We just got a band change today and the lead singer sounds (and looks) pretty good, but oh my god how her microphone technique sucks. The quiet parts are too quiet and loud parts are too loud, and the dynamic range is like almost 40dB(!). And the singing isn't constant, it comes on more like bursts.
After trying to clamp it down with with a compressor for a few songs, I decided "fuck it" and split the channel on the fly to an empty channel as that way it won't affect their monitoring... Now the second channel is compressing 6:1 with really low threshold and fast attack, that gets me about 9-24dB attenuation, constantly...
And who said you can't use extreme studio compression techniques live?
That channel is also filtered a lot more (highpass filter is at 250hz when on the other track it's at 100hz and it has a de-esser and then I have a deep dip at ~6khz to kill a bit of the nasty sounding presence) and since I compressed the fuck out of it, the mids are more clearer now. I accompanied it by the original track about 10dB quieter in the mix, so now I get the vocals at constant volume, but it still sounds dynamic. It's kinda like parallel compression, but not quite, as the other processing is different too.
But the thing also is that the venue is like pretty large (I think the ceiling is like 12m high) and the distance to the nearest speaker is over 6 meters, so the risk for feedback is not that huge.
After trying to clamp it down with with a compressor for a few songs, I decided "fuck it" and split the channel on the fly to an empty channel as that way it won't affect their monitoring... Now the second channel is compressing 6:1 with really low threshold and fast attack, that gets me about 9-24dB attenuation, constantly...
And who said you can't use extreme studio compression techniques live?
That channel is also filtered a lot more (highpass filter is at 250hz when on the other track it's at 100hz and it has a de-esser and then I have a deep dip at ~6khz to kill a bit of the nasty sounding presence) and since I compressed the fuck out of it, the mids are more clearer now. I accompanied it by the original track about 10dB quieter in the mix, so now I get the vocals at constant volume, but it still sounds dynamic. It's kinda like parallel compression, but not quite, as the other processing is different too.
But the thing also is that the venue is like pretty large (I think the ceiling is like 12m high) and the distance to the nearest speaker is over 6 meters, so the risk for feedback is not that huge.
