough attack that attenuation will happen mid-word and so what's happening here when we have an attack of 97 this is way too long or slow in an attack is that that I can see your light those big transients that are coming through are going straight through the compressor and then it's starting to attenuate after those big transients have come through but if we're down in the one millisecond then it's going to be too fast so the the vocal almost becomes an intelligible at that point so let's go ahead and start setting this attack time to a reasonable amount [Music] I could see your light I could see your light I could see your light I could see your light chasing out to me okay so that's probably the attack time that I would be choosing for this vocal so when this vocal is saying I can see the light it's not super aggressive like it was before the next thing that I'm going to do even with my ratio down here at 101 and my threshold really really low is I'm going to set my release time now again the release time is how quickly does this compressor relax off of this Channel Once that audio has gone down below that threshold point so let's go ahead and give this a listen I could see your light chasing after me I could see your light chasing out too so if we set too long of a release time it's not going to give any benefit to us on the volume [Music] and you can see how long it takes [Music] now again if we go all the way to five milliseconds I can see your light chasing out I could see your light Shake I could see you okay so I we know how that vocal actually sounds for the compression so let's go ahead and give it a listen I could see your light I could see your light I could see your light okay so this is what we call pumping and breathing so if you ever read about compression and you hear about pumping and breathing that's that sound that's happening I is compressing super fast and then releasing very quickly and it sounds almost weird and so that's what's Happening Here I could see your light I could see your light I could see your light the the second portion of I is louder than the first portion of I and so this is too fast of a release time and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start dialing this release time a little bit longer until we get a reasonable amount of signal through and keeping the word still intact I could see you I could see your light I could see your light I could see your light chasing I could see your light chasing I could see your light chasing out to me that's probably about where I would go so I have an attack time of 24 milliseconds on this vocalist and a release time of 68. and so the next thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to bring my ratio back because currently I have it at a hundred to one meaning that my vocalist will have to sing 100 DB louder to go up One DB Above This threshold point which is just ridiculous so I'm going to go ahead and set this to 10 to 1. now when I'm doing vocals and I'm mixing most of these are going to be a little bit more rock and roll sounding so in my church we're going to be doing a little bit more content temporary music or in my venues that I'm mixing in it's going to be a little bit more rock and roll if you are mixing a jazz thing you might not want to do a 10 to 1 ratio on compression as that's not what that music calls for so when I'm mixing I'm going to be mixing more contemporary type Styles and so in that case I'm wanting my vocal to be very far forward and really contained in a nice package and to do that I'm going to actually be setting my my ratio on my compression to about a ten to one now the Behringer X32 only really allows us to have two compressors if we want to use one of the effects section and insert an effects rack compressor on top of the compressor that we already have of the channel some other consoles actually have two compressors or multiple compressors that we can use in that single Channel now the benefit of having multiple compressors is the compression can become a little bit more transparent so you can have one compressor with a little bit faster attack time and a little bit faster of a release time and then your second compressor you can have a little bit longer of an attack time and a longer release time and those two compressors can work hand in hand to make that compression sound a little bit more transparent so in this case I'm just going to be showing you one compressor in another video I'm going to be showing you how we can stack another compressor say the Ultimo compressor in combination with this channel compressor to give us a pretty good solid compression on this vocal but today we're just going to be using our one compressor so the thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to set this to a 10 to 1 ratio and I'm going to bring our threshold up and let's go ahead and give this a listen and so this is going to be without any compression because our threshold is so high ah just because I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me okay that is where I would be placing my compressor at we can get that I down contained into the rest of the vocal and then the rest of the vocal just all of a sudden sits really nicely together so I'm going to go ahead and turn this compressor off and we'll give it a listen I can see your light chasing out to me I could see your light Chase I can see your light chasing out to me okay so the next thing that we want to talk about is the makeup gain and that is labeled gain here and I actually had it set at three and a half DB when we are applying compression it is attenuating that Channel or bringing the volume down so if you bring all the volume of those Peaks down all of a sudden you've turned your vocal down to a point where you need to boost the fader up even higher so what we have is makeup gain and so this little red bar here is showing us how much gain attenuation we are doing on this channel and so our makeup gain is going to allow us to match whatever amount of attenuation we're doing to bring that back up or a makeup gain so usually what you'll want to do when you're setting this gain is you'll want to a use your ears and B use this meter so let's go ahead and set this makeup again so I'm going to go ahead and press play on this so we can see that we're getting about the negative nine on the Peaks but pretty consistently sitting about the 4 DB Mark chasing out I could see your light okay so what we know we've done correctly if we've set our makeup gain correctly is that when we turn off our compressor the volume should stay the same so I'm going to go ahead and turn this off mid song here and the overall volume should stay the same obviously the eye and the light are going to be loud but I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing out to me I could see your light chasing so it needs to come up just a little bit more to me I could see your light chasing out to me all right let's go ahead and listen to this compression turned off back with the band up and then we'll turn on the compressor and see how much better this is so here we have our vocal one Dynamics is turned off [Music] to me again [Music] okay so I am noticing that I can actually bring this threshold down a little bit more in my uh gain will have to turn up just a little bit more because I'm noticing that the eye and the light is still kind of coming through a little bit too much here so let's go ahead and give this another listen [Music] see your life chasing after me there we go [Music] okay here's without compression [Music] okay let's go ahead and add compression on our vocal 2 here and I'm just going to copy over a few settings here ten to one my attack time's probably going to be around that and release is going to be around in there and let's just go ahead and give this quick listen so knee is going to be at three and we'll turn our threshold down give her a listen so muting the band muting vocal one give this a listen your life you're like chasing after me I can see your light chasing after I can see your light chasing after me I can see your life chasing after me I can see your light chasing after me okay let's give a listen before we actually apply compression here I can see your light chasing after me so I can see and then light is significantly louder let's give that another listen I can see your light chasing after me all right so let's go ahead and apply his compressor and get this threshold set I can see your light chasing after I can see your light chasing after me I can see your light chasing I can see your light Jason there we go okay so makeup gain will have to come up a little bit chasing after me I can see your life chasing a little bit but that's okay okay so let's go ahead and bring our two vocalists up here and I'm gonna go ahead and turn off compression on both of these real fast so here turning off compression on vocal 2 turning off compression on vocal one and let's give a listen to to the two of them together without the band again okay now I'm gonna go ahead and turn on the compression compression there we go and play I can see your [Music] eye can see your light chasing after me good to me all right let's go ahead and listen to it with the band here chasing after me [Music] you are good to me [Music] okay let's go ahead and turn off the Dynamics and listen to it with the band again [Music] [Music] okay so I and light are loud and the oh that he does in the in the middle of the two sections here is a little bit quieter so let's go ahead and give it a listen with compression as that is going to bring that back up here [Music] [Music] my good to me I can hear your voice [Music] okay so that is a really fast and dirty way of doing vocal compression on your vocals now there's a whole lot more that I can dive into on this compressor but I'm not going to today because this is just a basic theory of compression on vocals but hopefully this will help you get a little bit better with your compression on your vocals and give you another tool that you can use to really sculpt your mix for your next show or weekend now one thing to mention about compression when you are compressing something live and you are bringing your makeup gain up you are going to reduce your gain before feedback and game before feedback means that how loud you can turn that up before it starts feeding back so with no compression you can turn up something and then if you then turn that back down and apply gain inside of your compressor and compress those loud notes and the moment that we add makeup gain here we are adding gain to that channels and then if you go turn it back up you may get into feedback so you just have to be very careful with the amount of makeup gain you are applying to a channel as you can reduce that gain before feedback and get into feedback territory on your channel so just be careful but compression is really going to be useful for getting that vocal very forward in your mix very centered up and just even and dynamically sound in your mix so thank you so much for watching this video if you haven't already make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel down below as I am always releasing new content and then you will be notified when I do also please leave a question down below I'm always browsing the comments looking for other questions that you might have on videos that I can do in the future that would be helpful for you but again my name is Drew bashler and thank you so much for watching

Channel: Drew Brashler

Views: 74,600

Keywords: Behringer, Behringer X32, Behringer X32 Intro, Behringer X32 Tutorial, Behringer X32 how to, How to set up Behringer X32, How to set up X32, Name X32 Channel, Phase vs Polarity, X32, X32 48V, X32 Delay, X32 Intro, X32 how to, drew brashler, drew brashler x32, wing behringer, x32 behringer, x32 behringer tutorial, EQ, X32 EQ, X32 Equalizer, Behringer EQ, X32 PEQ, X32 VEQ, PEQ, VEQ, Parametric EQ, Behringer 32x, vocal, vocalist, vocal mic, vocal eq, eq vocal, eq live vocal

Id: voi_HAAjJMI

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022