Thanks Cyan, I knew you'd hear it someday...
I don't know Alan's specific positoning theory, but just heard him metnion that mic postion was a superior way to eq a mic. I did some positioning experimentation with my NTK and with my 4033 to figure out how to get this to work. Mainly, it’s about understanding the proximity effect for your particular mic. Up really close on the NTK, it’s pretty bassy, and on the 4033 it's even more pronounced. I used to get vocalists up to an inch or two away, but now I’ve figured out that the closest I really want them with the NTK is about 4 inches, that gives a nice round sound that is fat, but doesn't sound ridiculous. Any closer than that, and it’s radio announcer time. For a 4033, which has a lto more prox effect, add some to that distance. For a really pure, realistic sound, I found that about 10-12 inches is more accurate, and gives an airier sound, with more highs and high mids, and less lows and low mids.
I wanted the vocals to have a fairly even sound throughout the song, even though I had two different vocalists and 3 different vocal levels to deal with (the verse, the chorus, and the end/bridge).
Usually I would place the mic really close for the soft singing in the verses to get more prox effect, but since I knew I would have to back it up a little for the choruses, which required a little more eair from the vocalist, I ended up setting up about 5 inches from the mic for the main verse. I always use a pop filter, so I just placed that about an inch from where I wanted my singer to be. The mic was vertical, with the little gold dot approximately at the level of the mouth, so the element was actually a little above his mouth. Having two singers, and not wanting to a change the mic postion in case we had to do any fixes later, the second background singer, who is shorter, was singing lower on the mic body.
On the chorus, where the singer would sing louder, I moved him back about an inch, not far at all. This kept the proximity effect similar enough that I couldn't really hear the difference.
For the bridge, where he was really yelling, I had to move him back, probably to about a foot. But I used 3 vocals for that part, with two by the same singer in the center and on the right, and a different singer on the left, so it's thick enough to match pretty well. I also cranked the input gain pretty hard on the Joemeek to get a slightly distorted quality for the main vocal.
