If you find a compressor or limiter over or under doing things in a particular part, shifting the threshold accordingly may help with that. For other instances where the gate may be falsely triggering to not triggering, you may have to put a little automation on your track, raising or lowering the threshold automatically.
Providing your compressor has a sidechain, that is. In fact a compressor with a sidechain eq can also help. A gate with a sidechain eq could probably be more helpful so you can select a consistently dynamic part of the vocal range to have it trigger. Subtractive eq before the gate could help to eliminate false triggers, but probably only a tiny bit. Either way is a valid approach, they just don’t come without their problems. If you set the compressor up after the gate its less of an issue, but your signal varies more radically making it difficult to find a “set and forget” position. However, the trouble with that since the signal is being compressed it there are less dynamics making it harder for the gate to determine what to keep and what to throw out. This would suggest maybe putting the compressor before it, like you were thinking. Since they are threshold based, they can certainly benefit from a more consistent signal so you can set it more reliably. Where to put the gate in relevance to the compressor probably poses more of a dilemma. They “correct” before they “enhance” and get all creative. In film they generally do the same approach with their ocular grading, which is effectively the visual equivalent to mixing for us. That all seems like a very sensible setup. Whereas the Gate is rejecting signal based on dynamics. This is what I see you doing with your Hi-Pass and Deesser. That way you’re not exaggerating the issues. It makes total sense, right?!?Įxtending on that, it makes sense to cut what you don’t like before you compress. “Boost what you like, cut what you don’t like”. When I was first mentored, way back when, the engineer had one very simple principle concerning eq. The way it and the eq interact are one thing to consider, as is the way it interacts with a gate. Like many other things there are pros and cons to where you position a Compressor within a signal chain. There are those that advocate “there are no rules” but I don’t feel that’s entirely accurate… or helpful.
If you haven’t guessed already, the reason why there are several ways to chain your effects together to process an instrument or a vocal is because there is more than one way to skin a cat. But I’m also very close to buying a MXL 770, since it gets amazing reviews (not least for its price class) and seems more catered to what I’m trying to do. I know the 55SH was not the ideal mic for voiceover/podcast work, but I fell for the cool looks – and I’m still hopeful I can achieve the desired sound. My goal: To have a similar sound to Michael Barbaro on “The Daily” or Jon Lovett on “Lovett or Leave It”.
My concern is that, with the 55SH, I have to be superclose to get the full tone, but when I do get that close (an inch or less), the plosives are nuts – even with a popfilter. The problem: No matter what I do, the resulting sound is always tinnier than I want it to be – and not that natural sounding. The breadth of my efforts: I’ve tried recording my voice with all kinds of different mixer settings (EQ, gain, built-in compressor), all kinds of mic techniques (angles, distances, in a muted walk-in closet) and – naturally – a plethora of plugin combos and settings.
My setup consists of: The Shure 55SH II, the Behringer XENYX Q802USB and Logic Pro X - with a ton of relevant Waves plugins at the ready (including MM Triple-D, GW Voice Centric, Vocal Rider, NS-1, RVox + the entire Gold package).
I’m struggling to achieve a good, clear voiceover sound.