Compression in Monitors?

[Downunderwonder]

Question. A buddy does "phools on stools" gigs. He's a good singer but he's got zero mic control. He's always clipping his mic channel on the excited bits which sends a horrid distortion through the horns on his powered speakers.

It's not particularly discernable if you don't know what you're listening to but it wears on the ears. I'm sure he would hold crowds easier if he got his **** together.

Every time I turn up I object and make him turn down the gain on his mic and turn up his fader. I kinda gather this makes him work a bit harder to get the "mwah!" into his act.

He's monitoring off the PA set back slightly. I am of the opinion that sending his mic channel through a compressor set for a hard limit would let him sing and roar with impunity and might train him to back off the mic when he roars, but all I get from this thread is bad juju for compressing vocal monitors.

 

[Mark Reccord]

Compression on vocals in monitors is generally a bad idea for the reasons stated by Floyd Eye and Fokof. If you're concerned about blowing up drivers, then use a limiter somewhere else in the chain to manage that, though I suppose you could use a comp inserted in a channel in limiter mode with the threshold set high to accomplish that. Seems like it would make more sense to limit the entire send, though.

Back in the old days before digital desks became the norm, if I was doing monitors from the FOH desk, I'd run the vocals to submasters and compress those, so I'd have it in the house but not in the monitors. Assuming compression was needed at all, of course.

Most experienced vocalists freakin' hate compression in the monitors but I know a few who actually prefer it. I always found that weird, but if it helps them perform their best who am I to argue?

Overuse of compression is pretty common in live sound if you ask me. I know guys mixing very competent big name acts that insist on compressing everything and then wondering why everything starts feeding back between songs...

 

[wcriley]

I'm fairly new at using compression, so I find this thread interesting and enlightening.

I'm currently using compressors in the channel inserts without the problems everyone has mentioned. Fairly high threshold and ratio around 2:1. Just enough to knock the peaks off if the singer doesn't back off the mic enough when suddenly going from soft to scream-o.

If I move the compression later in the chain, it would seem that I'd need to reset the threshold every time I move the faders up/down. How do you guys handle this?

 

[Downunderwonder]

I'm fairly new at using compression, so I find this thread interesting and enlightening.

I'm currently using compressors in the channel inserts without the problems everyone has mentioned. Fairly high threshold and ratio around 2:1. Just enough to knock the peaks off if the singer doesn't back off the mic enough when suddenly going from soft to scream-o.

If I move the compression later in the chain, it would seem that I'd need to reset the threshold every time I move the faders up/down. How do you guys handle this?

That's along the lines of what I figure my mate could use. He doesn't have inserts but he has a spare auxilliary so he would still need to back off his input gain for it to work. I'm thinking he would need a mic pre with compressor.

B'ringer do a valve DI/mic pre with a limiter, silly cheap enough if it does clean, anyone use MIC100 ??

 

[Sparkdog]

Too much reverb or delay does cause the monitors to feedback.

The key phrase there is "too much".

I am a singer who plays bass, rather than the other way around, and a bone dry monitor mix is a real obstacle to singing your best. It would be very much like someone telling you to play with a bass tone you hated, but be brilliant. Not very inspiring.

I dial in just a touch of reverb...nothing else...on my monitor mix and provided the mics and wedges are positioned properly it's never an issue.

Compression is another story and I agree it's not wise in monitors. Sounds bad anyway.

 

[Floyd Eye]

The key phrase there is "too much".

I am a singer who plays bass, rather than the other way around, and a bone dry monitor mix is a real obstacle to singing your best. It would be very much like someone telling you to play with a bass tone you hated, but be brilliant. Not very inspiring.

I dial in just a touch of reverb...nothing else...on my monitor mix and provided the mics and wedges are positioned properly it's never an issue.

Compression is another story and I agree it's not wise in monitors. Sounds bad anyway.

I'm sure that is true. I have noticed that when we played some bigger stages with a provided system there has been reverb and even delay in the monitors with no problems. Usually the problem I run into when running my system is the singer wants more volume, then I gotta spend a bunch of time equaling out the reverb and dropping EQ frequencies or what all to control feedback. As it is it's just easier to leave the FX out and make minor adjustments to the 31 bands. I'm sure guys that actually are SEs and actually have bad ass monitors and nice FX units deal with it a lot more easily than I do.

 

[ggunn]

The singers almost never complain about the monitors.... except if I leave the reverb out. Then they complain it is too dry.

IMO that is an ego thing. Singers should concentrate on singing in tune and getting the lyrics right. Reverb does not help with either of those and it interferes with the clarity of the monitors.

I admit, though, that my position is different when I am sound man and not on stage. If that's what the band wants, that's what they get.

 

[walterw]

Question. A buddy does "phools on stools" gigs. He's a good singer but he's got zero mic control. He's always clipping his mic channel on the excited bits which sends a horrid distortion through the horns on his powered speakers.


He's monitoring off the PA set back slightly.

there's the problem; he's not hearing it get too loud when he leans in.

a strong, uncompressed monitor is exactly what he needs, so he can hear it get too hot and back off the mic on the loud bits.

as for effects, they don't seem to cause me the same kind of feedback trouble as compression. it can just get weird with multiple singers, the one singer might be hearing somebody else's slapback echo in their wedge, or if a vocal delay isn't turned off between songs the slapback can make between-song talking difficult. a pinch of verb or delay is probably OK.

 

[two fingers]

Your singer will subconciously sing louder to make up for the volume and can easily blow out his voice. Many, many threads about it in the Live Sound forum. Guys like Walter W. and Modulusman advise against it for this reason. A little compression on vocals FOH is good, in the monitors is bad. Also no FX in the monitors.

I agree. If the singer needs a tiny bit more volume and doesn't have time to signal the monitor guy that split second, he/she can simply sing a tiny bit louder and all is well until the break between songs. If you run a comp, the singer will almost surely try to do that all night and get nowhere with it, forcing them to shred their throats in the process.

I sing too. Give me a clean dry vocal with very little else in the mix (just a little bit of other vocals and possibly acoustic and keys) and I'm all set.

 

[Downunderwonder]

there's the problem; he's not hearing it get too loud when he leans in.

a strong, uncompressed monitor is exactly what he needs, so he can hear it get too hot and back off the mic on the loud bits.

as for effects, they don't seem to cause me the same kind of feedback trouble as compression. it can just get weird with multiple singers, the one singer might be hearing somebody else's slapback echo in their wedge, or if a vocal delay isn't turned off between songs the slapback can make between-song talking difficult. a pinch of verb or delay is probably OK.

The problem is he doesn't hear the clipping. I would leave his dynamic range untouched until it clips, limiter style with higher ratio.

It's the heyuping whooping type accents he regularly throws onto words that he likes to have all the gain available, just doesn't have mic control for when he's singing hard out.

 

[mellowinman]

Your singer will subconciously sing louder to make up for the volume and can easily blow out his voice. Many, many threads about it in the Live Sound forum. Guys like Walter W. and Modulusman advise against it for this reason. A little compression on vocals FOH is good, in the monitors is bad. Also no FX in the monitors.

No FX in the monitors is almost always quoted by people who aren't singing anything difficult.

Why wouldn't the singer want to hear their voice the same in the monitors as it sounds in the mains? If the effect changes how the voice sustains, and the singer hears it dry, how do they perform accurately?

I want all you tech-heads to really THINK about this one. If a singer wants effects in the monitors, there better be some effects in the monitors.

 

[mellowinman]

Oh, and for the record, we don't have feedback.

EVER.

If you are not playing too loud, feedback is never an issue.

NEVER AN ISSUE.

It's not even something we talk about, or think about.

 

[modulusman]

The reason I don't like effects in monitors is because it makes it harder to sing harmonies. A little effects would be OK but too much can make it harder for people to sing in tune.

 

[funnyfingers]

I bought a compressor for my singer to use. I like it a lot, because he can really belt it out or do a woo that will jar you. This lets us turn him up a little bit more than we normally would without fear.

 

[agreatheight]

I'm fairly new at using compression, so I find this thread interesting and enlightening.

I'm currently using compressors in the channel inserts without the problems everyone has mentioned. Fairly high threshold and ratio around 2:1. Just enough to knock the peaks off if the singer doesn't back off the mic enough when suddenly going from soft to scream-o.

If I move the compression later in the chain, it would seem that I'd need to reset the threshold every time I move the faders up/down. How do you guys handle this?

This is a good question - any takers on an answer?

 

[Floyd Eye]

If you are not playing too loud, feedback is never an issue.

NEVER AN ISSUE.

It's not even something we talk about, or think about.

We never have feedback either, buy you are wrong about one thing. Playing too loud is NOT the only thing that causes feedback. There is more than one example of something other than volume causing feedback in this thread alone.

 

[mellowinman]

We never have feedback either, buy you are wrong about one thing. Playing too loud is NOT the only thing that causes feedback. There is more than one example of something other than volume causing feedback in this thread alone.

Well, there are many things; EQ, (but poor EQ gives you way worse problems than just feedback; you sound BAD!) and poor speaker/mic placement, of course, but I'm just saying...

 

[mellowinman]

The reason I don't like effects in monitors is because it makes it harder to sing harmonies. A little effects would be OK but too much can make it harder for people to sing in tune.

It depends on the effect. I don't like chorus, except in very small doses, on ANY vocal, but reverb and delay shouldn't make it difficult at all.

Compression? When compression is used correctly, whether in monitors OR mains, it doesn't cause problems; it fixes them.

 

[Chromer]

As an occasional lead vocalist, give me both a healthy amount of "pull-up" parallel compression and peak-taming compression in the iem's, because I'm going to work both ends of the dynamic range and I need to hear what is happening. Flip the polarity in the monitor feed for me too.

 

[kedo]

I typically don't use any compression in monitors, unless a situation presents itself where its warranted (vocalist whips out a trumpet, vocal mic becomes trumpet solo mic) and that channel needs to be tamed somewhat. Often in that case, the singer/soloist wants to hear that change in dynamic, and the band does not."Hey man, when he plays the trumpet can you dial it back in my mix?" What I do then is split that inputs signal to another channel, compress that, and send that to the band.

Its rare, though.