Pro Tools 11 Pioneer — Part Four: Recording Without TDM Plugins
As much as we love to debate the topic, recording vocals isn’t the rocket science we make it out to be.
Zach is on the hunt for effective TDM plugin workarounds.
Once you’ve got the hang of it, actually it’s pretty easy. You pick the right mic, the right chain, and set your gain stage appropriately. In a sense “You put a mic in front of it.” “Easy for you,” you might say … and in a sense you’d be right.
I have access to the best gear here at Downtown Music Studios. We have a great studio, and I get to record some of the best musicians. So there it is: I am not a rocket scientist. It is the gear. It is the room.
Most importantly it is the musicians. It took me a long time to accept that. No matter how hard I try, a recording engineer can’t fix a bad song or arrangement. No matter how valiant my efforts, I’m only the guy putting a mic in front of it.
Stay With Me
So where’s this headed? Since in part it is about the gear, I figured out early on I had better get a handful of the best stuff and memorize it. Learn the gear backwards and forwards, pick up its nuance; and in a sense get a real feel for it. I’m no genius but this much I figured out.
Ok, so where’s this going guy? I don’t overindulge. I have a few bits of kit that I know really well, and I rely on those almost religiously. I’m also overly cautious about what I print, especially when recording vocals. I do my best to keep the GR meter on the inside of 5db. I rarely record hot, especially with artists I don’t have a lot of experience recording.
And your point is? What I’m too cautious to print, I often make up for on playback. As much as I can sit here on my high horse and talk about not recording too much compression, quite often my clients want it. For this, like most of you I rely on plugins, specifically WAVES plugins. I love a few of those plugins, and they are part of that cross section of gear I know so well, relying heavily on them for recording.
Sonic Options
So here’s the dilemma. A lot of you know this, but it bears repeating: If you put an AAX native plugin on a record-armed track, it gets automatically placed in to “bypass”. Since WAVES put the kibosh on AAX DSP (i.e. they are no longer coding for the Avid DSP format), recording vocals with my precious Renaissance plugins are a no-go.
So since I’m not going to stop using Pro Tools 11, and I’m definitely not going to stop recording music, I’ve been digging around for some good alternatives to use especially while tracking vocals.
For those who haven’t checked it yet, AVID’s Pro Compressor is definitely worth a try. Now I know what you’re thinking: I’ve never been overly excited about AVID’s plugins either, but the Pro Compressor is actually really good.
It’s a little more involved than, say, an opto-style comp, which isn’t always a good thing when tracking, but here it’s a non issue. The plugin can take a lot of GR without getting harsh. It’s also got a Wet/Dry knob which creates versatility. This comp is tonally a little on the transparent side, so you’ll figure out its sonic signature in no time. The metering is first in class, and it looks pretty slick. Love this compressor to use on lead vocals, ad libs and high harmonies where resonant overtones can get harsh.
If the job calls for a vari-mu style compressor I’ve been turning to the McDSP 6030 Ultimate Comp. It’s a bit of a Swiss Army Knife, with a few different tools that emulate vintage compressors.
The “670” setting emulates a vari-mu to great effect, the beauty of it being the compression envelope follows the transient contour of what you’re recording. A “You get what you give” – kind of the thing. When I don’t have a lot of time and need a quick fix, the two Opto settings are perfect. Just like an LA2A, it has a very musical time constant. It’s only got two variables, a Peak Reduction and a Makeup Gain. You crank down the peak reduction until you see a few DB of GR in the louder passages, and push up the gain to make up the differential.
For a FET style comp I’ve been using the McDSP 4030 compressor. You can push this one more, and it has a quicker attack than the other compressors in the 6030. It’s a lot like an 1176 with a Wet/Dry knob, which my friends is a beautiful thing. I have been using the 4030 on lead vocals, especially when I want the color of a compressor but don’t want to commit.
For transparent compression, which is a valuable thing in a tracking situation, you can’t go wrong with the Sonnox dynamics compressor. By design this compressor doesn’t have a lot of color (warmth knob aside). Most of what we love about gear is its character, so transparent gear doesn’t get much glory. When you’re recording though, you need to know what’s going to tape and without it, you can run the risk of printing distortion. Not an easy task, if the artist is asking for tons of compression on playback.
But the Sonnox Dynamics comp, boy you gotta’ hand it to that thing, you can slam it and it won’t pump or impart any tone. I use this a lot when top line writers demo vocals, especially on leads. I also use it when artists want to track with Auto-Tune on their vocal which makes it a valuable tool indeed!
So SonicScoop gear-aholics, its time to wrap this rant up. Things are lookin’ up for Pro-tools 11 though. SoundToys got their plugins out on the native platform, and what do you know … Universal Audio released a public beta a few weeks back for UAD powered plugins in Mac. The really exciting stuff is some of the new channel strips, multiband comps and parametric EQ’s, and I know all the good ones. I’ll be writing about those in my next article.
Oh and PS, go out and get the “Plug and Mix” bundle. It’s amazing, and I’m over the moon about it — more about those later too.
Zach Hancock is a NY-based engineer and producer. He works as chief engineer at Downtown Music Studios, where he works with a wide range of artists spanning from Charli XCX to Birdy.
Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.