Just completed a shoot for a training DVD and have about 16 hours of excellent recorded voice - lapel mounted Sennheiser MKE2 Gold recording into MiniDisc in wav format.

I set the levels to manual at an average -12db but nevertheless the speaker tended to move head from side to side causing a fluctuaution in levels and also through the usual transients from laughter etc.

My question then is, what are people using to comprees the sound and what parameters are recommended for voice wrt ?

Attack

Threshold

Ratio

Release

Gain mark-up

John,

I think that you will find a variety of suggestions here - as compression is something that you have to suck and see. I will give you some broad suggestions as to what I often use on narration vocal, but this is on a hardware compressor pre-recording. I rarely need to use much on the post processing side.

I would normally use a ratio of between 2.5 and 4 for voice - with 3 a good starting point. I like a fairly fast attack of about 0.3msec, but a much slower release generally about 0.2sec. Threshold setting is generally about -30dB - but you might like to start higher if it is only the tops that are a problem. I just adjust the makeup gain as required by comparison with the original at a part whose audio I am happy with (generally only 1-2dB). I generally use a noise gate as well (about -50dB), but if your recording is nice and clean you probably will not get any great benefit from this.

Hope this helps.

Graeme, I will try some your suggestion especially attack & release - I have zero noise to be concerned with. Thanks