Noam Wallenberg walks through his serial compression approach for vocals, showing how distributing the work across multiple compressors changes what each one can do.
Before touching a compressor, Noam uses Waves Vocal Rider to gently lift the quietest phrases rather than level everything to the same volume. He sets it to upward-only riding at a conservative range, so it takes the edge off dynamic inconsistency without flattening the performance.
With that pre-leveling in place, the CLA-76 no longer has to fight for control. That's the core idea here: when volume is already managed, compression can shift its role from control to character. Noam backs off the input gain on the CLA-76 to reflect that the heavy lifting is already done.
A third compressor, the PuigChild, runs at a very slow time constant (4) and adds gentle, continuous compression alongside harmonic saturation. It's not doing dramatic gain reduction - it's contributing texture and glue that a fast compressor wouldn't provide.