Recording vocals

the_obsolete

Hey people, i need your advice!

I'm recording stuff at the moment, everything is grand EXCEPT for when it comes to vocals, I'm getting too much of a live sound and I'm looking for that crisp n clear studio sound! What the hell do I need to do? Is it an audio card, a particular kind of mic, a vocal compressor i need or sommat else?
i've little expreience when it comes to recording vocals, so any help will be greatly appreciated!

crosstownk

Start with a compressor and adjust the gate so as it excludes background noise but not the vocals. I don't have a great amount of experience with vocal recordings but the few times I tried I found adjusting the gate helped.

frobisher

the_obsolete wrote:

Hey people, i need your advice!

I'm recording stuff at the moment, everything is grand EXCEPT for when it comes to vocals, I'm getting too much of a live sound and I'm looking for that crisp n clear studio sound! What the hell do I need to do? Is it an audio card, a particular kind of mic, a vocal compressor i need or sommat else?
i've little expreience when it comes to recording vocals, so any help will be greatly appreciated!

It's hard to give any advice without knowing what your present gear and set up is. Also, what kind of music and vocal sound are you after?

Niall - Dahlia

Don't mean to hijack the thread, it's kind of related anyway, and might help if you've €300 to blow! But does anybody have any opinions on the SE Electronics Reflexion Filter? Waste of money? Effective at all? At €300 I wouldn't even consider it to be honest, but looks interesting.

Paligulus

the_obsolete wrote:

Hey people, i need your advice!

I'm recording stuff at the moment, everything is grand EXCEPT for when it comes to vocals, I'm getting too much of a live sound and I'm looking for that crisp n clear studio sound! What the hell do I need to do? Is it an audio card, a particular kind of mic, a vocal compressor i need or sommat else?
i've little expreience when it comes to recording vocals, so any help will be greatly appreciated!

Well I am no expert on this but I was reading somewhere about recording vocals and it made a good point about forgetting to factor in bad room acoustics (.i.e the sound bouncing around the room and such) and a way around this was to record the vocals with a towel behind your head. I suppose you could try putting your head and the mike under the towel. Personally I think its so crazy it has to work.

Paligulus

Niall - Dahlia wrote:

Don't mean to hijack the thread, it's kind of related anyway, and might help if you've €300 to blow! But does anybody have any opinions on the SE Electronics Reflexion Filter? Waste of money? Effective at all? At €300 I wouldn't even consider it to be honest, but looks interesting.

As I said above, this will do the trick and is considerably cheaper!!!:
http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/section.php/95/0/d6e4f005339add25e858ef0470aff800

Niall - Dahlia

Haha, yeah thought as much, nothing some careful positioning and technique wouldn't solve. I would love to try it though.

frobisher

Okay OP, with all this talk of diffusers and towels you might as well get a little usefel info! A great vocal sound will come from using the best equipment and set up that you can get your hands on. People spend serious moola trying to that perfect sound but even very basic gear can produce a good sound for relative peanuts. The first thing to start with is your mic and room. If recording in a very bright sounding room (bathroom) you can expect the charateristics of the room to carry through in the recording, although close mic'ing in your avaerage bedroom should do the job for home recordings (use headphones for listening, not speakers), erecting duvets into a small booth will help more. A shure SM58 is a great vocal mic that doesn't pick up too much room (a very general statement ,but high end mics will expose your acoustics far more). Next comes your microhone pre-amp. For many typical home recordings this is often built into the soundcard. It's possible to acheive acceptable demo quality at home on quite cheap sound cards, but like above, the better your equipment, the better it will (or should!) sound. Then comes the stage of recording and processing... and that is where options really increase. Make sure that you are recording a high level of input and get going with whatever various tools your recording software offers you. You may want to EQ, add a little reverb/delay and maybe some compression. Every voice/mic/equipment/room combination will warrant different manipulation to acheive the desired result. And don't forget that how it is sung will have a massive impact too!

Niall - Dahlia

Check out these articles too for some tidbits that should help.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/mar97/vocalrecording.html
http://www.johnvestman.com/vocal_sound.htm
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/May02/articles/maximisingaudio.asp