Distortion on hiphop vocals

[XHipHop]

I hear A LOT of distortion on vocals when listening to hot 97 in new york or power 99 in philly...i'm not talking about the pop-hiphop tracks (kanye, jay-z, things with a recording budget, etc) ...i'm talking about the the d-block stuff, m.o.p., whatever...the more "street" records that are done today.

If these vocals were soloed...people would be like "this sounds like crap" but the distortion, in a way, helps it cut through the mix and works overall.

Now is this a product of overloading the mic pre? do the "engineers" not hear it or are they going for this sound? Do any of you guys look for this sound?

[Sobe]

massive compression

[XHipHop]

well how do you feel about that?

Too much or just right?

[rickrock305]

all music on the radio today is heavily compressed...no secret there... But maybe what your referring to is the broadcast limiters and things they have at the radio station


But on stuff like MOP...they've almost always had distortion on their vocals, so i guess thats what they're going for. Sometimes it works, other time not so much. Some of the d block stuff with distortion sounds real good, although i can't think of any names of tracks at the moment, the one off of the latest Gang Starr album comes to mind.

Me personally, I've noticed that a lot of preamps sound the best when they're right on the edge of distorting, so i tend to get pretty close. With that comes the increased chance of distortion, especially with someone like MOP who is screaming all the time or someone with a lot of dynamics. Thats when a good pre comes in handy, because the distortion will be a lot better sounding off a good pre rather than a not-so-good pre. But sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...depends on artist/song/maybe even mic or other part of the chain?

[ILL]

You just HAVE to compress MOP, they yell so much...

[ttauri]

Originally Posted by rickrock305

all music on the radio today is heavily compressed...no secret there... But maybe what your referring to is the broadcast limiters and things they have at the radio station

I don't listen to a lot of radio (almost never, really), but I was listening to a HOT station recently, and was totally shocked by the sound... Sounded like they were playing 128kbps mp3s or something. Stunningly bad.

I guess that's a different thing, though (as for overdriving the vocals... I guess I've always heard that as an effect on certain songs... Biz & Kane on "Just Rhymin'..." for instance. Sometimes the raw isht just needs to be pushed like that.)

Peece,
T. Tauri