Recording acoustic singer/songwriter - how to get warmth and depth in sound?

Wings7919

New member
Hi all,

My first post in the forum. Was looking for some advice. I am recording some acoustic singer/songwriter tracks in my home studio. My current setup is a Rode NT1 mic, into a Focusrite Scarlett interface, into Logic Pro X. I am using the Logic vocal and acoustic guitar channel presets for each track.

I am trying to get a much warmer, richer (perhaps vintage) sound. At the moment my tracks and recordings also lack depth and are a bit thin and one dimensional sounding.

I was thinking of upgrading my gear and was considering one of the following options:

1) Replace the Rode NT1 with a higher end mic e.g. a valve mic like the NTK or the SE Z5600a II.

2) Buy some sort of mic preamp e.g. Golden Age Project Pre 73.

3) Buy a mic reflection filter (at the moment I am recording in a tiny, acoustically untreated room full of papers and books).

4) Invest in some vintage style emulation plugins.

Can anyone offer advice on where I should start experimenting?
 
Welcome to the forum.

I think your gear is enough to get close to what you are looking for.

I would first suggest that you get out of the 'tiny' room. How tiny? And or spend your money on treating the room acoustically.

There is really no way to even know if your instruments are even worthy of recording the sound you are looking for if you do not have a good room to record in. I am going out on a limb here but the 'vintage' tone you are looking for does not necessarily equate to the gear alone. More to do with the musician and the environment.

Treating the room is much cheaper than spending money on preamps and software. You will find that much of what you are hearing/not hearing is directly related to the sound of the room you are recording in. Especially if it is tiny. Frequencies are compounded and nulled in every room. Taking steps to control that would be my advice.


Please give more info as to what you are recording and how. Maybe there are other things you can change to get closer without spending money.
 
Hi all,

My first post in the forum. Was looking for some advice. I am recording some acoustic singer/songwriter tracks in my home studio. My current setup is a Rode NT1 mic, into a Focusrite Scarlett interface, into Logic Pro X. I am using the Logic vocal and acoustic guitar channel presets for each track.

I am trying to get a much warmer, richer (perhaps vintage) sound. At the moment my tracks and recordings also lack depth and are a bit thin and one dimensional sounding.

I was thinking of upgrading my gear and was considering one of the following options:

1) Replace the Rode NT1 with a higher end mic e.g. a valve mic like the NTK or the SE Z5600a II.

2) Buy some sort of mic preamp e.g. Golden Age Project Pre 73.

3) Buy a mic reflection filter (at the moment I am recording in a tiny, acoustically untreated room full of papers and books).

4) Invest in some vintage style emulation plugins.

Can anyone offer advice on where I should start experimenting?

The mic you have is a good mic. It may not be expensive but you can put that mic up against expensive mics, and you may end up liking it better. The mic isn't the problem.

In my experience, it comes down to the pre amp. Tube mics sound warmer, I don't use a tube mic, but I use a tube pre amp. That might be an alternative to replacing it with a valve mic.

Don't use the presets on Logic. Just set up two empty blank tracks, or else it'll set what it thinks you want on the EQ and other things.

Logic just updated it's compressors, it now has a ton of vintage emulated compressors, those sound good with vocals.

It sounds like something else might be going on though. Because that NT1 should be very warm and not thin at all. Are you using cheap studio monitors? Before I had good studio monitors, everything sounded really thin. They had no low end at all. So I had to buy a subwoofer. I then replaced the monitors with better ones, but even the better ones still don't give me the lows I need, so I have the subwoofer.

But, on my old studio monitors, if I was to record the NT1A through a tube pre amp, it would sound thin, as did everything. Have you tried to play it in the car or something?

As far as rooms, I agree with the previous poster... However, I have been in situations where I have either been part of or have seen vocals tracked in spaces not suited for vocals and they still sound amazing. A treated room makes a difference but if it sounds extremely thin, the room won't really alter that it doesn't sound like.
 
A bad-sounding room WILL result in worse sound (with good mic and singer/player) than the same in a good-sounding room. The same goes for how the tracks are being listened to. Proper monitors in an acoustically-treated space can make all the difference.
The next thing to look at is miking techniques. Are you recording both vocal and guitar at the same time with the mike in a compromise position to get the volumes balanced, or recording each individually? In a bad-sounding room, mic placement is even more critical.
 
Well, I've got both the Nt-1, have used a scarlett, and own a Pre73. The mic is great (if a bit bright around 10k, hello sibilance.).

Most of the 'vintage' sound, as far as I can tell, is down to getting decent capture while tracking and knowing a bit about mixing (haha, statement of the obvious).
The Pre73 is a nice flavour, but nothing you can't do with software saturation.

As a hint, I might suggest using warm sounding plate reverb for both vocals and guitar, and opto compressors. I havent used Logic for a few years, but I remember a dropdown box in the basic compressor (we're talking logic 8 here) that allowed you to select opto/fet/vca compression types. Give it a go.
 
There is really no way to even know if your instruments are even worthy of recording the sound you are looking for

^^^This^^^

What guitar have you got and what does your guitar sound like?

If, to your ears, the guitar doesn't sound like the sound you want in your recording then you're going to struggle to achieve "that" sound. To my knowledge there is no magic preamp, mic or plugin that can make (for example) a cheap Ovation Bowl Back sound like a Gibson J-45.

Look at the source of the sound and the room you're in before wasting money. :thumbs up:
 
Have you experimented with different mic placement ? Sometimes it takes a while to find the best place to positon and aim the mic but once you get there it can make all of the difference.
 
You need to get warmth at the source, the room needs to sound good, the mic position needs to be correct, the instrument and the player have to be good and the vocals need to be good. The mic will pick up what you give it, room, playing, instrument, performance, you can only record whats there.

The recording need to sound good before you touch any eq, compression, reverb, etc.

Alan.
 
Throwing technology at a problem is sometimes an answer . . . but most often not.

The others above have said what needs to be said:

1 The gear you have is very good
2 Your recording space may be a problem
3 Your guitar and voice may be problems
4 Your recording techniques may be a problem.

Always tackle the source first.
 
What Jimmy said--it's the room. Skip the reflexion filter and the new preamps and the presets (!) and treat the room. If you have lot of money, by all means get the good stuff, but the room and the monitors are the most important thing. Certainly you'll need several mics and preamps sooner or later. Also, are you recording the vocals and guitar at the same time? Or separately? I'm guessing separately.
 
for warmth, use a tube mic preamp,but not cheap one that uses a starved plate system , the EH 12AY7 mic preamp is the cheapest that actually puts 400v on the the plate but your interface needs to hav balanced inputs or you will get noise,
For depth ,use several mics spaced every few feet from the source , or use a figure 8 ribbon mic in conjuction with a condenser for "mid-side" recording which works very well. Above all ,use your ears.
 
First, like the others said, all the technology in the world can't do the same for you as a decent player/singer and decent acoustics. But if you do want a vintage vibe, get a Martin Dreadnaught or a Gibson Jumbo and put him/her in front of a good condenser mic. In fact, one of the things that make vintage recordings sound "vintage" is the lack of loads of tech stuff. Musicians would go into the studio, a couple mics were set up and they would cut tracks mostly live. If you wanted vocals or acoustic guitar louder, you just got closer to the mic. That is what the Everly Brothers did in the 50s---Don and Phil sang into one mic along with Don's Gibson Jumbo, which he would lift up when he wanted it louder. The other musicians would set up and a couple of mics were used, sometimes shared. Every mic picked up stuff, there was very little isolation. The funny thing is, their records like "Bye Bye Love" still sound clear and fresh. They sound better than a lot of stuff produced with far better equipment and more refined techniques.
 
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