Help! Vocal recording woes.

[famous beagle]

Ok, here's what I'm running:

vocals ---> MXL V67G ---> DMP3 ---> Yamaha AW16G

The attached picture shows a rough sketch of my recording room. It's part of a garage; the floor is still concrete, and the walls are sheetrock. (The bottom wall is brick on the outside, the other brick outside wall is about two feet above the top wall, the house is to the left, and the garage door is to the right, about two feet on the other side of the right wall.) The blue lines are fiberglass panels (light blue are hanging from ceiling. Red and black are singer and mic, respectively.

I'm recording a vocalist who sings VERY loudly. It's a gospel/rock song. He's got a great voice, and it sounds great in the room, so I don't just want to tell him to "sing quieter."

The first verse is nice and mellow, and I had no problem getting a decent sound. I set the levels for that and recorded it first.

However, for the second verse he jumps up an octave and really digs in. So I reset the level for that, and here's my problem.

I'm not close to redlining on the DMP3 or the Yamaha, but it still sounds distorted at times and as if I have no headroom at all. I've tried having him back away from the mic, but then we get too much room sound in the mic.

So here are my questions:

1) Are we distorting the mic itself?

2) If I were able to surround him with gobos (I have the parts, I just need to build them), would he be able to back off the mic more without compromising the sound?

3) What are any other options?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[famous beagle]

Bump.



anyone???

 

[Rick Shepherd]

I had similar issues with my setup, so what I did was....

I got three sheets of compressed fiberglass covered with cloth, about 3 feet by 5 feet. I put two of them about 3 ft in front of me at 90 degrees from one another, like a singing into a corner, the third one was placed flat on top of the other two above like a ceiling. So, when I sing loud, I position myself so that I am not singing directly into the mic, but at an angle. I still have to pull back away from the mic a bit, but I get less room noise with the sheets of fiberglass there. Works for me!

 

[Dogman]

I'm not real familiar with that mic, but I have a 93, I believe. I can get real close to it....2 inches, and am LOUD, yet it seems to pick up the sound pretty good, no distortion. I also have a DMP3, and it never distorts on me. Is there a chance that the Yamaha is alowwing some form of distortion? I don't know anything about this unit, but I have a cheap 4 track I used to use, and it had built in pre's that you couldn't turn off. Trying to get the levels good sucked. It distorted all the time. If that's no the case, I dunno. Just a thought.

 

[scrubs]

Have you tried other locations in the room? At first glance, I would put the singer in the bottom right corner in your picture (back facing the corner) and singing toward the upper left corner. That way, the voice must carry all the way across the room and will hit a non-parallel wall (diffusing the reflections). Put a couple of gobos behind him/her and position others out in front to minimize reflections.

It's unlikely that you're distorting the mic, but possible with a very powerful singer. Experiment with different distances. Perhaps even add a second mic, a foot or so further away, to capture the louder section. Engage the Gain pad on the DMP3. You might need some compression on the way in. If all else fails, track the louder section separately.