Preamp(Grace Design) and Compression

Frank, or other users of this preamp..

do you find yourself needing a dedicated compressor ?

I'm looking to record mainly vocals,guitar and bass with the Grace 101. For my live rack I have an Alesis 3603 and a DBX 266xl, both pretty low end units.

Any mid priced (under $500) compressor anybody had great results with?


Thanks

ORIGINAL: notfadeaway...

Frank, or other users of this preamp..

do you find yourself needing a dedicated compressor ?

I'm looking to record mainly vocals,guitar and bass with the Grace 101. For my live rack I have an Alesis 3603 and a DBX 266xl, both pretty low end units.

Any mid priced (under $500) compressor anybody had great results with?


Thanks

Not since I went 24bit.. You can record at a safe level and still get good sound if you have to bring it up later. With 16bit the low stuff got nasty but 24bit is just fine. On vocals learn to work the mic so you don't get wild peaks. For example if you know you need to yell tilt your mouth away from the mic and lean back. Do some test recordings till you get good at it. You should not need a compressor if you record at 24bit just add the compressor as a plugin later and use the clip gain envelope to fix the bad spots so the compressor can do a better job. In fact if you get good at the clip gain envelope you might not need any dynamics plugins. I do all my compressing, limiting and de-essing with it. It's a little more work be you can achieve prefection that no compressor can do. After all it's just working from one set of rules the entire track. With the clip gain you can work with each phrase, word, or part of word till you get it just right for the mix.

Grace 101s here and I don't use any compressor with them. I sometimes add a bit of UA Pultec and 1176 to smooth out the sound on acoustic instrumenta and vocals. But no Comp in my chain. The RNC is a good unit for the price if you must get one. A good outboard comp is a good thing to own, I have 3.................

That DBX 266 was a digital unit and just didn't have that great old analog sound of the 160. A pair of 160's is the way to go if you can afford it. I've only got one. If I need a stereo comp then I use a cheap Behringer digital unit (Composer Pro-XL). Its really a darn good comp for such a cheap unit. There are times when I can't tell the dif between it and the 160.

Fadeaway, I don't mean to take over your thread, but along the same lines, I'm looking for mic. recommendations for use with the Grace. My main mic. currently is an AT-4033.
To get a decent warm sound I have to take advantage of proximity effect and record vocals only inches away from the mic. It also sounds a little "sizzly" to me on the high end. Can anyone recommed a mic. in the $200-$300 range that would be warmer and have smoother highs?

Thanks.