Harsh Vocals?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rock God
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Rock God

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Hi,

After spending many hours playing with compression settings, eq, mic positioning, different mics etc I can't seem to get rid of a "piercing" sound during the loud, fairly high pitched chorus of a song I'm recording.

To fill you in on the equipment i'm using; a Rode NTV into a TL Audio 5051 then into a Soundtracs Topaz 8 mixer before the Fostex D-108.

I've tried so many things to avoid it like setting the threshold of the compressor to kick in at the harsh bits, with a real high ratio to flatten the sound, which works to an extent but the compression is far to obvious and kills the sound.

When listening to pro recorded CDs, no matter how loud I listen the vocals never seem to have this same "piercing" problem. Ok so the signal chain might be slightly more expensive but surely there's something I'm missing here?!

Please help me if you have any idea what I'm talking about!

Thanks
 
Not all vocals fit with condenser mics. If you have a dynamic, like an SM57 handy, you could try that.
 
I'm still hoping someone will tell me I'm missing the "nice vocals" button!....I'll get working on a clip....

The only other mic I've tried switching to for this song is an AKG 414 (which gave similar results). It's not actually me singing, it's a friend who sounds fine when I hear him in the same room, though he is very loud...Think I've tried using an SM57 in the past but I'll give it another go, thanks
 
Ok, here's a link to a very short section of this song. It's the end of the verse, leading into the chorus. Just a keyboard backing so you can hear the vocals better. I've used some slight compression on the vocals just to get the levels closer between the verse and chorus, though you can really hear the harshness on the "will she ever live again...." line.

please don't judge the song, or the vocal performance as it's very very rough (as you will tell!)

Any suggestions greatly appreciated! (apart from get a new singer!)

Click here to download clip
 
Rock God,

The only irritating frequency I heard was around 1Khz (did not meter this but just a guess).

Some suggestions:

If you have access to a multiband compressor or parametric EQ, you could either focus the multiband on the errant sounds or tryl to find the center point with a parametric and widen the Q to bring down the loud ones.

If the Fostex allows you to set track envelopes you could go that route too. This is my favorite as it would preserve your dynamics.
 
Thanks for the reply Middleman. Unfortunately I don't have access to multiband compression or parametric EQ at the moment, though I agree with you about the 1Khz.

I think parametric EQ would be a good investment to help understand what's goin on with problems like this.

Thanks again

Rock God
 
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