Help needed with vocal home recording!

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vladalj7

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Ok, so I've been doing some covers for the past year, as well as working on some of my own songs. Been using Shure SM58 and Sonar Producer on my PC!
Thing's have been going fine, except I have never been able to control the volume quite well.

I've been working on my microphone control (by that I mean distance from the mouth) but I always end up having parts that are too quiet, can barely be heard on speakers, or blowing the speakers on loud parts.

Classic example being Elton John's - Can you feel the love tonight. On the verses part I can manage to get nice amount of volume and richness in my voice but in the chorus I either blow the threshold or If I distance myself from the mic I lose on the voice richness in the recording. :-/

What can I do to even out such parts, as this is starting to get really frustrating since I am spending most of my energy focusing on the mic control rather than on actual singing? :(
 
You could start by investing in a better microphone. Not that the SM58 is bad but now that you are getting into thinking about things like volume control and such it may be time to move up to a more specialized condenser mic. Also, learn how to use compression on your vocals to smooth the volume peaks out.
 
I plan on investing in a new mic, although with the budget of 250E (possibly 300E if there is some mic that is a "Must Have") I'm not sure what to look for. So could you guys help me out with some suggestions? I would really appreciate that! ;)

I do have a pop filter, though I only used it few times. Although it eliminates Ps, Ds and other unwanted sounds it made it even harder for me to control the volume!

@Murdersgalore - Which brings me to that compression problem. What exactly did you mean by "learn how to use compression on your vocals to smooth the volume peaks out"? Btw forgot to mention that my sm85 goes directly to line in in the PC (MB integrated sound card) , so any compression I can apply is post-compression in Sonar Producer, which has proven not to be so effective 'cause when I blow the threshold I already blew it and there is nothing that Sonar can do to help me with that afterwards. Some friend advised me on buying external soundcard or some sort of vocal processor to deal with it acting as pre-compressor... Does that even make any sense? I'm a newbie so excuse me if I'm talking out of my butt! :)
 
Reading your response, I'm not sure you have the correct definition of compression and what it does. If I am wrong excuse me. However, heres a good place to start. Also, I think when you said "cause when I blow the threshold I already blew it and there is nothing that Sonar can do to help me with that afterwards" I think what you are referring to is clipping which is a type of distortion that happens when you overload something in your chain or push the digital signal above zero so your signal is getting too hot on the peaks. This is probably happening because you are trying to get a consistently audible level without any type of compression. Adding compression (after you understand what it does) in Sonar after recording is perfectly fine and is usually how I do it. Having what might seem like a weak level on the quieter sections of the vocal after your initial recording is also perfectly fine so long as there isn't a lot of hiss or noise and you aren't clipping.

Before looking into more condenser mics you must first know that they use phantom power to work so you would need to get some kind of interface with phantom power. Plugging a mic into a common motherboard sound chip is possibly the worst way you can record anything so even before purchasing a microphone you should look into that.

By 250E do you mean euros?
 
Thank you for helping me understand how compression works! While waiting for response I also did some reading and now I realize that my understanding of it wasn't correct. I was actually referring to clipping which is what is happening to me on high notes for example. So if I tried to reduce the volume in the sound recording controls, I would avoid clipping but also lose sound on the more quiet, lover range parts of the song (unless I bring the mic as close to my mouth as I can, but that tends to bring some unwanted sh-es and other noise, and makes lower and higher range parts unbalanced in intensity).

Anyway, I can't expect much more with what I have right now, since direct mic to PC without any interface can't do much. That much is obvious! So now I need to invest in interface and new mic. The first one being priority since I already have this sm58 and that will have to do for now unless I increase my budget a little.

Yes, I was talking about Euros 250-300.
Any suggestions on audio interface? Just to remind, It's for homerecording ( nothing too professional) so it doesnt have to be some kind of a beast, just average, good quality/price ratio, 2/2 input/output is just enough!
And also suggestions on the mic choice would help me a lot?

Thanks a lot for helping me so far and investing your time in a newbie, I really appreciate it! ;)

P.S. I have found these 3 on sale :

1. AKG Perception 100 - 120 euros

2. M-Audio Luna - 150 euros

3. AKG C 391 B - 220 euros

Any thoughts?
 
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The Alesis IO2 Express is pretty affordable. It has line level and XLR inputs with phantom power and is 2 in 2 out. It's not as durable as the more pricey ones (its made of cheap plastic) but if you take care of it it should work nicely. I've heard the pre-amps on it and it would definitely beat the hell out of a PC soundacrd.

As for mics there are so many good ones out there. I have heard good things about AKG. I have a cheap MXL 990 and it does pretty well for the price.
 
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