Ever get tired of setting individual levels for people on vent who are sometimes too loud and sometimes too soft? Want to set up your vent so everyone comes through at the same, comfortable volume? Do this:
Here's how:
- Go to Setup
- Enable Direct Sound
- Select the SFX Button
- Select Compressor and click Add.
- Under Compressor Properties use the following settings
- Gain = Adjust for how loud you want people to be. (I use "7")
- Attack = 0.01
- Release = Around 500
- Threshold = Around -30
- Ratio = 100
- Pre delay = 4.0
What these values mean, in case you're wondering:
Gain
How much volume you feed into the compressor. Not really relevant unless everyone is too quiet, then you can turn this up a little; turning it up too much will sound EXTREMELY CRAPPY.
Attack
How fast volume change will happen. example: setting this to 500 means that any-
thing coming in will only be dropped in volume after a half a second. for vent this should
be set as low as possible.
Release
how fast the compressor stops changing things. not really that relevant with vent, setting it around 500 is good for voice material.
Threshold
This sets the point where we actually start changing what's coming in. Whereas 0 is the absolute loudest you can have for an input, -60 is super quiet. Average users will probably come in somewhere around -25 to -15, with the occaisional few being really quiet, which is why I have this set so low.
Ratio
How much any sound below the set threshold gets compressed and/or modified in the volume department.
If you still want to hear SOME volume variation then set this lower (2-4)... the higher you set it the closer in volume everyone will be.
Pre delay
Mostly just deals with processing; with computer and digital processors they can look ahead a few milliseconds to see what needs to be dropped in volume or changed before it actually comes through the speakers. Highest is ideal.
:)
I use this. I learned a bit about compressors when I did audio recording with my dad years ago. I can say that compressors basically average out the sound levels. So if you have someone who's really loud, and someone who's really quiet, they will both come in at the average between the two.
This works REALLY well for our HDL channel, and it's nice that the vent compressor allows you to filter out at what levels things will start to be normalized. I can tell you however that, this will not save our ears from the feedback of people using speakers.