vocal frustrations

T

tigerotool

New member
i'm an amatuer producer. i play guitar, bass, keyboard and program drums and synths on my computer and they all sound good clean and professional. sometimes i have people from my church come over and record songs they wrote. i have an oktava 219 and i thought i'd get a second mic and upgrade to a 319. i try and use them with stuff i make and it just doesn't sound good compared to everything else. it either sounds like an old dusty record or an answering machine. i bought the 319 and they wouldn't let me return it after wasting a weekend trying to get it to sound good; stupid health code. so i'm thinking of just selling the mics on ebay along with 2 20 ft xlr cables, a shockmount for the 319 and a popper stopper and just starting from scratch. i don't want oktavas since no 2 oktava's sound exactly alike cause of lousy quality control and who wants to grab a handful of oktava's and see which one is the best.

after that i'm thinking of getting a studio projects c1 and maybe the studio projects pre-amp. i also could just plug the mic straight into the mixer.

does this sound like a good idea?

basically i plug everything into a behringer mixer and from the mixer it goes into my delta 44 soundcard. for drums keys and synths i use fl studio. for guitar and bass i use behringer v-amps.

any help would be appreciated. i'm kind of on a limited budget right now.
 
tigerotool said:
i'm an amatuer producer. i play guitar, bass, keyboard and program drums and synths on my computer and they all sound good clean and professional. sometimes i have people from my church come over and record songs they wrote. i have an oktava 219 and i thought i'd get a second mic and upgrade to a 319. i try and use them with stuff i make and it just doesn't sound good compared to everything else. it either sounds like an old dusty record or an answering machine. i bought the 319 and they wouldn't let me return it after wasting a weekend trying to get it to sound good; stupid health code. so i'm thinking of just selling the mics on ebay along with 2 20 ft xlr cables, a shockmount for the 319 and a popper stopper and just starting from scratch. i don't want oktavas since no 2 oktava's sound exactly alike cause of lousy quality control and who wants to grab a handful of oktava's and see which one is the best.

after that i'm thinking of getting a studio projects c1 and maybe the studio projects pre-amp. i also could just plug the mic straight into the mixer.

does this sound like a good idea?

basically i plug everything into a behringer mixer and from the mixer it goes into my delta 44 soundcard. for drums keys and synths i use fl studio. for guitar and bass i use behringer v-amps.

any help would be appreciated. i'm kind of on a limited budget right now.
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First of all, the MK319 is a great sounding mic........for some people's voices.
You have to test the mic you want to buy to see if it sounds good on YOUR voice. If you keep on buying and selling mics based on what anyone says on this forum, you will go broke in no time at all.

That is why studios usually have dozens of mics available to them. This also applies to pre-amps as almost any decent mic can sound good with the RIGHT pre-amp. What is the right mic/pre-amp? Depends on the source and the sound you are looking for.
 
You didn't mention the space you record in, but you may need to set up in a bigger space. Condensor mics pick up more room than dynamics and if the room doesn't sound good, the recording won't either. There's a guy in this area who owns a Neumann U87 and insists on recording all vocals in a tiny attic room and they sound terrible (maybe not to him: he's a bluegrass guy). I have cheaper mics and a better room and get better results, at least according to people who have recorded both places.
 
they sound ok. i can't trust the quality control of oktava. i have a hard enough time playing the guitar in front of a gc vulture. let alone sing forget that. and yes my studio is in the corner of my basement. it's the best i can come up with. it's not that bad. i'm more sure its the mics and not the room. they sound good for one girl who comes over my house but not for me. I'd feel more confident with another brand besides oktava.
 
How does quality control fit into the equation? It sounds good on the girl's voice but not yours. I don't see how that is indicative that it is a poorly made microphone or that you'd get differing results if you bought another of the same model.
 
tigerotool said:
basically i plug everything into a behringer mixer . . . for guitar and bass i use behringer v-amps.
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tigerotool said:
i can't trust the quality control of oktava.
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. . . Somehow I have a hard time reconciling these two statements. :confused: :D

they sound good for one girl who comes over my house but not for me.
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All the more reason you should audition the mic before you buy it. They have a habbit of behaving like that; sounding good on some voices and not so good on others.
 
i guess i'm into branding...

m-audio:
Delta 44 soundcard
radium 61 keyboard

event tr5 monitors

ibanez guitar and ibanez bass with emg pickups.

livewire cables

in case you didn't get the chain of command.

it goes ibanez guitar----behringer v amp 2----behringer mixer---m-audio soundcard.

i don't look for the most expensive industry standard gear. i look for the best underdogs.

i'm satisfied with everything except my vocals. i did try and use a presonus tubepre the other day. it was hard to get it to warm up my vocals without being noisy. i couldn't find the balance between answering machine and old dusty record if you know what i mean. i returned the presonus tubepre so i could get my money back and return to the drawing board trying to figure out how to get my vocals sounding good.

the girl just sings and plays acoustic guitar. I combine rock, hip hop and electronic music it's mostly hip hop sounding so it's pretty clean. we're pretty different styles.
 
tigerotool said:
i bought the 319 and they wouldn't let me return it after wasting a weekend trying to get it to sound good; stupid health code.
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Health code... if there was such a code, we wouldn't have public phones.
 
tigerotool,

Mikes are tools, and they are picky ones as well. They react differently to different voices, proximity, angles, room conditions, humidity and even temperature.

The idea is to get a good recording to work with. It is best to not use eq if at all possible when tracking. While you may not like the sound at first, it becomes possible to fix that in the mix if you will. So you may not like what you are hearing right now, but perhaps spending a bit more time with the mic and working around what you don't like may yeild better results for you.

This takes some time, and you will have to record a few tracks positioning the mic differently, but maybe you can be happy with it if you realize all mikes have issues and selling them after only one weekend is not necessarily giving the mic a chance.

If you have already done all of these suggestions and worked the vocal track in a mix with eq and effects and still don't like it, then perhaps another mic for "you" is in order.

Now, I am all for you getting a C1, but then I would be...wouldn't I. Before you do that, I suggest you exhaust all possibilities with the mic you have now before spending more money.
 
I would try to get the sound you want right off the bat... take the time to record the vocals in the right room, with the right mic and etc right away... so you only have to use very little EQ (if any at all) and you don't have to "fix it in the mix"... many times the vocals are last thing recorded, so it's easy to hear how it's going to sound in the mix as you add it to the mix.

Plus, it's always best to audtion mics before buying them... so make sure you can return them... also, many times you can rent mics from music stores, sound companies, and etc... which is another good way to audtion mics before buying.
 
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One option, if you're going to be recording a lot of different people, but only have enough budget for one mic, is to buy a mic that takes well to EQ. Like an SM-7 or a BLUE Baby Bottle (two that I have first hand experience with).

Then again, you have to have a decent EQ for that to work, and I'd be surprised if your Behri board's EQ was up to the job. Who knows though?

Anyway, just my two cents.
 
http://www.vzwpix.com/mlib/Navigate?acl=GDShGpNhTDU=

here's some pics of my little area. yes that is a christimas tree that i have nowhere else to put. i'm surrounded by junk. bear in mind i took these on my cell phone so they look like crap.

i'm 24 years old i still live with my parents. this is all i can do. any decent mic is going to pick up the furnace/central air. if there's some kind of inexpensive acoustic curtain thing that could help but other than that i'm not going to get good results.
 
tigerotool said:
if there's some kind of inexpensive acoustic curtain thing that could help
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You could use some padded packing/movers blankets... drap the blankets over some mic stands or whatever, it's not the best, but could help and it's cheap... "Habbor Freight Tools" sells padded movers blankets cheap.

Here's a link... but, watch for when they are on sell.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=46115

EDIT: Added...

Also, Ethan Winer (maker of RealTraps) is a good person to ask about cheap homemade treatment and etc.

Here's a link... http://www.musicplayer.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=26;hardset=;start_point=;DaysPrune=
 
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Or if your on a really low budget... and you already have some sleeping bags, or any thick blankets... you could use them instead of movers blankets. Also, there was a pretty good thread a while back about making homemade vocal/isolation booths... do a search on this bbs and you should find it.
 
tigerotool said:
the behringer mixer is fine. eventually i'll sell it and get one with more inputs. that's not the problem. it's the isolation mostly i guess.
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A decent pre-amp would be a good idea for most mics. In the Behringer I had the pre's were noisy and not very transparent. Just my two cents. I've used a SP VTB-1 and that made a difference.

Isolation is most definitely something you'd want to try. I've actually used moving blankets draped over one of those three-pane dividers that fold up (the things you'd have in a room where someone could change behind it).

Warren
 
tigerotool said:
it's the isolation mostly i guess.
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Well, then the blankets are worth trying... oh, and by-the-way, the Studio Projects C1 is a much brighter sounding mic than the oktava 319... the C1 is an ok mic for the money and can work well for some voices and not so well for others, so make sure you audition it.

Hey, besides the room noise from appliances and etc... if you clap your hands in the room, do you hear a lot of echo?
 
Just my two cents, coming from experience of recording vox in very crappy conditions: I wound up buying a Sansom C01 and ran it through an Art compressor mic pre. I haven't had the financial luxury of trying out alot of high-end mics, but I've found I use the c01 as often as my much more expensive AKG.
Again, the other posts are correct in the need for experimentation. This was just a solution that helped me out a bit (on a very tight budget). Good luck.
 
Ok, I just looked at your pictures again (fuzzy)... and I bet you have a lot of build-up and sound bouncing off all that crap in the room... the first thing I'd do is, get that crap out of there. Hey, is that a Tarkus bass petal on your floor?
 
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