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.

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 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.

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

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

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 .

There is a nice Solid State mic pre out there that doesn't break the bank. Mac has mentioned it numerous times, and after reading the linked article below with a few respected opinions I grabbed one a few years ago. I like it a lot. Much more than the few ART's I've owned.

StudioProjects VTB-1. Clean SS, with ability to add a little tube if desired.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-g...xperiences.html
It's an old article; the preamp has been around a while.
As far as 'adding some color' .. how do you know? You are comparing one unknown to another most of the time. People get used to the color of one pre and then say the next one adds color, when in fact they all do, along with the mic. JMO

All of my vocal tracks are done in mono, on mono tracks FWIW..

Eddie, read Bob's response carefully. This is true for nearly any instrument that isn't large physically, like acoustic guitar, individual brass instruments, violins and violas, etc.

These are all traditionally recorded in mono. Monitor through your soundcard and if you set whatever DAW software to record to a mono track, it will play out mono TO BOTH EARS simultaneously. That's all you really have to think / worry about. That's what you should want.

If you want to process it internally in the DAW with stereo effects, that shouldn't be a problem either. Most plugins that have stereo function automatically will take a mono source and process it stereo, like a ping-pong type of delay. Usually no thinking or signal routing required.

Your looping thing through the EQ could be the very source of what sounds odd to your ears about your recorded vox. It's possible you are printing to disk the very thing that is bothering you.

Go simple. Eliminate the mixer. Roll-off the low frequencies below 100 Hz or so, add light amount of compression if you have some level inconsistencies, add slight, and I mean slight amount of reverb to taste and enjoy the results. I think you'll be very happy / surprised.

For effects, try to avoid processing. This includes harmony processing. I have yet to hear this sound satisfactory. There's always a 'machine' like quality no matter if it's the most expensive digitech vocalist outboard gear or not.

John mentioned that he uses harmony processing for live performance. I can understand that but then I have to ask about the listeners. Are they expecting vocal harmonies from a solo artist?

If you are just recording, I say to make the little bit of extra effort involved in recording your own harmonies or double and triple tracking. For not a lot of effort, you can get a much more palatable result. In fact, I would say it's less effort than bothering with harmony processing.

This is the first ever double tracking and BGV project I did using my own voice. It's a two minute cover of Beck's 'The Golden Age': I stand that up against any harmony processor - and you know what it was fun doing the BGVs one track at a time.

http://rockstarnot.rekkerd.org/songs/new...ute%20cover.mp3

Now, the original song had quite a bit of reverb on the vox and through critical listening, I tried matching it.

Here's the original by Beck btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6zAT15vaFk

I did all of the parts, including the faked pedal steel - which was a soundfont, but I did the bends and so forth. I recorded an actual glockenspiel (most difficult instrument recording I ever did at home) that I borrowed from church.

I don't like most of Beck's stuff, but there's a vibe on that Sea Change album that is haunting and beautiful. Credit to the choice string section stuff he has in most of the tracks. He learned that from his dad.

I chose to attempt to directly copy the feel and sound of that song because to me it is so sonically interesting. I spent a great deal of time deconstructing all of the elements and trying to figure out how to ape it in my basement studio. I was accused of more than once directly stealing it until people did a back-to-back listen, then the differences are easy to detect (guitar strum rhythms are totally unlike each other, my drum programming is a bit hitchy, etc.)

-Scott

I add no effects to any recorded track, 'cept maybe electric guitar. I like to effect it later where i can make changes.

I only record vocals on 2 tracks so I can have it on 2 tracks and not make one track so loud that it distorts. I run each track at half volume. 2 x 1/2 = 1, right?

I add some reverb though the 2 digital reverbs that are looped through my mixer's effects bus. (Rob says I add way too much.... LOL!!)

I am going to record the vocals on one track again totally dry, plugged right into the interface, no verb, no EQ.... and see what I get. When I try to use the effects built into Real Band, whether it's the reverb or the EQ, it ends up like when you shorten a leg on a table to make it even. Then the other side os wrong so you shorten that one, and pretty soon the table is on the floor.

Eddie,

Unless your hardware reverb units are Lexicons, chances are you can get a better result inside the box, not outside the box. Any time you are sending signal outside of the card for processing, you are going to add noise. There are so many free, nice sounding reverbs, that you really should avoid looping out to the mixer. Reverbs can have a 'time period' sound to them. As processing power has increased, the natural aspect of reverbs changes. I bagged my Alesis midiverb years ago because I found that I could get much better results in the box, than with the Alesis.

When you record vocals, or any source for that matter, you should try to set the gain staging so that it's a few clicks under 0 dB on the software's VU meter. You can always dial it back.

2 x 1/2 does not equal 1 when it comes to audio, BTW.

Adding reverb should be one of the last steps in a mixdown.

The main point of recording 'into the box' is to use the box. With an SM58, if you are close mic'ed you are almost assured to need to apply high pass filtering. Start at 80 Hz or so and go up from there, until you feel that the sound is getting 'thin'. Roll it back down 10 Hz or so from there.

Now, for reverb, it's almost always a good idea to bus the reverb. First, go get a decent freeware vst reverb like FreeverbToo http://www.sinusweb.de/freetoo.html . Place this into the aux slot and set it to 100% wet. Then, on your vocal track, start the aux knob at full left and as the track is playing back, slowly dial up the amount until you think it's too much. Then dial it back 25% of the travel from there.

While the effects that come bundled with RB can be good, I've not heard people brag on the reverb. It's o.k. to admit that not every effect in RB or PTPA is the best.

Another reverb that gots of airplay here on PG forums was the Anwidasoft reverb. Slightly limited in function, but still very usable. Then there is the whole classic series of Kjærhus plugins, hosted now by the Acoustica folks: http://www.acoustica.com/plugins/vst-directx.htm Everyone should have this plugin pack. It's the best deal going for 10 years now.

The reason you want to bus the reverb is so that you can send other track output there, without instantiating another copy of the reverb, which would eat more CPU.

I would send you a template project if I had RB, but I don't. Perhaps someone can help Eddie out this way - get him started with the right type of signal routing?

The simplest (in function) vocal routing I know of is using the PG 10 band EQ, Classic compressor you linked to at acoustica, and the anwida reverb you mentioned. Each of these units gives great sound with very simple controls. and they're free.

I like Ambience reverb because it has a TON of control, but some people don't like it because of that.
Claasic reverb in that acoustica package is nice too.

"Finally Gel" in the user showcase is Barry singing thru SM58 plugged directly into M-Audio soundcard.
Then I used PG 10 band to cut from 120Hz on down and did a slight boost to just the 2 kHz band. Then used Classic Compressor vocal preset and turned the output dial to suit.
Then I put reverb in Aux slot and sent a little of the vocals thru it.
That's what I ended up with.