Need help to find a microphone which could fit to my voice better than Neumann TLM 103

[choked boy]

Hello Boys!





I would need help and advices concerning my gear, but i need to explain the situation so you could see where i am in my head concerning the situation if you may...

I do music since 10 years as a guitarist, singer, beatmaker and now i try to rap on a solo project, am an ex metalhead.
My style is akward but i found something cool to developp i think.
i talk really quietly on the mic with a bassy voice on some g-house trap instrumental, and i'm in search of this warming tone/feeling to make my voice sound like a charm.


I usely record at a pro studio and the engineer uses a neumann tlm103 (for every artist he receives he only have this mic...) and a spl goldmike pre amp. the sound is ok, clean, precise, a litttle warm. pretty good in general even if he have to work a lot on sibilance and on this harshing effect too with this mic (but he know how to do it) ect.
the songs i design with him are top notch quality he have experience and know how to work with his tlm 103 and his weakness.


On my side i decided since a year to begin my home studio and bought the same mic (neumann tlm 103) and learn theory about editing vocal takes, mixing, how to make music like a pro, understand all the plugin i use, understand mastering notions, developp my ears ect. i'm passionate and very dedicated bout all of this.


So after finessin and learning all of that, i found that I can make pretty good mixes with my gear (TLM 103 + motu m4 for audio interface)
but my vocal takes after being compressed sound very harsh... with a lot of sibilance and breath going through the mic , i have mouth click too even if i try to de-ess, eq, compress less, i have tried everything i can't completely get rid of all of this and my ears bleeds... and i'm pretty sure the vocal takes are good i respected all the theory doing everything the right way (do not clip, do not normalize, do not speak to close to the mic, sing/kick in a prepared treated room phonically speaking, aim at -15db when i record raw takes etc)


My engineer, who are working with me on my project, listened at my mixes two days ago and was actually suprised how good it sounded for a beginner. but at his place when we listened at my mixes with him i found it lame honestly (pretty hard with myself ^^)


I can't succeed to have that warm tone, keep such precision, but less harsh that he achieved on my project when i work with him.


he said to me "you would need a tube pre amp like i have to have that sound".


so i beginn to look at the pre-amp gear and thinking bout maybe add Universal audio LA610 pre-amp or something like that to have a warm tone with my tlm103, some people experimenting the same thing as me with tlm103 said they fixed this with a pre ampl like this. but i know i can warm the tone with plug in too with saturation for exemple. so do i really need a pre-amp. i can't say....


but i speak with other people who seemed very qualified too, and they said to me "stop recording on tlm 103 its not very good for vocals especially for hip hop vocals, too bright, it do not forgive, maybe try a Shure ksm32 you will love it!"


my audio interface is not that crappy (the motu m4) so i think they may have right, maybe i need a new mic, which could fit better to my voice than buy an expensive tube pre amp to fix the harshness of my tlm103.


Seems like TLM103 for my voice without pre amp is not that cool at home finally...


I also heard a lot bout AKG c414 and AU 4050.


and i'm also very curious bout the slate digitale polyvalent ML-1 (cause i beginn to help people with their project too, and it could permits me to offer them a lot of different mics sounds finally, but i don't know if its a really good mic i need to made some research bout it)


So now i'm hesitating with testing to work with an AKG c414, audio technica 4040/4050 or a Shure ksm32/34... i really can't decide and try it out at the same time i'm in a small city nobody here sell or give the offer to try it out...
and i would love to have someone able to give me the good mic advice concerning my voice and project.

i also find someone tonight on a forum said to a person which have the same problem than me with his tlm 103 that he should make space for the vox and dig some frequency concerning the instrumental (dig at 600hz and at 2.5k), than the voice will sound better with this trick, i need to try it out don't have yet.




So i'm here, would need advice if you may.


Which mic could make my voice sound even more seducing without having to do a lot of eq, and which could be more permissive concerning sibilance, harshness, heavy breathing noises cause of proximity and mouth clicks that i have with my tlm103 at home...


i join one of my song "pulp fiction" recorded on tlm 103+ spl goldmike at pro studio with my engineer, so you could listen how my voice sounds like in studio pro condition,
and i join another song called "Tek" mixed by myself with my home configuration (tlm 103+motu m4) and you could see what i mean by harsh.





Which mic would be my best bet? thanks a lot for your help.

 

[keith.rogers]

It would be more useful to hear just the vocal track, maybe posting the non-lossy, unprocessed WAV/AIFF file so we can hear what the mic and your voice sound like. There should be a media folder in your project where you can pull that out and put it in a cloud location like Dropbox, Google Drive, et al.

The tracks are pretty highly compressed, so it makes it difficult to really hear what has been actually recorded.

IMO, any modern, LDC is going to be in a similar bucket as your TLM103. They are wonderful for capturing many vocal styles and instruments, but sometimes they just don't work. I would probably hang on to the Neumann and consider adding a dynamic mic, honestly. Have you tried something like the plain old SM57/58?

And, make sure you have a good pop filter and keep a distance that captures enough low frequency content so EQ can help bring in warmth, but at the same time the mouth noises are minimized, i.e., you are not right on top of the mic.

Over compression is going to really emphasize things like mouth clicks and sibilance, so developing some mic technique to reduce the need for a lot of compression in the vocal track will help, but I can also recommend iZotope's RX (8 or later, probably) as a good tool to remove mouth-clicks. And, it has an effective de-esser, but they can also introduce artifacts, so unless it's a voice-over kind of track, I tend to only work on sibilance "surgically" where it detracts from the overall mix. And, you can, of course, do de-essing manually with a combination of automation on compression, EQ and level/volume.

 

[TalismanRich]

I think there is more going on that just the sibilance and harshness of the vocal. The click percussion sounds are right in the same place sonically as your sibiliance and just seem to add an irritating click to the track.

You might also find it advantageous to work on your vocal technique. Try to make your sounds a bit more "round" by opening your mouth and enunciating the words. The easiest way to take care of mouth clicks is to eliminate them at the source.

 

[Orson]

I am no expert but my experience with the 103 is that it is a very unforgiving mic that will pick up everything. We are constantly having to reposition it if moved or doing something new because it will pick up all mouth noises etc. I

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

KSM104 or 105 would be more forgiving than a 103LDC, I imagine.

A sm57/58 is great to baseline against something fancy. Right on Keith.

Not sure if stated, but use a pop guard.

 

[choked boy]

yeah i already have an anti-pop! here is raw vocals i succeed to record at home without any effect so you can see if there is another problem. but i think i do everything fine, have no reverberation, no clipping, have an anti pop, don't speak too close to the mic, record at -15db, be careful about articulation and select the best takes for each phrase. let me know what is not fine if something is pls. i listen to some comparisons between Shure ksm 32 and tlm103 and it seems pretty close on youtube comparisons. there is not a world between them i think. but i'm just a beginner after all.

 

[keith.rogers]

First, the vocal can, and probably should, be recorded at a higher level. There's nothing wrong with getting peaks around -6dB. It will mean less lift for the track to the final mix, and if a good portion of that lift is getting done in a compressor (with make-up gain), it's going to lift noise more.

Now, unfortunately, I do not know more than 2 or 3 words of French, and I suspect that many of the default settings in RX might change your vocal into something that sounds like you have a speech impediment, rather than cleaning up the vocal. It does seem to find a lot of mouth-click noises, but I think the sibilance "fixes" might not be ideal for your language. Plosive control might be useful, because there are some dynamics that seem to be mostly plosives. Maybe that's intentional, but I don't know.

I doubt a mic change is going be a huge win, but, again, you might give a dynamic mic a try. My 2¢.

p.s. (edit): Our son, who does know a good amount of French, listened and said the articulation of the processed track is still intelligible. So, here's your original track with an 11dB boost (for comparison), and the same track with some de-click, de-ess, and de-plosive work done in iZotope RX. I suspect that somewhere between your original and the processed track is where you might want to be, but IMO the very rapid [speech] delivery is going guarantee some mouth noises, and probably breath ones, too. (I tried to use RX Breath Control, but it was clearly removing some vocal parts and not just breaths). The plosives are something you might be able to tame with practice, but RX will let you just dial in a level of attenuation that might give you a better track to start mixing with. De-essing is one of the hardest (IMO/IME), and is also something that may or may not impact the final mix. Plus, I think your language is going to be hard for software that may be designed primarily for a different language. (I could be wrong!)

 

[RRuskin]

..."but my vocal takes after being compressed sound very harsh." Why do you think you need to compress your vocals? It's not a must and might be causing many of the things you don't like.

 

[choked boy]

First, the vocal can, and probably should, be recorded at a higher level. There's nothing wrong with getting peaks around -6dB. It will mean less lift for the track to the final mix, and if a good portion of that lift is getting done in a compressor (with make-up gain), it's going to lift noise more.

Now, unfortunately, I do not know more than 2 or 3 words of French, and I suspect that many of the default settings in RX might change your vocal into something that sounds like you have a speech impediment, rather than cleaning up the vocal. It does seem to find a lot of mouth-click noises, but I think the sibilance "fixes" might not be ideal for your language. Plosive control might be useful, because there are some dynamics that seem to be mostly plosives. Maybe that's intentional, but I don't know.

I doubt a mic change is going be a huge win, but, again, you might give a dynamic mic a try. My 2¢.

p.s. (edit): Our son, who does know a good amount of French, listened and said the articulation of the processed track is still intelligible. So, here's your original track with an 11dB boost (for comparison), and the same track with some de-click, de-ess, and de-plosive work done in iZotope RX. I suspect that somewhere between your original and the processed track is where you might want to be, but IMO the very rapid [speech] delivery is going guarantee some mouth noises, and probably breath ones, too. (I tried to use RX Breath Control, but it was clearly removing some vocal parts and not just breaths). The plosives are something you might be able to tame with practice, but RX will let you just dial in a level of attenuation that might give you a better track to start mixing with. De-essing is one of the hardest (IMO/IME), and is also something that may or may not impact the final mix. Plus, I think your language is going to be hard for software that may be designed primarily for a different language. (I could be wrong!)

wow thank you very much to give it a try, your version is cool. yeah more i made research more i understand i have already a very good microphone and nothing i couldnt fix with eq . i need to work my delivery on the mic to be maybe less breathfull, and masterise the art of de-essing, de-plosive(wouldn't know plugin does this, i thought it was the anti pop work) ect. exemple when i de-ess its very hard for me to spot the righ frequency to act on...

 

[choked boy]

..."but my vocal takes after being compressed sound very harsh." Why do you think you need to compress your vocals? It's not a must and might be causing many of the things you don't like.

i compress cause my quiet vocals recorded at -15 db are crushed by the instrumental i record on (which kick at -6db). I have difficulty to install them well in the mix without compressors. so after watching pro youtuber musician tutorials i got the wave suite. i compress with rvox a little, then cla-76 bluey, and like the result is weak i put two different compressors called "soundgoodizer" with different settings at the end of my vocal chain and this two seem to help my voice find his place in the mix a lot. but all of this is very harsh too... i see everybody have compressors in their vocal chain it seems to be a standard in a vocal chain to fight against the unconsistency of a voice delivery performance right? i use a plugin by waves called "vocal rider" to not compress a lot my vocals cause my fear is to overcompress it maybe. i don't really know when its "overcompressed" with precision so... but the best result i achieved is with 4 different compressors in my vocal chain... sounds cool but all the harshness, sibilance and plosives are bulked too xD. maybe i shouldn't record at -15db Rogers spot something too. its a bullshit rule every amateur repeat like a parrot maybe? as my style is quiet i can't clip with this style of delivery, maybe i should record at higher level, compress less, and work my skills about de-essing, d-plosive and the breath? if i want my voice to sound a little warmer, which frequency should i rise? curious about your thoughts.

 

[keith.rogers]

Like I said, record at a higher level. And, in the mixing phase, you can use something like a "clip gain" or gain plug-in to adjust levels between tracks to create what one guy I used to watch called a "static mix" with no FX at all. No EQ. No compressors. Nothing. Center the faders and work on the clip levels to get a full mix that still has headroom (at least somewhere around -6dB, maybe a little less. THEN you start to figure out panning and EQ carve outs for tracks to give everything its space. Add in your compression and reverb or whatever you need. Maybe some "exciter" on the vocal, maybe some ducking between bass and kick, etc. (Now I am making stuff up, because I just do small acoustic mixes, but the idea is get the tracks so it sounds like music, without having to work at the FX, because if you can't do that, then that means the problem is in the tracks.)