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Multi Band Compression on your Live Mix .. Would You?


Mark Payne

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Definately one of the better typos around here!

 

Used the multiband in our services today - felt good, definately gave more control over the vocals. The challenge with the Hillsong mix is that there are a lot of stage sources (12 band members!) with a fair bit of overlap in terms of instruments (2 guitars, 2 keys, 7 vocals etc...) and so by the time you've got the band sounding nice and each instrument well defined you dont have a whole lot of space left for the vocals. The second challenge is that not all the vocalists sing at the same time, and so obviously the overall sound of the line changes quite significantly when everyone is going. So what I did was to use the multiband comp to compress the lower frequencies with a slightly lower threshold and a fairly modest ratio. Then with the higher frequences, where most of the clarity and sibilance is, I let the threshold out a bit higher with a higher ratio so that when the whole line comes in together for a strong part, the weight of all the vocals together doesnt crowd out the band, but you dont lose the clarity. When this is coupled with suitable input compression on the vocals (sometimes de-essers when necessary) it seemed to work quite well, definately better than with just a straight compressor.

I also use compression on the band master aswell, at a high threshold and low ratio just to smooth it out at higher volumes.

Seemed to do the job.

 

Im sure more tweaking next week will be good too

 

Chris

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