Typical signal chain for vocal recording?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nadzilla
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Nadzilla

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Hey guys,

Currently my signal chain looks like this:

Mic (SM7b) -> PreSonus Firestudio Mobile -> Cubase Essential 5 with the Cubase generic VST Dynamics compressor on the mic channel.

What kinds of signal chains does everyone else use, and is there anything else I should really be adding to my chain to get better quality recordings?

I am just home-recording at the moment, but would love to be able to get my vocals sounding as much like a decent studio recording as possible. Any help appreciated!
 
Hey there.
That's a perfectly good chain.
I actually have an sm7b and a firestudio mobile.

More often than not, I do use other preamps. I have some rackmounted jobbys from old consoles.
I appreciate the difference, but I still happily use the firestudio when it's more convenient.

The typical signal chain around here is probably similar, in that it'll be a stock interface built in preamp.
The range of microphones is pretty vast, but I think it falls on suitability for each voice, or preference more than anything.

There's been a surge of people buying GAP pre73 and some other preamps, so there's something to take a look into perhaps.

Perhaps the biggest immediate result that people see is from treating their rooms, or at least building some kind of gobos, if the room needs it.
 
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Steenamaroo said:
The range of microphones is pretty vast, but I think i falls on suitability for each voice, or preference more than anything.

There's been a surge of people buying GAP pre73 and some other preamps, so there's something to take a look into perhaps.

Perhaps the biggest immediate result that people see is from treating their rooms, or at least building some kind of gobos, if the room needs it.
Click to expand...

As always, words of wisdom from steen. I too am the happy owner of a firestudio mobile and I, like steen, make use of external preamps the majority of the time but i've never had any real problems with the built in pre's on the firestudio mobile.

The GAP Pre-73 and the Focusrite ISA One both get a lot of kudos and are both very reasonably priced. the GAP has a more "vintage" (for want of a better word) tone, whereas the ISA is cleaner and crisper.

The mic choice and the room always factor in heavily. As steen said, if your room isn't treated it's always a good place to start. if it is then i'd say maybe have a look at some other mic's. There's a whole world of LDC's and ribbon mics out there to explore, or if you're happy with dynamic mics the EV RE20 gets a lot of praise.
 
Mic (model dependent on source) -> mic preamp (model dependent on source and mic) -> converter/interface -> DAW. Sometimes there's a Drawmer 1960 or ART Pro VLA or Manley ELOP after the preamp if I'm feeling pretty sure about the end product.

What your best bet is for improving your sound depends on what is the weakest link in the chain. You can throw all the money and fancy gear at it, but if the weakest link is the performer you will never see much improvement.
 
nice that mic alone is worth more than most of my gear :laughings:
 
Cheers for the info, guys! Yes I really need to treat my recording area, currently it is untouched. I use the kitchen of our house for vocals because it's the only room not attached to our neighbours houses (we live mid-terrace in a house with paper-thin walls, so we can hear people BREATHING next door, ugh!). I am currently building a sound-proof partition to really section-off that part of the house, which is a mix of 18mm MDF board covered with 6mm high density EVA (with a 6mm air pocket between the EVA and the MDF). I am going to be putting rockwool on top of that, probably RW5 or 6, covering it all in black material and then sticking some audio foam on the outside to control the acoustics a little better. After I'm done building that, I have two more panels to make in the same way to block the other half of the kitchen off from my "recording area" as the fridge makes a ton of noise that I don't want getting on to my recordings. I should have some materials left over to build some simple acoustic wall hangings as the walls really bounce the sound around a lot in there.

Yeah the mic alone was the result of a year and a half of saving up, it's really made a huge difference already to my sound, partly because of the quality of the mic itself, but mainly because I am free to use it hand-held and really give the vocal performance I could never get when standing static in front of a shock-mounted vocal mic.

However, I am still finding that my recordings sound a little "thin" for want of a better word, and I'm thinking that maybe I need to work on my compression and learn how to EQ vocals properly. It's a really gain-hungry mic, too, so I need to play with cranking the PreSonus pre-amps up a bit more.

Exploring other mics or getting more gear (like dedicated pre-amps etc) is kind of a non-option for me right now seeing as money is so tight (just look at how long it took me to save for the SM7b alone, eek!) so I really need to learn how to really optimize my current set-up. I learned a little in college, and a little more purely researching on the internet and here on this forum, but I really need to knuckle-down and do some hard work to learn what I am REALLY doing and how to go about it instead of just pushing buttons and hoping I am doing the correct thing, haha!
 
Good signal path but i find that if you have a quality input both in terms of Mic and 'talent' than that makes a huge difference. BUT as the saying goes 'you can't shine a turd'....meaning...if your talent is crap than no mic or signal path will make a difference :)
 
Indeed! ^_^

I'm actually very happy with my voice, especially in a "live" situation, which is why I got the SM7b to use it as a hand-held, because I perform much better when I have the freedom to move around a bit. Suffering a bit from a cold that won't shift at the moment so I have that typical "blocked passages" nasal sound going on, but apart from that it's mostly going well. I've not sung in months though so I have to do more warming up than I used to.

One thing, though, are there any other software compressors and EQ's that you guys can recommend? I'm not entirely sure the ones built in to Cubase Essential 5 are properly cutting it. Like I said in one of my other posts, I still need to learn how to properly use compression and EQ to the best of its potential, but like Backyard says, you can't shine a turd, hah! So even if I learn how to do it perfectly, are the built in Cubase ones going to be the best way to go? Or will they make my recordings suffer / not reach their full potential?
 
I myself have never been a fan of the Cubase compressors. I mostly use Waves API 2500 these days, but the Density MKII is quite pleasing for a free comp plug. Stillwell also has many really good plugins that are free to try. Purchase when you decide if you like them.
 
Backyard Record said:
Good signal path but i find that if you have a quality input both in terms of Mic and 'talent' than that makes a huge difference. BUT as the saying goes 'you can't shine a turd'....meaning...if your talent is crap than no mic or signal path will make a difference :)
Click to expand...

Fortunately? I was gifted with pipes, 12 years of choir, and bands there after... "AND" the best gear I could get my hands on ;-) The difference between men and boys is the price of the toys.

You can hear it on the latest? The signal path, and the talent... Not to mention the fact that I'm playing everything :-) It's a burden. I don't wish this kind of talent on anyone else, it's a heavy burden to carry. (I particularly enjoy the fretless bass on this track :-) (the 12 string is sweet too)

And you can actually polish turds up pretty nicely with some of the vocal editing software available? I didn't use any on the latest, I use it occasionally and sparingly, but have it available if I record someone else.

And life is too short to use cheap plugs? Check out the stuff from Fabfilter... And of course Izotope.

http://www.fabfilter.com/

http://www.izotope.com/

And Audioease never disappoints...

http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Altiverb/
 
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