Peak Meter Pro - Taming a wildly dynamic vocal

[kylen]

This is kind of an after the fact repair I'm having to do on some tracks - usually vocals and bass guitar - where, for whatever reason the dynamic swing is too much (over 12dB) for the usual compression methods (unless I'm looking for the overly compressed squished sound - usually not). In addition to the swing the dynamic peaks can occur pretty fast (in ear time - not detector time) and it's pretty obvious if a compressor or 2 in series tries to tame that.

The alternative I've been working with using the Peak Meter Pro is to get both a normal envelope and a reversed envelope of the vocal - decay set about 200ms. I pick a good transparant compressor for this task, like Polysquasher, and set the threshold by hand to just above where the average of the signal is - so every few words (depending) there is no more than 1db or 2 db of compression. Next I adjust the mix/dry knob up to about -20db or so - this is kind of a parallel mode as it lets uncompressed and compressed signal mix to be set to taste. Anyway - now I have a very transparent smooth compression happening...but oops here comes a dynamic peak where the vocalist hs come back from off-axis and gets too close to the mic (proximity) and that is gonna screw up the track!

Here's where Peak Meter Pro comes in...I use the envelope it generated to control Polysquasher knee - when a peak comes by the knee is adjusted higher so that the compressor kicks in at a lower db than normal maeking a smoother transition. The 2nd envelope, which is inverted (reversed in Peak Meter Pro lingo) is used to control the wet/dry mix of the compressor and mixes less of the dry (uncompressed) signal in during the short time of the peak (300ms or less according to my decay setting). This makes for a pretty smooth sound.

This all assumes the time spent characterizing the knee and mix knobs of Polysquasher - what the range of each knob is - the sweet spots and how those ranges correspond to Peak Meter generated envelopes. Also Peak Meter Pro has an 'Amount' and 'Offset' knob that can set it's own limits and in affect adjust lower and higher ceiling for Polysquasher controls.

Anyway this is a lot of control I think - and fun once I'm getting the hang of it. I wouldn't be able to do the trick I've described above with a control surface I don't believe!

Thanks Blue Cat for a nice tool!