Live Mixing Vocal Compression

Compression settings for lead vocals should be as natural sounding as possible.

Live mixing vocal compression.

Some recording engineers think compression is a must for vocals. At this point you re done. But the truth is it s not that easy. I wish i could do that too.

Let me state up front that there s no single setting you can use for every vocal track. Many bloggers will tell you what the perfect vocal compression settings are. There are no magic settings that work 100 of the time. Compressing a lead vocal isn t always easy but avoiding these mistakes will help you mix vocals that sound modern and musical.

Heck it d certainly save me a few keystrokes. It evens out the often erratic levels that a singer can produce and tames transients that can cause digital distortion. To achieve subtle natural sounding compression on your vocal it s best to use multiple compressors throughout the mixing process this is called serial compression. And i don t want to mislead you.

Rather than using one heavy compressor with a 10 1 ratio that s applying 10 db of gain reduction it s better to use multiple compressors that each chip away at the. If you want to learn more about using compression on vocals and further improve your mixes you can read my in depth guide to vocal compression and also download my free vocal compression cheat sheet below. You can use compression on vocals to just even out the performance and to create an effect. Your vocals should sound 100x better than they did before especially if you followed all of the other vocal mixing steps mainly equalization first.

If you must use compression we recommend trying a ratio no higher than 3 1 for live use along with shorter release attack times. Because humans are expert listeners any small unnatural sounding volume jump or dip will be noticeable and detract from the power of the melody and lyrics.