Before I begin the article, I'm not mega huge on gear. That may be because I can't afford to spend $2,000 for a volume knob too often. Not only is price a factor, but in almost every case more expensive does not always mean better, it simply means different. Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions to this rule, but for anyone in the home recording realm, there are usually bigger fish to fry than high end outboard gear. Your acoustical space, the song, and the quality of musicians you are working with are the most important by far and buying high end recording gear should wait until you have a great sounding room, great songs, and great musicians.

But.......

I must say that I witnessed something down at Micheal Wagener's Production Workshop that blew me away. We were in the early mixing stages and Wagener was showing us various vocal mixing tricks. It was time to smash the rock vocal with compression. Wagner had no problem decimating the vocal with compression, by the way. Anyway, we tried out just about every compressor that Wagener had. All of them worked, but some sounded better, different than others.

A Little Background Info

Before I get mega deep into my enlightening experience, let me explain the situation. We were in the middle of a 9 Day Workshop with Michael Wagener. We were recording one song with the emphasis being on engineering...not the band. Most of the time, the performances weren't given the attention they would have gotten in a typical recording setting because the focus was on the engineers who paid to attend the workshop.

While I was totally blown away by the vocals, Wagener had mentioned that he wasn't 100% satisfied and that they would need to be redone at a later date. He implied that the issues had to do with more of the emotion of the take (which I was impressed by) than with pitch or whatever.

Wagener Changed His Mind About The Vocals

As I said before, we were going through Wagener's extensive compressor collection. After hooking up one box, we all turned out heads. ?What the hell just happened?? I asked myself.. The vocals that were lacking in certain areas began to scream. I don't mean scream as in that annoying thing the kids seam to be into. I'm talking that emotion of the vocals went from a 7 in some spots to a 9 or 10.

So What Compressor Was It?

Well click on the next page and find out.