Is buying a compressor a good thing for vocal recording?

Question

I have a little home studio and so far, just recording with my Studio Project B1 microphone right in my Presonus Firebox was ok for vocals. I have some money to spend on an upgrade for this setup, and some people suggested for me to get a compressor. This should help my vocal take to be more even and remove some unwanted noise.

Would you suggest this add-on to my current setup? Or would you suggest something else? I was also thinking about an effect rack, to replace the bad plugins that I have. Some people also suggest that I should get a better pre-amp (instead of relying on the one built-in the sound card).

Any help will be appreciated!

EDIT I record vocal mainly for rock/Alternative/Metal music but it could also be soft vocals with acoustic guitar.

Answer 1

Your pre-amp should be plenty good. You should be able to use a compressor in-the-box. Compressing while tracking could be beneficial, but not strictly necessary. Unless you can articulate exactly why you would need an out-board compressor, chances are you actually don't. Most live venues will have compressors so there's no need to get your own in most cases.

Things to think about in order of importance:

1. Improving your performance. Performance is king. If you are doing rock/metal, consider looking into the Zen of Screaming DVD series, or better yet, an actual teacher. Improving your performance is the biggest thing you can do to improve the end product.
2. Microphone technique. Are you an appropriate distance away from the mic? Do you use the characterics of the microphone to enhance your performance? Are you modulating your distance from the mic, i.e. backing away when singing louder so you won't peak the levels? Look at what very good singers do, the ones with a ton of stage experience tend to do this subconsiously.
3. The room you record in. Is the room appropriate for what you are trying to do? Do you have unwanted room ambience? It can be as simple as setting up a deadening panel (portable vocal booth or similar) behind your mic or singing under a set of furniture blankets, or as involved as building a vocal booth or just finding a good-sounding room to record in.
4. The microphone. Your microphone is decent enough - I have the same one. You are unlikely to find a significantly better microphone without diving into the 500-dollar range or beyond.
5. The pre-amp. Your presonus box has very good pre-amps and you are unlikely to find anything better before you start shelling out 500 dollars or more, and odds are it's not the weak link at all.

Knowledge is better than gear.

Answer 2

For my home studio, I went for an external pre-amp/compressor as a means of improving the quality of the vocals, as discussed in this question. It allows the raw vocal to be captured in a more controlled manner for subsequent processing. [As a caveat, I'm not familiar with the Firebox, so I'm not sure whether this is the weak link in your system.]

n.b. My choice was coloured by the need for the device to be rack-mountable and within a certain budget.

The other item I considered was external EQ but, for my setup, capturing the vocal clean and applying EQ changes through my DAW has been sufficient.

Answer 3

I would definitely recommend compressors. We use hardware compressors for as many channels as possible (8 I think) so we don't load the computer's CPU unnecessarily.

It makes a great difference to the separation and quality.

Answer 4

Buy a better mic FIRST. In order of importance;

Mic

Preamp

Compressor