How? Vocal distortion in 'Satellite of love' (Mila Jovovich)

[AlexT]

Hi.
Maybe you know the version of 'Satelite of love' from 'Million Dollar Hotel' sung
by Mila Jovovich (babe).
I found it on the net http://funksion.org/mal/ (somewhere in the
middle, right click and save as, don't know about Macs, sorry)

When you listen to the vocals throughout the song there is this great soft
distortion. Any idea how this was done or how this could be done precisely?
Tube pre-amp maybe?
Enjoy!

[downfader]

Do you mean this track: ??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HYxQfZ_uSE

All I can hear is compression. The bit at the end is just her overloading the channel I reckon. You can easily get this effect with pluggins... a guitar pedal over the inserts of a channel strip.. etc.

[AlexT]

yes that's what i mean.
but when i overload my channel on my desk it distorts immediately at some
point. That's why I'm thinking its maybe tube distortion.
Oh - just tried it with a guitar distortion. Does work quite well.

I haven't come across any guitar plug-ins yet that work as good as an effect pedal.

[downfader]

I used to do a similar thing with the pedal in the send/return buss of a mixer, too, and it has the added benefit of keeping some of the channel uneffected.

[downfader]

Doh! My browser posted twice, sorry.

[AlexT]

it seems though that the distortion isn't always there. It slowly fades in when
she sings louder methinks... either this was manually done or that is why i
imagine it could be a tube pre-amp...

[MartinOM28V]

Yeah that is definitely tube distortion. probably aided by use of a compressor to keep the level low enough to minimize distortion until it's time to cut loose.