Live Mixing Vocal Compression

There is no one size fits all formula to vocal compression.

Live mixing vocal compression.

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. And i don t want to mislead you. 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.

Many bloggers will tell you what the perfect vocal compression settings are. Lead vocals in pop and mainstream music are the centre point of the mix. 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 must use compression we recommend trying a ratio no higher than 3 1 for live use along with shorter release attack times.

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

It evens out the often erratic levels that a singer can produce and tames transients that can cause digital distortion. You can use compression on vocals to just even out the performance and to create an effect. 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. In a live setting try dialing back the compression settings if you re using compression at all on your vocal channel and instead use the volume fader to control how the vocals sit in the mix.

Let me state up front that there s no single setting you can use for every vocal track. At this point you re done.