upgrade from Samson c01

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xcal237

New member
i have a samson c01 but i dont like the way it sounds... it sounds very constrained... like im in a small room. anyways i mostly do vocal covers for fun... im not into recording or anything this is just something that i like to do.

Should i post a vocal track so that you guys can better judge if i should upgrade to a better mic?

my budget is in the 100-200 dollar range
 
Hey there,
You should post up a sample for sure. It'd give us a much better idea of what's likely to suit your voice.

What interface or preamp are you using?
There'll be a queue of people screaming 'SM7B' along in a minute, but some of the cheaper audio interfaces aren't the best match for it.
 
Steenamaroo said:
There'll be a queue of people screaming 'SM7B' along in a minute
Click to expand...

woh woh woh, this isn't GS! :p

i was in the same boat with the same mic nearly 10 years ago and went for the sE2200a as an upgrade; i still have it and it still see's a lot of use :)

saying that, over the past 10 years the quality of budget range mic's seems to have gone up, as has the number of makes and models.

As steen said, some samples would help everyone suggest mics based on your voice, but in the price range there's quite a lot of choice. Have you had a look around the net/have you anything in mind?
 
That sounds a lot nicer than I expected.
Is your mixer just plugged into the line inputs of a computer?
There's very little noise in the recording!

It is a little dull for a condenser and dead sounding, acoustically, but that's better than having a bad room ambience.


To me, that sounds like a recording that would take eq and reverb pretty well and end up working out just fine.

What are you hoping to hear from an upgrade?
 
just want something that would give me a more airy sound... something that doesn't soo constrained

edit - another thing to consider is that my desk is on the corner of my room i have two big monitors right in front of my mic and its pretty much a pretty tight space... so maybe thats why when i record it sounds real dull?
 
xcal237 said:
edit - another thing to consider is that my desk is on the corner of my room i have two big monitors right in front of my mic and its pretty much a pretty tight space... so maybe thats why when i record it sounds real dull?
Click to expand...

It probably is, but again, it sounds perfectly workable to me.


Steenamaroo said:
That sounds a lot nicer than I expected.
Is your mixer just plugged into the line inputs of a computer?
Click to expand...

I'm asking this because I wonder if a decent USB interface might be a better upgrade.

It'd be nice to hear from someone who knows the C01 well though.
 
nope i dont use any reverb and eq at all since i dont have a slightest clue how to use it properly and if i tinker with it, it doesnt sound that good.

oh and yeah my mixer is plugged in to the line input of my sound card
 
xcal237 said:
nope i dont use any reverb and eq at all since i dont have a slightest clue how to use it properly and if i tinker with it, it doesnt sound that good.

oh and yeah my mixer is plugged in to the line input of my sound card
Click to expand...

Ok, this is probably key.


Yes, there are better mics out there, but from your clip I don't really think you need to upgrade.

Learning to use an eq and compressor might seem daunting, but I'm confident that it's exactly what you need.
Reverb can sound very very bad if used badly, but it's not that hard to get the hang of it.

Take a look on youtube for some tutorials. Even if they don't relate to your specific plugin brand, all the parameters are the same across the board.



Also, would you mind making your file downloadable?
I'd happily throw an eq and verb on to show you what I mean.
 
btw when i record should i separate the vocal recording with the songs music? cause my mixer wont let me monitor the sound from my mic if i want to record the sound track at the same time... that and windows 7 has latency problems so whenever i record without hearing my voice and the track it goes out of sync pretty bad
 
xcal237 said:
btw when i record should i separate the vocal recording with the songs music? cause my mixer wont let me monitor the sound from my mic if i want to record the sound track at the same time... that and windows 7 has latency problems so whenever i record without hearing my voice and the track it goes out of sync pretty bad
Click to expand...


Yes, you should aim to keep the two separate.

You should have a track for your backing which plays into your headphones,
and a separate track for your vocals, which is set to record.

If you have latency issues, you may need to look into your hardware buffer settings.
Lower number = lower latency + greater load on the cpu.
Higher number = higher latency + smaller load on the cpu.
 
Ordinarily, whatever's being recording is also played out of the speakers or headphones.

Sometimes there's an option to turn on input monitoring, so if you don't hear the vocals while your recording, look for that.


Personally, I just mute the vocal track and slip off one side of the headphones.
 
yeah when i turn that on i get a considerable amount of latency. I also have the buffer settings set to 30ms the lowest it can go
 
Ok. may just be a limitation of your current hardware then.
You might be able to improve your results with ASIO4ALL (google that), but if not, a USB audio interface may be in order.
 
the program definitely lowered the latency but it still is noticeable that it interferes with my singing. so whats a usb interface?
 
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