Distance from Condensor Mic

ido1957

ido1957

9K Gold Member
I'd like to hear what distance you put between you and a condenser mic when you record vocals (yours or somebody else's). I'd like to know how distance from the mic affects the tone/sound of the voice - based on your experience. If you can give me the distance and the type of mic and why you choose that distance. I'm sure room treatment will make a difference (that room sound) so add confirmation of treatment if you use it.

Ay home I sing with no treatment at a pretty close distance - maybe 5-6 inches. It's just the distance I've been using for years for recording and live singing. I use a Sputnik mic into a LA610 pre mostly for the comp. At Mike's (treated) we're using a C414 into an ISA 2. He prefers to stand back - maybe at 12-15 inches, whereas I sing at my typical 5 inches. He says it reduces lip noises and stuff we don't want.

I wonder if the closer you sing the more it drives the mic components to respond giving you more color or brightness or whatever the mic tends to sound like.

I'm not doing a poll because there's too many factors.
 
The closer you sing can get you into "proximity effect", which can be good or bad.

I usually keep myself and others about a pencil length off the mic. I'll back off if I know I'm gonna be really blasting it out for some parts. Good enough.
 
I'm about the same as you ido and I sway in and out a bit depending upon what I'm singing... in my room 12 inches starts to sound distant.
 
Ido, is that you that sings on the tracks that you've posted in the clinic? I can hear some proximity effect on the vocals on your tracks. It's a weird balance in home studios...too close and it gets boomy. Too far and the less-than-perfect room comes more into play. It's a little different for live singing though. Dynamic stage mics require a pretty close distance. The differential in signal strength between you and the band diminishes quickly as you move away from a mic.

I use an LDC in an untreated room, and usually stay about 8-12" away. Any further and my awful acoustical environment creeps in too much.
 
Further to what I said above, and in light of what Tadpui's said... I'll almost always HPF vocals to deal with, as best I can, proximity effect caused by being this close... plus I have a naturally deep voice caused by having testicles big enough to require a special wheelbarrow to carry them around..;) - so I sort of need to trim the bass frequencies a bit anyway...
 
My goto vocal mike is c414 as well, and I stick people (and me) about 20cm in front. That pencil length Greg mentioned would be a pretty good rule of thumb. Well, rule of pencil.
 
Not being forced in to micing closer than you might like for the sake of tone, is one of the immediate payoffs with some treatment around the mic and/or in the rooms. Or, larger and nice sounding rooms, -which probably most of us around here don't :)
It is really nice to be able to have as much as possible placement options for image size, tone' etc.
 
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For normally sung or spoken vocals, I put a pop screen up about a fist's width away from the mic as the 'closest you'll ever want to be to the mic' distance. Then I try to keep the artist's head another fist's width away from the pop screen.
If they are belting out, I ask them to take a step back from the mic (ie, proper mic technique)

Experience I have had with various singers is that if they are eating the mic and, as a result, singing quietly, there's all kinds of unwanted mouth noises that are introduced to the signal (pops, whistles, crackles, harsh consonant starts and ends, etc) and sibilance also becomes a b*tch to manage in the mix.
Backing off the mic and making the singer project a little more reduces all of that and also means that if they naturally rock forward or back when singing there won't be too much of a change in volume in the delivery (something to to with inverse square law of sound energy or something uber nerdy like that lol)

Dags
 
6" - 12" and much further when I'm belting it out. I mean like 2 to 3 feet away. I honestly don't know how much the distance affects the tonal qualities because my voice sounds different when I'm belting. It's a combo of (lack of) proximity and loud horrible yelling. :(
 
Armistice said:
... I'll almost always HPF vocals to deal with, as best I can, proximity effect caused by being this close... plus I have a naturally deep voice caused by having testicles big enough to require a special wheelbarrow to carry them around..;) ...
Click to expand...

You bring up a great point Armistice. Little known fact: the magnitude of the proximity effect is directly related to the size of one's testicles.

For most people, I'd say 6"-12" will do. I myself stand about 6-7 feet away.
 
calimoose said:
You bring up a great point Armistice. Little known fact: the magnitude of the proximity effect is directly related to the size of one's testicles.

For most people, I'd say 6"-12" will do. I myself stand about 6-7 feet away.
Click to expand...
Word.
A little back story might be in order.
These two, back in the war, relabeled a bunch of their condoms 'Small'.. Then actually flew over (very risky! dropping them into the enemy camp.
Hard to tell what havoc that might had on the poor bastards.. You be the judge.
But it preceded one of our major victories.
There you go. ;)
 
I try to position the mix based on a couple factors:

- Tone. The closer you get to the mix, the more low end you pick up. This is called "proximity effect". Too close and your vocal is too boomy. Too far away and it can sound weak, or you can get too much room noise (assuming you're not in a booth).

- Consistency. If you are singing 12" away from the mic, then if you sway an inch or two closer or further away, it's not going to make that big of a difference. If, however, you're 3" away from the mic, an inch or two of movement will make a huge difference in the input level. I tend to try to get the mic at least 6-8" away for that reason. I also tend to use a pop filter and sing right up into the pop filter, so that I can position the mic behind it and keep my position fairly consistent.

For my voice, specifically, I find that if the mic is too far away, it sounds kind of wimpy and pathetic. I need to bring it in closer in order to have some body in it. Especially when doing acoustic stuff. But I would still try to get the mic as far as you comfortably can from the source, without sacrificing the tone.
 
I usually have the pop filter 3" from the mic, and I'm 4-6" from the pop filter for a starting position. I can move in closer for quieter passages, and further away for louder. Always ride the distance between you and the mic for dynamics. Way better to do this that to have a plugin compressor do all that heavy lifting. And for belting or screaming, I'll end up as far as 2-3 feet away. Condensers are sensitive!

There was a great YouTube video I saw once (I'm pretty sure it was the Garageband and Beyond channel) where he said that many engineers misunderstand how to use the distance from the mic. Many believe that if you want a deeper tone, you move closer, and if you want a brighter tone, you move further away. While that is technically true, the distance from the mic depends on the singer's natural voice. If they have a naturally bright voice, you want to position the mic the distance away from them such that the recording is an accurate representation of their naturally bright voice. And the same goes for any vocal timbre. Good advice.
 
I use some extreme distances sometimes, at much as 10 foot at times but usually with acoustic guitar it's 1-3 foot as a starting point then I move back from the mic until it sounds well balanced. It depends as well how loud the source is, with hard tension strings my classical guitar become a LOT louder than medium or light tension, so one can move the mic back.
 
My most recent project I used an AT4040 for a guy with a pop filter. He was about 6 inches from the mic. We started farther out but closer in there was better bass response and so I made him stay close.
 
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