I've listened to both pieces, and in the girl's one you can even hear a phone ring!
I agree with the others - placement is you big issue here. You have a boxy sounding room, and are using omni mics that will work beautifully in a nice sounding room, but in this one, they don't.
I am NOT going to blame the mic, because I've had stunning results from cheap mics used properly. For me it sounds like you plonked out two mics and did no nistening to optimise their sound, then did NO EQ, or at least ineffective EQ. If you must record two sources at the same time, you need isolation, so cardioid settings and find the best place for the guitar by experimentation. Clearly the one on the guitar also heard your voice - as we can hear fret noise and finger slide noise, which come from further away than your voice. Your vocal mic is too far away - so get it in closer. At the distance in the video, the pop shield wasn't doing anything anyway.
Get the mic in closer, take advantage of the proximity effect to get your voice warmer, and then you just have to add processing. EQ is absolutely essential, and probably a bit of reverb and maybe a tad of compression to tame the clouds and softs.
You also need to place the mic so you can sing into it and not have to keep moving your head. You look at the cameras, then look at the mic and we hear this.
Being frank - you have a competent recorder, but 59 takes is a joke. After 6 or 7 your performance falls off. It's never going to be a case where you record on your device and upload straight to Youtube - it needs work inside a computer, or at least with some device, like a mixer and another recorder!
Hi Rob!
Thanks very much for taking the time to consider me! I thought I needed a pop screen for my acoustic guitar because to minimize noise created by plucking the strings and sliding my fingers across the wound strings, but I will try not using that screen and place the mic even closer, plus other means to increase my sound quality. I tried many takes and moving the mics, and changing gain, but thanks to advice not doing so effectively.
You mention the boxy room and not sure what you mean, but maybe it might mean it's echoy? I'm in a room in the far corner of a nine story 131 apartment bldg almost hardly ever used and meant as a rec room. It is a big room, about 50 feet by 20 feet or 15 meters by 6 meters. It has baseboard heat in winter, but no ventilation vents or air conditioning that could cause noise, just one big ceiling fan I can turn off. It doesn't echo in the room because of carpeting and I think because of furniture, a big pool table, two 6 ft long tables, many very tall stacks of stack-able chairs etc. and false ceiling with soft foam-like panels and 3 ft of dead space to a very thick concrete floor construction and adjacent to rooms hardly ever used. It is basically dead silent. To me it is a musician's home recording dream. It is also up against a steep river bluff about 3 floors below street level on the two outside walls. The way the bldg is entered from the street level is by about a 100 ft long enclosed bridge to the 4th floor. The only thing that happens is sometimes, not often, others come to shoot pool thus I must tear all down.
It means 35 min to set up and same to tear down every time I go there. I use my laundry bag cart to transport my 3 tripods, lights, and other things and wear my guitar on my back. The case has nice shoulder straps. I by great advice, will place next time my mic at the area where the neck meets the body and see how that goes, and per your advice I'll not use the pop screen and place it even closer than the former 10 inches away. My problem is getting brave and using my 60 day free Reaper software now about 30 days passed.
Years ago I'm finding it was by far easier to record my acoustic solo piano (no vocals just piano). I was in an un-used bedroom of a 4 bedroom farm house in a very quiet country setting with no neighbors, only wilderness in every direction. It too was a very quiet room. My mother could be watching TV in the living room and no sound effect my recording. I had to put the B3's on omni or I would get that strange phase effect where the recording would sound like it was done with mics mounted in tin cans, terrible. At that time the mics were 6 feet apart where now they are only 3 feet or less apart. Being on omni I think is fine as the room is absolutely silent. Are you saying boxy because the mics receive with micro latency a bounced sound that I can't myself hear that causes degradation? I use no amplifiers as all is directly my voice and the volume of my un-amplified nylon string guitar. To me my guitar sounds muddled but maybe it's just me being too fussy. To me it's muddled enough it bothers me. I'm also by great advice not considering that my example of Keiko Nessario's recording being mastered either by her or by some professional sound engineer.
I don't want to play with engineering and might try to find someone online. My question to all is to let me know if they know of any good engineer to master my audio. I decided I'm not going to edit in pictures of beautiful scenes and keep the visuals simple. I'm reading that it's important how the thumbnail appears so I might try to figure out how to have a picture of beautiful clouds in the thumbnail, all another task to be learned. Years ago and some others were impressed, like my title song with my album, Red Sky At Night, was 16 minutes long. I surprised myself as I didn't have to do all that many takes, but... the farther I got into the song the more nervous I'd get ha! I knew if I had any mistake I would have to start all over again as no way did I want to try to figure out how to do that kind of editing, and seamlessly. I have other songs on that album and my second album that are up to 30 minutes long... It's amazing as I sold almost 4,000 copies to book stores and gift shops and businesses with sound systems just as Sirius Radio and Pandora etc were taking over and as CD sales were dropping off fast and stores discontinuing selling them.
Others, not me, are still selling my albums 17 yrs later on Ebay, Amazon, and other places mostly used but still some bran new never opened from $45 to 4.95 ha! About a year ago a store in Japan had my "Over The Rainbow" solo piano album for $85 and about 2 weeks later it was gone! You will see my "Red Sky At Night" for sale too, and also not by me. I've seen it for $65 a few times too, and that was only about last February, a store in LA! It was all recorded with the Studio Projects B3 mics but not with the Zoom Q8. The sound engineer who mastered it told me I had done such a good job he was blown away and only had to do some minor things. I tried hard to find him again, but so many years passed I couldn't. I think he retired or died and felt a conflict of interest to ask the manufacturer I had originally hired as he worked for them.
Back in 2003 and 2004 I had just the $587 "M-Box" by Digidesign that is now of course obsolete. I don't know to what degree my Q8 might be to blame, or the audio not being mastered at all, just as it was recorded... but again me being too concerned... yet it is my debut video to attract others to my originals, a crucial video that in the first few seconds viewers can reject. I know the problem is also "me", to what degree I have what it takes, only after many open mics in coffeehouses I have received a lot of encouragement, however I might find out such an open mic crowd is more empathetic than the general public at YouTube... I've never played guitar and sang in public until recently. Any input is much appreciated. Thanks for all!
Kindest Regards,
Winfred