Upgrading advice, please

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mango71

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I have a very basic home studio which I'm looking to expand to do more commercial voiceover work.

At the moment I'm in a fairly untreated room with a Rode NT1-A mic, a four channel Mackie analog mixer and I'm recording using Sound Studio on a Mac Pro.

I want to increase the quality of the output.

Is a pre-amp for the mic essential? What exactly does it do? And does anyone have any recommendations (budget under €500)?

In terms of acoustic treatment I'm looking at carpeting the floor (currently wooden with rugs), what about the walls? I have a reflection filter for the mic currently.

My mic cables are fairly standard, would better quality cable make a big difference?

And is that mixing desk sufficient as most of the production work is being done on the computer - it's just for the mic itself?

Sorry for all the questions for a first post :D (and I'm pretty sure I've put this in the wrong forum, apologies).

Thanks in advance.
 
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I dont know much about recording vocals or voice however i did a vocal booth search on google images and definately seen some interesting solutions...I usually just mix vocals however I may send the singer these links as well because they seem to get some odd room noise/verb in their recordings.

I will just post the links and let you decide if you think they would work.

As for preamps...I hear the m audio dmp3 is pretty good for the price.

http://www.zzounds.com/a--2676837/item--MDODMP3

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links for vocal booths

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http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=...ges?q=vocal+booth&hl=en&sa=G&gbv=2&tbs=isch:1

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http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=...ges?q=vocal+booth&hl=en&sa=G&gbv=2&tbs=isch:1

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http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=...ges?q=vocal+booth&hl=en&sa=G&gbv=2&tbs=isch:1

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http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=...ges?q=vocal+booth&hl=en&sa=G&gbv=2&tbs=isch:1

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http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=...&start=20&hl=en&sa=N&gbv=2&ndsp=20&tbs=isch:1

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http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=...&start=40&hl=en&sa=N&gbv=2&ndsp=20&tbs=isch:1
 
mango71 said:
I have a very basic home studio which I'm looking to expand to do more commercial voiceover work.

At the moment I'm in a fairly untreated room with a Rode NT1-A mic, a four channel Mackie analog mixer and I'm recording using Sound Studio on a Mac Pro.

I want to increase the quality of the output.

Can you be more specific?

Is a pre-amp for the mic essential? What exactly does it do? And does anyone have any recommendations (budget under €500)?

The NT-1a has a pretty hot output, so I think you should be fine with your mixer preamp. I have used my NT-1a with a Solo 610, Grace m101, and Sytek MPX 4Aii with good results - it just depends on what sound you want. Solo 610 gives the biggest sound of these, also very warm and tubey sounding, with lots of control for different sounds.

In terms of acoustic treatment I'm looking at carpeting the floor (currently wooden with rugs), what about the walls? I have a reflection filter for the mic currently.

Room treatment would probably give you most bang for buck sound improvement. But don't carpet the wood floor! Keep the wood floor and rugs, and treat the 4 wall-wall corners with bass traps, and add broadband traps at the side wall and ceiling reflection points for you mix position.

My mic cables are fairly standard, would better quality cable make a big difference?

As long as you are using mid-grade or higher (no cheapo cables), you should be fine.

And is that mixing desk sufficient as most of the production work is being done on the computer - it's just for the mic itself?

You did not say which Mackie mixer you were using, but their mixers usually have decent to good preamps. It must be digital too, for you to be using it as your audio interface, so the converters in it would be important too. A good interface (good preamps, great converters) for $200 is the Emu 0404 USB.
Click to expand...

There is my 2 cents.
 
I can try to help with some of your questions. I'm not familiar with Sound Studio -- I run Logic 9 in a G5 Mac Pro, a KSM32, and have East West Symphonic Gold and Goliath.

I can't comment on the audio quality of your Mackie versus something more streamlined like the Apogee Duet I use, although I'd guess that the Mackie isn't as clean as a dedicated audio interface would be. It's possible that a pricey mic pre (used as a "processor") could add more smoothness to your mic sound, but any benefit wouldn't surpass the cleaner signal you could achieve by processing the mic onboard with a virtual plugin, like EQ, reverb, compression, etc.

If you're just trying to achieve a cleaner sound to your mic for vocals, don't treat the room. Build a small mic chamber to house the mic when you're recording vocals. Room treatment is only necessary when micing instruments...or, when you're also trying to mix in a parallel channel of reflected sound. (But if you deaden your room, you're not going to get that anyway.) If you want to go ahead and deaden the room some, focus on heavier materials. Acoustic foam does little to nothing. Carpeting would be your first step, but lay down a thick, heavy pad first. Loud audio signals can easily pass through carpeting to the wood floor, and bounce back.

Sometimes tweaking a noise gate (also available as a plugin) is all you need to fix any room problems.

Definitely go with high-quality mic cables...don't skimp.

What specifically weren't you satisfied with when recording on your system? You say that you want to improve the quality of your output, which implies you've used it a bit. I wouldn't relish this thought after spending time on the learning curve of another software program, but maybe switching to Logic would give you what you're looking for. 24-bit output is standard with Logic, and higher quality can be achieved if your processor speed is fast enough and there's enough RAM.

Hope this helps. There are some recording engineers who haunt this forum, but perhaps you could get better advice on another message board.

-Bruce
 
gehauser, thanks.

You did not say which Mackie mixer you were using, but their mixers usually have decent to good preamps. It must be digital too, for you to be using it as your audio interface, so the converters in it would be important too. A good interface (good preamps, great converters) for $200 is the Emu 0404 USB.
Click to expand...

It's actually a TAPCO - http://www.tapcoworld.com/products/blend6/index.html

As I said, I have mic into mixer then audio out from mixer to audio in on the Mac.

A digital desk is a bit out my price range at the moment - is it a must have?

bcfromfl said:
What specifically weren't you satisfied with when recording on your system? You say that you want to improve the quality of your output, which implies you've used it a bit. I wouldn't relish this thought after spending time on the learning curve of another software program, but maybe switching to Logic would give you what you're looking for. 24-bit output is standard with Logic, and higher quality can be achieved if your processor speed is fast enough and there's enough RAM.
Click to expand...

There wasn't anything I was particularly unhappy about, it's more to do with the post-recording output and ensuring that's properly eqaualised/compressed etc.

I was looking at a DAW called Reaper which doesn't look as complex as Logic.

Thanks for your info though and to D_Vincent. Much appreciated.
 
mango71 said:
As I said, I have mic into mixer then audio out from mixer to audio in on the Mac.

So you are using your Mac's soundcard? That is probably your weak link then. I would use an audio interface designed for recording, like the 2-channel Emu I mentioned above. You could sell your mixer, as you won't need it then.

A digital desk is a bit out my price range at the moment - is it a must have?

Not a desk or console or mixer, just an interface (with good preamps and A/D conversion). It is where I would focus first. The others are right about room treatment if all you plan is voiceover work. In such a case, you can probably get by with just some DIY reflection filters around the mic and rug underneath and be done with it.

There wasn't anything I was particularly unhappy about, it's more to do with the post-recording output and ensuring that's properly eqaualised/compressed etc.

I was looking at a DAW called Reaper which doesn't look as complex as Logic.

Reaper is what I use. Excellent recording software for $60. Plenty of good EQ and compression processing options at your fingertips.
Click to expand...

Another 2 cents.
 
mango71 - you can't go into the audio in on the Mac and expect much. It will work but not with the results you probably want. That's your weak link, you need some sort of USB audio interface, there's lots out there. That will make a major difference.

You asked about the mic cables - it's nice to have good cables because they are more durable and less likely to pick up RF, but i doesn't sound like that is your problem.
 
gehauser - dinty, thanks again.

Just to clarify, something like the Emu 0404 USB takes the place of the mixer? Do I need a pre-amp with that? And it connects to the mac via the optical port at the back?

Also, as I'm running my speakers via the mixing desk, I assume I can do the same with the USB device?

Sorry if this seems very basic, it's new ground for me though. I appreciate your patience and help.
 
hey mango71,

The Emu 0404 USB has:
- two (2) pre-amps with phantom power.
- 96KHz/48kHz A/D conversion quality USB input for Mac
- stereo outputs for real-time monitoring (for your speakers or headphones?)

You will use the EMU instead of your mixer, but you will then only have two-preamps, instead of four, and you will lose the hardware-based EQ/mixing features of the Mackie. I don't know the quality difference between the Mackie's preamps and the EMU's, but I bet only a keen ear could tell the difference.

You could probably ALSO use both the Mackie mixer and the EMU at the same time; just feed the Mackie's main output into one channel on the EMU. You won't need to use the EMU's Gain or Phantom power features then for that channel. The EMU will just be used to transfer the audio to your Mac via USB. There might be a couple reasons to do this, one of which is if you want 5 mics to be recorded at once (ie: 1 mic on the open EMU channel, and 4 mics on the second EMU channel via the Mixer).

Generally, the less gear connected in series, the better, so I'd go just EMU if it did everything I asked. It also makes your setup FAR more portable, since you don't need to lug around the mixer.

If you need four channels, there are other USB devices that offer 4channels, like the maudio fast track ultra. I don't know about its quality though....

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/computers-peripherals/audio-interfaces
 
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+1 on everything in xyster's detailed reply

All you would need is:

NT-1a > Emu 0404 USB > Mac via USB, running Reaper

Attach your monitors to Emu's main outputs and your headphones to the headphone output. You can also attach computer speakers to the mini-jack output beside the main outs.

0404's preamps are very good, and the AD-DA conversion is excellent (best AD-DA specs of any $200 interface - compare the dynamic range spec with other interfaces)
 
Fantasic, will look into that straight away.

Thanks to both of you.
 
roughly in order of importance:

room
mic
pre-amp

even if you are close mic'ng room is by far the most important element

carpeting might or might not help . . . matter of preference, personally I like wood . . . typically without actually hearing the room I would think rugs on wood floor should be sufficient

for voice over work, if own a lot of books, floor to ceiling book cases filled with books can actually do wonders to smooth a room getting mic (and any monitors) out away from corners and walls can help as well. While neutral sound can be more important in V/O then for a lot of music it is not typically sound proofing you need as some type of treatment

Not really going to comment on mic choice. If V/O is going to be commercially viable budgeting, eventually, for a different mic would probably be beneficial

A mic pre, like, for example, True systems P-solo would probably also help

While I don't typically wax poetic about influence of converter 'A' over 'B' I do agree that, typically soundcard installed in consumer recorders should not be viewed as 'Audio cards' and while the limitations are less critical for single track solo recording you should be able to detect difference by migrating to a real 'audio care' I have not use the Emu USB but regularly recommended the PCI 404 for clients pursuing similar goals (if you pursue or are planning on pursuing an out board mic pre you want to make sure that A/D choice permits you to by pass any of the audio cards mic pres

While reaper is an excellent tracking program it is not designed to be an audio editor. Unfortunately as you are tied to a Mac you are shut out of one of most cost effective audio editors, Adobe's Audition (it's weak areas, relatively speaking, of MIDI support and multitrack mixing are not really concerns (and you can mix effectively in AA merely that it's strong suit remains it's editing capabilities) As far as editing is concerned sticking Logic, at least initially probably makes as much sense as anything (and I'm a huge fan of Reaper and when ever possible I use it as my tracking platform)

Without actually hearing your tracking and editing environment the above suggestions (most not particularly cheap) are designed to elicit subtle improvements, improve transparency and accuracy
 
By commercial voice over work, do you mean you yourself doing the voice over? Or is someone coming into your studio to be the voice?

For voice over stuff you probably want a pretty dead room. You'll be mixing it with some other audio from video I assume anyway. It sounds like you need a decent interface. Which might be all that you need. At a minimum it should improve your monitoring environment so you know what you're doing wrong better.

A good post flow could do you, but that's all software. Unless you need to do some on location / live stuff you really don't need hardware compressors and the likes. Assuming that you sample at a high enough rate to allow for a lot of editing in post.
 
I'd be doing the VO work myself.

Sometimes it'd be just a dry voice to send elsewhere, others mixed with music/video.

Will check out the difference once I sort out the audio interface.
 
Ok, I just took delivery of a Cakewalk UA-25 EX on advice from the music shop bloke who didn't have the E-mu in stock and that the pre-amps in the Cakewalk were much better.

Anyway, I've set it up as follows:

USB > Mac

I've got the output at the back of the USB device going to the input of my amp and that powers the speakers etc. No problems there and soundwise everything's very nice.

I have one mic plugged into Input1. However, it's only recording in one channel.

I do quite a bit of podcasting work so I do phone interviews via Skype. Having done a couple of test runs, it records the person I call in both channels but I'm on the left one only.

I tried switching to mono when recording but that doesn't make any difference. I know the inputs say L and R but how do you do that with a mic? Surely it should record in both channels the way my Tapco mixing desk did?

Any advice much appreciated with this. I imagine I'm missing something very obvious, I just can't figure out what.

Pic here - http://i46.tinypic.com/156zgrc.jpg
 
Each input jack is a MONO channel. The LINE IN (if it has one) should be a stereo jack. But that'll probably be the only input that is stereo in a single jack. You can select number of channels to record from in your software. (or should be able to anyway). A lot of software assumes stereo by default and if only one input is given it'll generate stereo from the LEFT / 1st channel. Or I could be wrong.
 
Yeah, what I've managed to do in Sound Studio, for example, is set it to record 1 on both channels. I'm sure it's the same with Reaper (haven't tried yet). However, when I've got headphones on and I'm recording, I can only hear myself in the left channel.

Is this typical?

I've checked the core audio settings on my Mac and it doesn't allow you to play around with anything other than the output level.
 
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