Vocals: Transparent mic position

A

AlecBeretz

New member
Hello HR!

So, in your experience, what mic position is best for a large diaphragm condenser to make a vocal track sound "natural" ?

Obviously, the room is gonna make an impact. I'm looking more for EQ and dynamic balance. I've found the closer you are to the microphone, the more "full" the voice is going to sound, but you have to restructure your treble range and use lots of de-essing which is annoying as hell...

If you're farther away you tend to get an "organic" and "live" sound, but you lose lots of warmth unless you're in a treated room (which I'm not).


And of course there is no right answer. So what do you do? Inches from mic to pop filter, inches from filter to mic, etc.

Thanks guiz.
 
You gotta spend a little time to experiment.

Find out what works best for you in your space with your equipment,
then document the hell out of it so you can repeat it.
 
Trouble is, you get your mic sounding how you envisaged it should, then you do vocals for a track and find it's dynamically at odds with the music. Then it's experimenting with compression and EQ, reverb and so on. I've been recording for just over a year and have had to set the vocal up differently for every one of my 20 plus tracks. What sounds natural against one backdrop may sound at odds with another unless working with identical instrumentation, playing in a similar way, recording it at the same levels, which might make the tracks lacking in variation. And then of course, a totally natural sounding vocal might not be what you want at all once you have it, because experience with doing your own tracks and working with your own vocal sound will over time if not already educate your ears and when you listen to commercially produced tracks, you'll hear tell tale quirks in the tonality which point towards the treatment of the vocals.

Good luck

Tim
 
I'm sorry to say that the room that the vocal is recorded in is going to make a big difference to the sound. The reason I say this is that the natural position away form the mic (LDC) is somewhere between 100 mm and 300 mm, sometimes with a pop shield in between. There is going to be room acoustics being picked up at this distance. I found that when I finally got a good sounding room a lot less eq was needed on the vocal, with any mic I was using.

You will need to treat the room, and don't think about building a small vocal booth, most home studios are the size of a vocal booth.

Alan.
 
At least try deadening the area around you and the mic. It will expand the range where it's dry enough to be useable.
(And don't forget that other hard surface- just above you :)
 
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