Vocal hiss (SM58 + Tascam DP004)

danny4690

New member
Hi all,

New to the forums, first post here!

Basically I've been helping by better half with some demo recordings for her solo material. It's mainly 1 acoustic guitar, 1 main vocal and the odd bit of backing vox.

Simply because this is a very basic demo we're using GarageBand to mix, we do have access to Logic but I don't feel it's worth it because what I'm doing in the mixing isn't complex enough to justify such a powerful software.

I'm recording guitars into my Tascam DP-004 and then transferring the tracks into Garageband with no problem. Everything sounds good, levels perhaps a bit low, but it's manageable.

We recently bought an SM58 to record better vocals (the onboard Tascam mics are good but just not clear enough). The main problem I'm having is a persistent hiss coming from the vocal track. I have the Tascam on the mic setting which is designed for mic input. The vocals themselves are clear, it's just constantly there in the background.

Is the issue just that I'm using the Tascam in place of a proper audio interface, or is there something I could be doing better?
The plug-ins in GarageBand go a bit of the way in reducing it, but I feel like it shouldn't be there in the first place.

Any thoughts? I'll be posting one of the tracks (Cambria Moon) on Soundcloud later this week so will direct you towards it then so you can maybe hear what I'm talking about. Don't be too harsh on my mixing though! I'm new to this - more used to video editing!

Thanks in advance.
 
How close is the mic to the vocalist? Too far away and the gain of the DP-004 will need to be higher which might introduce some background hiss from the preamp in the recorder. The SM58 is considered to be a mic for live use and generally used fairly close to the mouth. Too close though and there may be a boost in the bass from proximity effect, so a good balance needs to be found.
 
Cheers Mark,
It was all pretty close. As we are new to this we got an all-rounder mic which could do instruments too, rather than paying for separate mics and the 58 was a good option.

About 5 minutes after posting this my girlfriend remembered she had a midi keyboard which could be used as an audio interface...after all that!

So we're using that with good results. Thanks!
 
Back
Top