What’s your pick for routine vocal compression duties? Vox Comp, Black Valve or Compressor?
Cubase now boasts a number of decent stock compressor plug‑ins: Vox Comp, Black Valve and Compressor. Which should you choose for vocals?
When it comes to modern vocal production, compression is pretty much a ubiquitous part of the processing chain. In most cases, the primary aim will be to manipulate the dynamic range so that, when placed within the final mix, every part/phrase/word of the vocal comes across clearly. Having achieved this, a secondary consideration might be to impart some character or attitude to further enhance the vocal, either tonally, or in terms of finessing the attack or sustain elements of the individual words.
Cubase now offers a number of stock compressors, including two new choices added in v13: Vox Comp (for Pro and Artist users) and Black Valve (Pro only). So how do you decide which of these compressors to use on your vocals? To help you choose, I grabbed a suitable vocal track and put the two ‘new for v13’ offerings up against the long‑standing standard Compressor plug‑in, to see if I could identify the role that each might play in achieving these typical compression aims. You’ll also find, on the SOS website, some audio examples that demonstrate what I’m talking about: https://sosm.ag/cubase-0724.
One Knob Wonder
As can be seen in the main screenshot, Steinberg have taken the keep‑it‑simple approach to Vox Comp’s control set. The documentation suggests that it features a ‘highly adaptive’ algorithm that’s designed for processing vocals. Given that there is a specific option to engage a low‑latency ‘live’ mode, I assume that there’s usually a ‘look‑ahead’ stage of a few milliseconds that lets the plug‑in see what’s coming and adjust the processing to suit.
Once inserted, you simply dial in Vox Comp’s Threshold knob to achieve the required amount of compression (there is no user control over the attack/release or ratio settings; presumably, these are built into that adaptive algorithm). If you need to level‑match the processed signal to the original, you can adjust the Output knob. I’ve not used it here, but you can also use Vox Comp for parallel compression without setting up any routing in Cubase, thanks to the Dry/Wet knob.
As is easily demonstrated by the audio examples that accompany this workshop, the results can be very good indeed. My example vocal features noticeable level differences between the verse and chorus sections, and several words within the verse section that are quieter than some others. Using the settings shown within the first screenshot, Vox Comp’s one‑knob magic does a very good job of levelling out these quite marked differences (the loudness range across the example goes from 13.1 LUFS unprocessed to 7.8 LUFS after processing) while still maintaining a fairly natural sound.
These changes are reflected in the vocal’s waveform, as shown in the second screenshot. Sonically, it’s impressive stuff: a much more even vocal performance is achieved effortlessly, the words and individual syllables can all be heard clearly, and it still sounds fairly natural. If in doubt about your vocal compression choice, then, Vox Comp should be a very good place to start, regardless of your confidence level and/or experience with compressors featuring fuller control sets.
Changes to the vocal waveform as a result of the compression settings shown in the first screenshot. Each panel shows a short example from the same vocal performance — the top and middle panels are from the quieter verse section, while the bottom panel is from a louder chorus section. The top panel compares the unprocessed vocal (pink) with the Vox Comp version (pale blue). The middle panel shows the three different compressors: Vox Comp (blue), Black Valve (pale red) and Compressor (pale green). The bottom panel shows three different configurations for Compressor, using the settings shown in the other screenshot (in pale green), with the same settings but an 8:1 Ratio (in pink), and with slower attack and release settings (in pale blue).
Added Character
Users of Cubase Pro 13, though, have the option of using the Black Valve plug‑in, which emulates a classic tube‑style compressor. There are more knobs here (five, compared with Vox Comp’s three) and it’s not designed solely with vocals in mind, but it still offers ease of use and is certainly useful in this context. The plug‑in emulates two important characteristics found in Black Valve’s hardware inspirations: a relatively slow attack time and the option to add some preamp‑based saturation to the sound.
The Dry/Wet and Output level controls function as they do in Vox Comp and, again, there are no individual attack, release or ratio controls. But as on lots of hardware valve and optical compressors, the Peak Reduction knob acts as a sort of ‘macro’ control, influencing both threshold and ratio parameters, with higher values providing more overall compression. The Drive knob controls the signal level going into the modelled tube preamp and, pushed suitably hard, adds some saturation to the sound. The gain control then provides a post‑preamp gain‑staging option before your signal hits the compressor.
As shown in the screenshot, I set a pretty high Drive level to make the tube saturation sound a little more obvious in the audio examples (it’s particularly noticeable on the harder consonants), but note that if you wanted to exaggerate this further then you could apply a few extra dB of gain prior to the signal reaching the plug‑in — this would drive the tube stage even harder. I didn’t think it was appropriate for this particular vocal part, but the modelled tube does break up in a very pleasing fashion so it’s an option to bear in mind in a different context.
My Black Valve settings produced a slightly greater increase in the loudness of the quieter sections, but more noteworthy is the slightly higher levels of some note onsets.
The combination of saturation and compression resulted in a shift from the original 13.1 LUFS to 6.2 LUFS, and the much more even nature of the processed performance is clearly audible. Looking at the resulting waveform display, my Black Valve settings produced a slightly greater increase in the loudness of the quieter sections, but more noteworthy is the slightly higher levels of some note onsets. This is not a surprise given the somewhat slower attack time, and although it’s a small difference, to my ears it results in the starts of words having a slightly stronger emphasis. That might or might not be a desirable result, depending on the captured performance and the musical context, but it’s a useful option to know about. So if you’re looking for a compressor that might impart a little additional character to your sound, while still being very easy to use, Black Comp is a great candidate — I’d certainly check it out before choosing to splash the cash on a new third‑party compressor plug‑in.
Clinical Precision
Cubase’s standard compressor, called simply Compressor, is designed for those occasions on which you want precise control over all the elements of the compression process. It requires a little more user input (and probably experience), but the results are clean and controllable. As shown in the screenshots, for the main example used here I used a combination of a modest (4:1) ratio and fast attack and release times. I then just adjusted the threshold to taste until I felt the vocal was sitting at a more consistent level. Analysis subsequently indicated this resulted is a loudness range of 8.0 LUFS.
As shown in the short waveform, the most obvious feature of the Compressor processed version is that the loudest parts of the vocal are not compressed as much as with Vox Comp and Black Valve. This is most likely because the fixed 4:1 ratio is lower than the adaptive ones of Vox Comp and Black Valve are on average — a little experimentation revealed that an 8:1 ratio in Compressor produced something closer to the results of Vox Comp. Keeping the ratio and threshold fixed and varying Compressor’s attack and release produced exactly the sorts of changes you might expect in the waveform, making it possible to experiment with the balance between note attacks and note sustains with a level of control that’s not really possible with the simplified controls offered by Vox Comp and Black Valve.
Again, to my ears, the results in this example sound very clean. The overall level of compression achieved in this case was in the same ballpark but, of course, the user has much more precise control over how that’s achieved. If you’re more of a control freak, Compressor is a great choice — and note that if you want a less clinical‑sounding result, you could always use something else to add character: you might insert an instance of something like DaTube into your signal chain in front of Compressor, for example.
Is All Choice Good?
For me, the key lesson from this little experiment is that the differences between the three compressed versions of my example vocal are relatively small when compared with the differences between any one of them and the uncompressed version. Some of those differences between the compressed versions are where that secondary aim (discussed earlier) comes into play, whether it’s adding character or wanting more detailed control. If those things are important to you, Cubase clearly has stock plug‑ins that let you explore that.
But if you’re simply focused on that primary aim of getting your vocal broadly in the right dynamic range, then whichever compressor you go with, be it Vox Comp, Black Valve or Compressor, it can deliver the goods and the ‘right’ choice will probably come down to how quickly, or how easily, you can get to that good result. Yes, you can deep dive on your vocal compression if you wish, but you can still achieve impressive results by turning a single knob. How cool is that?