Vocal Compressor

Hello,

I'm using audition, and I was wondering if there's a built in compressor for vocal recording, and if so, how do I get there and how do I use it? Any help will be greatly appreciated. I was reading tutorials about voice recording and they recommend to have a compressor run to 2:1 or 3:1, I don't know what that means? and don't even know how to use the compressor. Any help would be great.

Thanks.

Briefly, it's not good practice to compress whilst recording, especially if you don't know what you are doing. Consequently, the option is not available in Audition. Like all effects, what you add at recording time cannot be undone - so if it's wrong you are stuck with it.

Audition has more than adequate compression for vocals built-in in the Dynamics Processor, but the only way to use this live would be to feed the monitor output back to another input (you can monitor effects live, but they don't get printed to the track, for the foregoing reason).

Vocal recordings are all different when you make them, and there's no way you can do an accurate job of compressing one (if you need to) without listening to the way it sits with the rest of the track - which is why it's a bad idea to record them anything but dead flat. That way, you retain the processing options.

Alright, so is it better to just record it, and then go to the edit window and use the dynamic processing? if so whats the proper way to use dynamic processing?

Without in any way wishing to put you off, or appear unhelpful, your question is so complex that it would take a very long time to give you a reasonable answer. I would therefore recommend you read the help files (you have read them a bit I hope). And then you should search for "vocal compression" via Google and I have no doubt you will find a lot of information. Searching the archives on this site will also lead you to masses of good info. When you have digested that, please come back with questions. If you don't even have a basic understanding of the topic, we can't really help you can we?

Don't be afraid to experiment a bit with the Dynamics Processing to see what it does.  There are quite a few presets in there for vocal compression to give you a start. You can always Undo what you have done and try another one.

Alright, so is it better to just record it, and then go to the edit window and use the dynamic processing? if so whats the proper way to use dynamic processing?

As MarkT has said, this is a HUGE question.

One of the best primers I've found on dynamics processing is in the RANE notes.  Clearly, they're talking about their hardware processors, but all the principles are exactly the same in the Audition software.

The appropriate notes are available at:  http://www.rane.com/note155.html

Bob

Here's a starting point redghost:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_level_compression

if you want a simple, old-school classic compressor as a VST plugin - thats free! - i've been playing around with the Kjaerhuse Audio compressor... there is also a free delay, reverb, eq, phaser and more here:

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-series.php

you get what you pay for, but to me this is a simple and useful plugin.