hey im recording r&B and hip hop and have a home studio setup i was wonder should i use a compressor in the recording chain to fix some problems i have with
the audio i have alot of spikey sounds and when i recorded this friend from school he screams on parts in his songs and it sound terrible to my ears .

equipment:
emu 0404 sound card
presonus tube mic preamp
mxl 990
waves plugins

Sounds like you might benifit from a little compression in the recording chain. Be moderate when applying it during recording because you will not be able to undo it.

Compressing in stages (ie; recording and again in mixdown) gets better results than slamming it during recording.

Maybe better mic technique would help too. the vocalist could get up close to the mic during more quiet passages and then back off a bit when they let it rip. This way you could minimise the 'plosives' which are the B and P letter elements of the lyrics which push higher velocity air pressure at the mic and cause peaks.

Quote:

...and when i recorded this friend from school he screams on parts in his songs and it sound terrible to my ears .

Is this the recording or your friends singing that sounds terrible?

jameal wrote:

hey im recording r&B and hip hop and have a home studio setup i was wonder should i use a compressor in the recording chain to fix some problems i have with the audio i have alot of spikey sounds and when i recorded this friend from school he screams on parts in his songs and it sound terrible to my ears . equipment: emu 0404 sound card presonus tube mic preamp mxl 990 waves plugins

Tonytones is right you would need to apply some compression, maybe a limiter just to control the peaks then apply compression during the mix just to make the voxs sit alittle better
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