Recording Vocals Through Pro Channel?

You can use the active monitoring which means you will hear effect but it will not be applied until you either freeze the track or bounce down. 

However I suspect that you may have a latency issue unless you have a good system and appropriate sound card.

Thanks wookie any advantage of using compressor while recording? other than once its recorded cant uncompress it, or is it best to record then compress?

they used to do it years ago when recording on tape, same when interfaces were 16 bit, but they say with the dynamic range of 24 bit there is no need, but whos right or wrong, give it a bash, see what it sounds like mark, have to hit you with a fb request mate last account got nuked lol havent got round to everyone yet, cheers

FWIW, I religously use a hardware compressor when tracking vocals. You don't have to squash it. I find just a touch helps keep the track very stable dynamic wise. Then I use my tools in X1 to spice it up. Even in 24 bit recording I prefer to use that. It does give a great deal of help.
A lot of singers or rappers who perform live are use to working the mic. Low volume vocal=Mic on lips, while Loud vocal=hold the mic far away from the lips. That technique, I find does not work well in the studio. Thus the use of the compressor.

Although this does not apply to the original question, I use a Focusrite Eureka mic pre with compression going in.  I use very mild compression on input to keep levels within a reasonable range.  During mix, I use additional compression to obtain the sound required (with the Pro Channel Urei 1176 emulation—the one with U in the name—being my favorite). 

I normally record vocals then edit as desired, but is it possible to record vocals through the pro channel while recording, was hoping to use the pro channel compressor on vocal while recording is taking place, since I don't have an external hardware compressor to put before the mic, hope that makes sense?

 
FWIW, There would be no advantage to "printing" the vocal running thru the Pro Channel.
When using compression on the front end, you want it to be pre A/D converters.
Once the signal is digital (post A/D), you're better off applying the EFX/Processing non-destructively upon playback.

Mesh


Good thread!

I think so to, good constructive answers and suggestions I say thanks to all.

All of the vocals you hear on the radio, well let's leave a little room for anomalies, say 99%, were tracked with the compressor prior to hitting tape or a hard drive. This for one of 3 reasons, the first is that hardware compressors have a sonic image which, depending on the color you are looking for, a lot of people like. The second is to peak limit to make sure there are no overs during digital conversion or print to tape, the third is to gain a better RMS print i.e volume level control.

There are a few low cost compressors you can try which work well such as the ProV, DBX160x or xt, RNL. Know that if you are trying to get a competitive sound then the cost of your compressor can jump to $1.2k for say an 1176, $1.8k for an LA2A, or $2.3k for the CL1B these are the most used vocal compressors over the last 30 years. An LA3A would probably be another to mention after that the Avalon 737 in hip hop and rap.  

In my experience, the weakest area of plugins is around compression. Hardware still rules the day. EQ, Delay and some verbs work fine. Good transparent compression is not easy to duplicate action wise, sonically they can come close but the response time and precision is not easily duplicated. That said, I use a lot of VST based compression to clean up, control and glue a mix. But when I have compared a non-compressed vocal with plugs ins versus a vocal tracked with compression, the later wins out for the initial tracks. It doesn't preclude additional VST compression but it provides a better base when mixing. Purely my experience, no others need agree, apply as you see fit. Experiment in all cases.  

Great threads here! For about 2 years I recorded vocals for a radio show, and I was quite pleased with running the mic through a low cost Alesis compressor. With a wind screen, the signal was really stable going in, and I never once had to worry about undoing a processed sound. I've had great success that way. And as others mentioned, I didn't compress the bageebers out of it, just a mellow 4:1 or so, no big deal.

Corey
X1b | W7 32-bit | M-Audio | Intel Core 2 Duo | Sata II

Great thread.  One additional question on this subject- if using the technique described above - (recording at 24 bits for plenty of headroom  and setting input gain levels low enough so they never clip) - does that result in not getting the full dynamic range from the signal due to input gain being set lower, as opposed to the input gain as close to 0 without clipping and using compression to ensure no overload?

Thanks!
Russ

Jim - Thanks as always.. your responses are fantastic.
Russ