Working in Parallel

You've probably heard of parallel compression, how it makes everything sound great and how it's used in just about every vocal track ever. But why? Firstly I'll start with what a compressor does.

Compressors will either reduce the loud parts or "squash" your input by the parameters you set for it. Or it will raise the soft parts by the set parameters while keeping the max volume. The former is called downward compression and the latter, upward compression, though it is less common. What this means is that in either case you are losing dynamic range. While it may make your snare punchier and your kick thicker. Compression on a vocal can help make a lesser controlled singer's range a little more under control but too much can really effect your vocals in a bad way.

But by running this compression in parallel (via a send) along side a dry uncompressed signal, then mixing the two outputs you create a mix that is doubled in dB (+3dB) in the dynamic range of the compressed track, but still maintains the transients of the dry track. This creates the "thickness" for the body of the vocal track without sounding too tinny in that time of need. This is something you would always want in a vocal but is also useful in drum tracks when you want to make a deep sounding drum. When recording Jordan for an EP, I used this technique to great effect making his vocals pop in just the right way. Usually this technique is done by really ramping up the compressor with a 20:1 to 40:1 ratio, which works great with high quality outboard gear but I was using in-DAW compressors, so I decided to run 3 compressors each compressing a little more than the last so that no one compressor was doing too much work. I found this gave the tone a much better quality. This is a little trick that Adrian does within his mixes when he can, and I can see the difference.

Graham Cochrane from therecordingrevolution.com uses this technique in all his mixes and shows an easy way using ProTools by setting the outputs to two auxiliaries you don't need to use a bus at all. Though this technique can be done a number of ways including sending to 3 seperate channels each with their own compressors, creating a much larger boost of volume but also noise floor.

Reference:

http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/parallel-compression https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7rpw-8LvY8