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I can not get good results from that this to save my soul. Anybody have much idea how to use it? No matter what I do I sound like I am talking through a megaphone like Rudy Valee in Winchester Cathedral. One particular song of mine has TERRIBLE sounding vocals and I just can't work with that EQ. Is there a way to run that EQ in real time? Change, apply, test, change, apply, test, change, apply, test, change, apply, test, change, apply, test, change, apply, test, change, apply, test, .... really gets old when you are guessing to start with.
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My advice; hang it up with offline EQ because with a graphic EQ, you need to be able to audition while moving sliders. There are two plugins I would recommend here for free; you should use both a graphic EQ as well as a spectrum analysis tool For a nice linear phase graphic EQ, http://www.voxengo.com/product/marvelgeq/From the same company, get their fft analyzer, SPAN http://www.voxengo.com/product/span/If you put these in a chain, try an instance of span, then the eq, then span again. You should be able to hear and see the changes you are making. You might be dealing with room effects that will be hard to fix in your room without absorption treatment of some kind. Refer to posts from several weeks ago. -Scott
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I record vocal tracks direct in with no room volume on, and my early projects saw the vocals really boxy so I used the parametrics on the mixer and now they are worse than even. I need to set them back to flat and record the vocals on this song again. I mean it's only 5 minutes out of my life, but geeze....
I will try those plugins. What I am missing is feeding back out of the DAW into a real mixer. A physical, tangible mixer that I can touch and work sliders rather than moving a mouse. Everything on this track is fine except the megaphone vocals. They really suck.
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Eddie - hang some blankets behind your mic. Sing quiet. It worked for Simon & Garfunkel and countless others - it can work for you.
Try that with zero EQ for starters. What kind of mic are you using?
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OK - that should be fine. Put some hooks in the ceiling, put a rod (broomstick) across the two hooks, and find the fluffiest comforter you have in the house and hang it over that broomstick.
PUt the mic about 18"-24" away from the comforter. Record your vox with no EQ. The SM58 is directional enough that you should be cool.
Experiment with two broomsticks 3-4' apart and hang that comforter across both of them, making a sort of booth.
SM58 is actually a really nice mic to use for home recording. But if you have big-time room issues, then you are going to have issues in the recording that are very difficult to remove after the fact. It's not just about EQ, it's also about early reflections that shouldn't be there - those cannot be removed with EQ.
I generally go for the sing quiet method. But I've got enough treatment options that I can belt it out if I want to as well and not get major room noise in my recordings.
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I actually have a gobo made from 2 doors with a moving pad stapled to them so that I close them to 90 degrees and stand behind them when I do vocals, and using the door to the room I can make a square isolation enclosure if I want to. The main thing is that I did a poor job of equalizing when I recorded it. I will record vocals again when I next have the chance to work up there. Rehearsal tomorrow night after work.
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Eddie - you shouldn't be doing any EQ while recording except perhaps a high-pass filter set at 80 Hz or so.
Can you type out your signal chain starting at the mic; something like:
SM58-->Mic Preamp on mixer-->EQ on Mixer-->Line outs of mixer-->Analog input on sound card x-->
etc.?
-Scott
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Vocals are very tough to do especially your own vocals. You want your recording to sound like you think you sound. You hear yourself differently. Approach the vocals like they were someone else and try to get it to just sound clear, clean & with full timber. Here's one of my songs. How does it sound to you? What would you do to it? Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain
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SM58-->Mackie mixer -->4 band EQ on Mixer top +2, high mid +2, low mid +2, bottom +3 -->Line outs of mixer to M-Audio Fast Track Pro MIDI interface to USB on computer
I HAVE a 31 band EQ but it is not in the loop. Totally bypassed. Early recordings saw the vocals lacking body so I boosted where I thought my baritone voice was. That made it sound like I was in a tunnel. Or the Rudy Vallee megaphone thing.
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Hi Eddie - I too use an SM58. My mic interface is an older Tascam 8 tk Portastudio 488. I record with the EQ flat.
I also make sure that I stay 6 in. away from the mic. The SM58 has a great proximity effect for live singing, but can be over-powering on the low end for recording. So if you keep back from the mic (behind a pop filter helps) you can save yourself some EQing hassles on the low end, and then as Scott suggests, use a highpass filter for light tweaking on the low end.
At least that's how I've learned to handle the 58 on my system. Sometimes I use a nano compresser set at 2 or 3:1 because my voice can be spikey trying to hit high notes, or too soft trying to hit low. But generally no applications of anything until after a clean record.
Cheers - Ian
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Quote:
Vocals are very tough to do especially your own vocals. You want your recording to sound like you think you sound. You hear yourself differently. Approach the vocals like they were someone else and try to get it to just sound clear, clean & with full timber.
Here's one of my songs. How does it sound to you? What would you do to it?
Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain
Damn Google Docs - why do they need to have us register and put in a password. Any ohter options for posting? 
BIAB – 2026, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, Motu Audio Express 6x6 - My SoundCloud.
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I'm in the process of dumping them. Try this. Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain Mic plugged into the Harmony GXT/HW Mixer/Auxout to Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card.No other processing. As a side note listen to the screwed up harmonies at the very end. Minor chords really used to confuse this thing if the trigger track was not in root position. I'm half way through fixing this issue.
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Quote:
SM58-->Mackie mixer -->4 band EQ on Mixer top +2, high mid +2, low mid +2, bottom +3 -->Line outs of mixer to M-Audio Fast Track Pro MIDI interface to USB on computer
I HAVE a 31 band EQ but it is not in the loop. Totally bypassed. Early recordings saw the vocals lacking body so I boosted where I thought my baritone voice was. That made it sound like I was in a tunnel. Or the Rudy Vallee megaphone thing.
Here is a better solution: SM58-->Fast Track Pro. Period. Get the mixer out of the chain. No need.
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Doh - was listening to Johns version thinking it was Eddie.
John, I would quit the harmonizer altogether. Try it clean or double your own vox naturally.
Last edited by rockstar_not; 10/05/11 10:55 PM.
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Quote:
Doh - was listening to Johns version thinking it was Eddie.
John, I would quit the harmonizer altogether. Try it clean or double your own vox naturally.
I posted that in hopes of getting Eddie to post an example of his singing. Kind of hard to help out a phantom voice.
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I have not had a chance to breathe since Sunday. I will listen tonight and try recording my vocal track again but direct to the M-Audio.
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As a general rule Eddie, you want to record everything completely flat, no eq, no effects into your DAW. Then you switch hats to a mixing engineer and that's when you go track by track and apply all of that. One of my friends is a very good keyboard player and singer. I had him come over to do a vocal track, I plugged a SM58 into my EMU interface, he threw on a set of headphones and sang. That's it. When you do that you hear every little thing and it sounds mostly like crap no matter how good a singer you are but he's a pro, he knows that already and also knows what can be done later. Same for a sax friend too. I had him record his sax just straignt into the mic, he hated it because he likes verb and some eq. I do have the ability to do direct monitoring but I didn't have it set up at that time. After he did the take, he stayed and watched me "fix" the track in RB. He was quite impressed. Once you've done that a few times and realize what you can do with a flat track you stop worrying about how you sound while doing the take and just concentrate on your playing.
There's a lot of guitar/bass players who will even record their stuff direct in and use the verious modelling softwares after the fact too. The thing is even if you have a good piece of modelling hardware for your guitar, your recording engineer may have 10 different ones to choose from in the studio and if you give him a good straight recording with nothing on it then he's free to apply all kinds of goodies to it. If you give him an already processed recording, that really limits his and your creativity.
I do some live on site recordings using my Akai DPS16 recorder and the last two bass players I recorded asked me if I could take them direct because they already know that and they're used to massaging their sound after the fact. One guy has a nice David Eden bass set up and I was going to hang a mic in front of his cab but he still wanted to go direct so I did both since I had enough inputs. I got a nice sound off the mic and I still mixed some effects on the second track.
Just remembered something that's a cool little trick. My singer friend brought his favorite EV mic so I taped them both together and recorded each mic on it's own track. You can have all kinds of fun with two separate tracks of the same vocal.
Bob
Last edited by jazzmammal; 10/06/11 01:00 PM.
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IMO, mixers are evil to the home recordist. I have my reasons. Main reason is that it is simply unnecessary if you are recording an audio signal with most interfaces these days; particularly if you have mic pre-amps in the interface. If you can abide it, you want the least amount of signal processing, both analog and/or digital, in between your source and the recorded 1's and 0's. This includes cable lengths. At the Motown original studio, the guitarist and bass player were plugged in under the window of the control room and plugged into a patch panel in the wall. You can see it in this photo right here http://media.lonelyplanet.com/lpimg/20929/20929-9/preview.jpg right next to the hand-rail on the left side of the picture. No amps were in that room during the golden years, or so we were told when I stood within inches of that patch panel. I assume that you track your vocals after you have some scratch or guide tracks of keys, drums, etc. already laid down. If so, name one reason why you need a mixer to track vocals, besides pre-amping the mic. If your card does not have it's own pre-amp, then perhaps you should use the mixer - but why not spend a little coin to get a decent pre-amp like some flavor of an ART and deal with equipment that is specifically designed for the sole purpose of pre-amping? I have a nice little single channel dbx mic and instrument pre-amp, but I rarely use it because the pre-amp in the sound card I've used for years is pretty doggoned nice. Monitoring should be available from your sound card's headphone outlet. I think you'll be pleased about the sound of the SM 58 directly into the Fast Track Pro, after tweaking. The pre-amps in that unit are decent spec, from those that I know that have one. -Scott
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I agree inexpensive mixers can add some color even flat , so unless you have an SSL ,ect. like the big boys direct mic into comp is best. I don't like SM 58's for recording vocals, there are cheap condenser mics out there that sound much better and priced about the same .
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