9
PERFORM-VG User Manual
High & Low
9. Tone
Tone automatically adds EQ (equalization), Compression, De-Ess and Gate to your
overall vocal sound.
To activate Tone, press the button.
EQ helps to shape the tone of your voice to fit into a musical mix. We remove
some of the low “mud” frequencies and boost the highs for “sparkle” or “air”.
Every recording you hear has some manner of EQ on the lead vocal (and pretty
much everything else too).
Compression reduces the difference in volume between the loudest and quietest
notes. This gives you a more even sound that can blend into the music better. It’s
almost unheard of for vocals to go uncompressed in modern music, both recorded
and live.
De-Ess gets rid of harsh “S” sounds and makes them sound more pleasing to the
human ear. De-Ess goes hand in hand with Compression, since Compression can
make “S” sounds a bit more pronounced in the mix.
Gate “shuts off” an audio input when it falls below a certain volume. This works
great on things like drums where you want the drum hit to come through, but
then have the mic silent in between hits. For vocals, we don’t want to go as far
as shutting your mic off but we do want to reduce the volume (gain) of the mic
when you’re not singing so that feedback becomes less likely.
Although you can turn Tone off, we recommend you leave it on.
Since Perform-VG replaces EQ and effects that are often added by a live sound
technician, you’ll want to make sure that the mixer channel you plug Perform-VG
into has a flat EQ (not altering any frequencies) and that any effects are
turned off.