Compression on extreme vocals

[Moonshield]

I have found in the past that when I record vocals, I have problems with the dynamic range in relation to different vocal styles. To be more specific, my deeper death metal vocals do pack some volume, but not as much as higher pitched screams. I reckoned I'd be able to help to sort out the problem by using some compression, but I can't seem to find a good set of settings to use. I'm using a Samson S-Com compressor so it has a decent set of variables to set. Does anyone have any good suggestions for specific ratios etc to try out and see if they help?

Cheers!

 

[xenophobe]

Using compression to limit the volume of your lower sounds is also going to cause problems with sound quality... you'll need to figure out individual settings for yourself though, because one person's setting will most likely not work well for you. It would be like me asking what I should have my controls on my Mesa set to. Well... that would vary upon what kind of tone I'm looking for, what my particular guitar and pickup sounds like, and what I have in my signal chain.

Perhaps a volume boost or learning to hold your mic at different positions when you change styles might work best.

Compression and limiting is more of a personal preference, and you should just try to become familiar with the unit you're using.

Here's an excellent article for beginners describing how compression works, and what you can expect from it, and it includes a setting for vocal compression:
ftp://ftp.dbxpro.com/pub/PDFs/WhitePapers/Compression 101.pdf

 

[Moonshield]

Thanks... I gave the vocal settings mentioned in that article a try but I'm still peaking on screams with growls quite a bit quieter. I think probably a combination of compression and, as you mention, microphone technique is what I need.