I completely agree with Wynnd, all good advice,
A number of years ago, I provided sound for an outdoor festival and the band that was playing for that job had been around for many years and was really good.
I called the guy in charge of the band ahead of time to ask how many monitor mixes they would like,..... and he responded with the following...,
just one, we usually use four monitors but they all get the same mix and it has just vocals in it.
To which I replied,, WOW! now that makes sense
Getting back on topic... in most cases you will want to stay away from gates, unless you know exactly what you are doing with them.
If you use compressors use very litte compression, too much compression can cause feedback.
A decent compression setting for a vocal monitor mix is something like this:
a simple way to remember compressor settings...
Threshold = threshold of pain, how loud do you want this person's voice or guitar to hurt before the compressor begins to lower the volume for everyone?
Raising the threshold to it's max (
to the full right position) means there will be no compression, regardless of the ratio, attack and release settings. In other words ... we don't care if this lady takes our heads off occasionally and sometimes blows our speakers.
Moving the threshold slider to the left will lower the threshold. If the gain of the vocal is loud enough to reach or "hit" the threshold, then the compressor will reduce the volume,... provided a ratio setting is at least higher than 1 to 1 (1:1). A commonly used ratio is 4:1. Meaning, once the vocal has hit the compressor hard enough, the compressor will lower the vocal proportionally. in other words, a lower ratio will produce a smoother more consistent sound, a higher ratio will definitely sound more aggressive, and have a tendancy to cause "pumping" of the sound. Radio stations normally use a tremendous amount of compression because the "ON AIR" person pays no attention to volume from one song to another.
Attack = how fast do you want to compressor to respond to the "out of control" dynamically insane vocal?
Release = once the vocalist has hit the compresor hard enough to compresss, how much time do you want the compressor to spend (ducking) before it releases the vocal back to insasne levels (if the vocalist is still screaming).
Gain = sometimes referred to as "makeup gain".
If our compressor settings are causing the vocalist (or guitar) to almost always be "above the threshold" (compressing), then the overall volume of the vocalist will be lowered so much that we need to make up gain that we lost in our mix from the heavy compression settings / aggressive singing.
All of this is a lot to retain without being confused, but the best thing you can do is make a multi-track recording of your band, then back at home, set up a monitor speaker like you use on the gig and experiment with these settings. Use the multi-track recording to play back into the same channels as were used live,,, then use and trust your ears, and mess with these setting to fully understand what they do.
Most important, never hesitate to come here to ask questions. There are all kinds of users here and their experience/talent is diverse,,, so ask away
