An Interesting Vocal Compression Tip

WinkSound put out a video that offers an unusual tip for using compression on a vocal in a mix. It refers to some common compressor controls that I go over in my recent post on how to use Reaper’s built-in compressor plugin called ReaComp.

See that article here: Vocal Compression Using Reaper’s ReaComp Effect Plugin.

For some of my other articles on just what compression means and how and why to use it in your recordings, see my articles: : – Improve Or Ruin Your Audio With an Effect Called Compression, Vocal Compression Using Reaper’s ReaComp Effect Plugin. and Using An Audio Compressor For Voice Over Jobs, and What Is Audio Compression and Why Should I Care?

If you decide to start using compression, be very careful. It’s a powerful tool. And as with every powerful tool, it can cause damage if used improperly.

In this WinkSound video tip, conventional settings are pretty much thrown out the window. The advice in that article recommends to turn both the attack and release controls all the way to the fastest possible settings. What? Yup.

In combination with those settings, in order to not completely destroy the vocal with over-compression, you need to use a quite high threshold of about -10db and a much more subtle compression ratio than you’d usually use.

But things are usually made more clear by watching. So below is the WinkSound video of which I speak: