Re: legit scenarios for using compression during tracking?

So just to clarify, there's not something about recording live drums (or
other types of things with sharp transients and/or wide dynamic ranges) that
would *necessitate* the use of a compressor during tracking to do it
"right", am I hearing you right?

I'm not setting you up for a witty retort BTW, I'm genuinely asking! I
figured gain staging and mic technique was the "secret" for things like vox
but it seems like everyone and their brother uses all the compressors they
can get their hands on to do things like drums. Perhaps this is just
amateurish group-think.

Conceptually, it makes sense to me that if you can set the gains so that you
are not overdriving your inputs then a compressor isn't really going to get
you anything at the recording stage.

-Ben


"Scott Dorsey" <kludge@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ed6pi5$f6$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ben Hanson <transparency_76@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks guys...for other sorts of things like recording live drums is it
still very common? Or even with that sort of stuff is compression best
left
to a post-tracking/mixing task?

Well, in the digital world, the actual recording system itself is pretty
transparent, so it doesn't really matter if you do processing in front of
the recorder in tracking or after the recorder in mixdown.

BUT, if you have a philosophy of trying to get everything right the first
time, tracking to get a particular sound, and knowing exactly what sound
you
want, you should do whatever processing you want in tracking.

If you aren't sure exactly what you want, of course, this is bad because
you
cannot undo it. So in that case you're better off doing it in mixdown.

And, of course, if you have only limited channels of compression, you can
use
them all in tracking and then use them all on different channels at
mixdown,
thereby doubling the actual number of channels you can compress.

On top of that, lots of folks are still tracking to analogue tape, which
isn't transparent, and where it DOES make a difference whether you put
compression before or after the tape machine.
--scott

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