Compression for the Pastor

Hey all,

Was curious about who out there is compressing their pastor/speaker. Our Pastor has a huge dynamic range in his speaking and I was thinking that compressing him would help. I am just curious about...

1) What settings do you use?
2) Has it created any problems?
3) We record the sermon for a radio show...does this change anything? Will compressing him help?

If it helps, our pastor is using the Countryman E6 mic.

Thanks so much for any help!

Imraan

[Elec R. Winner]

first, the E6 is awesome! I have four, and have been trying to talk the pastor into using one, but he still likes his tie clip lapel... as far a compression goes, for your live setting, you won't want to do anything radical on your comp settings, don't go much above a 4:1 ratio, and leave the attack and release settings in the middle, but definately not too fast, or you'll hear the comp squishing and releasing. For live compression of an orator, I mainly use what's called multi-band compression for de-essing. this is essentially a 3 way crossover and 3 compressors. What makes it a de-esser is that you can squish all the highs, so the sibilance or "s" noise isn't so annoying, without squishing all the "meat" of the spoken word. I have a TC Electronic Triple C. They stopped making this a while back and I wish they hadn't. It has a bunch of presets that I used, tweaked the settings to fit my needs, and saved as a user preset. It's awesome. If you look at the gain reduction while it's in use, it will tell you everything you need to know about what's happening, and what you can change to fine tune it to suit your needs. If it's attenuating way too much, you should raise your threshold, or lower your ratio, or a mix of the two. If it's dropping out too fast or coming back too slow, you can change that with the attack and release settings. Finally, if it's still too quiet or loud overall, you can adjust that with the output gain, or the fader/send going to the compressor. Bear in mind that if you just raise the fader going to the compressor to make it louder, it may not get louder, but rather just squash the signal more. It's a hard concept to grasp at first, especially when you learn about companders, expanders, gates, limiters, and the like, but if you understand the basic 5 adjustments of threshold, attack, release, ratio, and output gain, you can quickly get a good understanding of how you can utilize these devices to make your job as sound guy MUCH easier.

[[Admin] osborn4]

I keep thinking this thread is about making the sermon shorter. Imagine my disappointment....

[Elec R. Winner]

Originally Posted by osborn4

I keep thinking this thread is about making the sermon shorter. Imagine my disappointment....

ahhh... reminds me of my days as a Baptist.... the pastor will just go on and on and on. Now that I work for a Methodist church, our pastor times his sermons so we're out EXACTLY when we're scheduled to, and we ALWAYS beat the Baptists to lunch

Originally Posted by Imraan

Hey all,

Was curious about who out there is compressing their pastor/speaker. Our Pastor has a huge dynamic range in his speaking and I was thinking that compressing him would help. I am just curious about...

1) What settings do you use?
2) Has it created any problems?
3) We record the sermon for a radio show...does this change anything? Will compressing him help?

If it helps, our pastor is using the Countryman E6 mic.

Thanks so much for any help!

Imraan

I too have a pastor with a lot of dynamics, since I've started compressing him I no longer have to ride his volume. Just be sure not to make him sound muffled when compression kicks in 3:1 ratio is about as far as I would go. Doing this will only help your radio show as long as you don't go over board.
I hope this helps.

[DTV-Engineer]

Originally Posted by Imraan

3) We record the sermon for a radio show...does this change anything? Will compressing him help?

At the least, you will make the station's board operator a lot happier... and the broadcast will sound a lot better, with lower apparent noise and distortion. If you currently run an unusually low record level to preserve the peaks, the noise floor becomes higher than it should be; on the other hand, if you're letting peaks peg the meter to keep the noise down, the distortion can become obnoxious after a while. So first, appropriate compression has the immediate effect of giving you a much better recording.

Second, some stations have better AGC/limiting processors than others, but all of them sound best when the input is held within a moderate dynamic range. This is especially important for AM stations, which typically use aggressive processing to achieve very high average modulation.

So... absolutely go for it!

-- Jeff

I'd really like to learn more about audio compression and alteration in that retrospect of things. Where should i head?

[Ron]

We love our E6. Our pastor hates it. He's even interrupted his message to say, "This microphone bugs the fire outta me." But he's promised that he'll learn to live with it since he sounds so good on it.

[[Admin] PHugger]

Originally Posted by The Pastor

This microphone bugs the fire outta me.

This is a good thing right?





PCH

Did he nopt use a microphone prior to the E6 .. and what is an E6?

[Ron]

Well if the microphone had "saved" the fire outta him it probably would have been a good thing Otherwise he's letting the entire congregation know more than they really need to know.

He used a lapel mic before the E6, which is a thin almost invisible mic that's worn close to the mouth. It sounds great, has helped greatly with feedback problems, no dead spots when he turns his head...

[1stAGSt.JamesMo]

Originally Posted by Josh Withers

.. and what is an E6?

A microphone - Countryman E6.


Terry