[ShadowAMD]

Originally Posted by aclarson

As usual, everybody in the "don't use an analog compressor" camp neglects the effect on the performer. It's understandable, I suppose many GS users are just engineers and not artists.

I find when tracking vox, I do about 1/2 to 1/3 as many takes with an outboard compressor because hearing the realtime compression while tracking allows me to intonate better, and hearing a more finished sound makes me get more excited, and thus, rock more. I use the Pro VLA II, and as Roland stated above, I usually have it at a low ratio, 2-8 dB of GR max.

Always sounds nicer than without it.

Now, I've compared my Pro VLA and plugs on stuff after the fact, and it's a win-some, lose-some situation. I can get some great results with plugins, and all things being equal, they are much more versatile. But I still always end up with better results using the VLA on the way in on vocals.

As people always say here on GS, nothing is more important than the source, and if your source is more comfortable tracking with compression, than that's going to make more of difference on your recording than the relative sonic merits of analog vs plugin. Maybe some performers don't care and it makes no difference, but one thing about all those classic albums where they had to use it is that THOSE performers had it there on the way in. Would those performances have been as good without it? Maybe this is a thing that's missing from the modern studio, and for the wrong reasons.

You can monitor with ITB compression ya know?