Noam Wallenberg breaks down a two-compressor approach for vocals that avoids the squashed, over-compressed sound. Instead of asking one compressor to handle everything, he splits the job by problem: peaks and valleys.
An 1176 catches loud peaks before they jump out of the mix. Attack is set relatively slow and release fast, but on this unit that still means a genuinely quick response, grabbing transients cleanly while letting enough of the initial hit through to keep the vocal's punch intact.
A Fairchild 670, run on a slow timing setting of 5, handles the opposite problem: quiet moments that get lost. Set slow enough to sit in constant light compression, it gently pulls quiet passages forward whenever they dip.
The result is vocal compression that shapes dynamics without sounding too squashed, each unit doing one job it's actually suited for instead of one compressor straining to do both.