Vocal recording tips and tricks?

[Divinejames]

I'm Interested in your personal approaches to recording vocals, whether they're professional standard techniques or obscure personal preferences!

Personal dilemma: everything I record comes out extremely muffled and rough. I've tried different placements and a variety of post processing but i just can get the tone right. Any suggestions on plugins, reverb sizes, etc?

 

[keith.rogers]

It should go without saying ("as they say"), the voice is the most important part. But, you can mess that up with poor mic technique/placement and more.

What is your setup now? Microphone, popscreen, distance to mic, preamp/interface? That's the most basic pieces to get right, and it sounds like you're still not setttled on that.

I don't think there's anything obscure about what I do as a home recording guy. My stuff is very simple, acoustic-y, solo or small group mixes though, so I don't resort to doubling or anything other than the basics.

So, for me, after getting the mechanical aspects right, then gain staging can be fine tuned. Having the singer's placement consistent lets you make sure that you're not wrestling with proximity effect, which can cause muddiness, and getting the mic gain right insures you don't clip or introduce more noise than necessary. A good mic matched to a decent preamp always helps, of course.

After that, EQ should be the main tool (IMO) to fix mud and "sweeten" the sound, but that needs to be done mostly in the context of the mix. Same with compression and reverb, which, for me anyway, are a given on practically any mix, though how and where they're applied depend on the tracks and type of music.

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Personal dilemma: everything I record comes out extremely muffled and rough.

So in addition to all of Kieth's questions (mic, popscreen, distance, interface) and a few other basics (how is your room? What is your noise floor like before you even have the vox going? Are you applying any pre-fx?), the big thing I'd ask is How does a single vocal take sound in isolation?

Are they muffled and rough in isolation or only when it's in the mix? If you like how the vox sound raw, then it's a mixing issue. If you don't like the raw tone you're getting, fix that first and save yourself some grief!

 

[keith.rogers]

OP, [MENTION=200220]Divinejames[/MENTION], needs to engage here, maybe answer members' posts individually, and get his post count up so he can post a sample of the raw track.