Preamp Tube Blues

  • Thread starter Thread starter miwrigh
  • Start date Start date
M

miwrigh

New member
I have to say that I have learned more from reading things on this site than from anywhere else. I don't respond much because I don't feel like I know much yet. Been recording at home for about a year, and am starting to get some decent gear. One thing I have noticed is that when I record vocals (decent mic and preamp into protools) is that they don't sound the same afterward. When I sing with the headphones on it sounds like five of me are hitting every note right and kicking ass. Then I am disappointed when I hear the playback and it's just me again. Just the laws of physics or am I missing something?
 
LOL.
newbie here and I don't know a lot about recording. Maybe someone else will respond soon to help. It will help if you was more specific or let someone hear you vocally. Then, he-she-they can tell you what the problem might be. I apologize, if I am not helping. GL! :-)
 
What you are hearing might be latency a slight delay between your voice and hearing it in the head phones, Try double tracking your vocals (sing it twice not copy and paste) and you could put a slight delay on one track and see if this helps
Tim
 
Let's see ... Pro Tools... Headphone out the interface with the output/input knob set pretty balanced so you actually hear your input being on time? You're hearing processing latency. You're only hearing 50% of the signal at zero latency. The rest is delayed slightly. That's why it sounds like multiple voices.

Try doing this: you record enable the track, right? Record enable and mute the output from that track. Now you will only hear yourself dry once through the headphones. If you want to hear yourself with a reverb (this helps some people -- I like this) you'll need to split the signal in an effects unit, make one dry, and the other with a reverb, and send both signals to the interface. Record only the dry. I prefer plugins for effects because they're non-destructive.

There are plugins available for vocals that have doublers, which would be for unison doubling but it adds some sort of delay and modulation. You could grab one of those. And if you want you could even get something like Melodyne and put that on a copy of the track, then drop the pitch of that track one octave for octave doubling. And with DNA in Melodyne you could even create other harmony voices.

Also you might want to use a delay on your vocal track and add a little reverb for warmth depending upon the genre you're doing.
 
Lots of people hate their voice when they really hear it. Perhaps you need to get used to it. Maybe you suck, maybe you don't I might give you advice if I heard your track ;-p
 
Many years ago when I first hear my own voice on a recording ..... I almost threw in the towel right then and there.
Kind of makes me think that we are all trying to get our voice to sound like we hear them with the resonance of our heads in the factor.
 
Nothing I record sounds on playback what it sounds like to my ears while actually doing it. That's the beauty of recording and 'the studio'. You can shape what goes in and what comes out.
 
Back
Top