SPEAKER IMPEDENCE CALCULATOR
https://soundcertified.com/speaker-ohms-calculator/
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use the noise gate in the DAW
singer to use tightly closed back headphones to avoid spill.
do a few takes you can pick and choose best delivery of certain lines.
For example Ed did this with a £30 superlux in his living room into a scarlett 2i2
I commented that it sounded better than our studio stuff and his take on it was that because he was working at home and not on the clock her could iterate on his delivery a lot more.
But that doesn't mean you can't get a better sound at home with a bit of care.
Thing to concentrate on:
Having the right mic for your voice.
Having a quality outboard Preamp, EQ and Compressor (or a channel strip).
Experimenting with different spaces in the house.
Having decent bass trapping in the room, especially corners.
High passing vocals around 80hz-120hz depending on the range of the vocalist.
Things I'd tend to avoid:
Using household furnishings in lieu of bass trapping- they aren't dense enough, they don't work on the bass frequencies. If you've got no other choice then fine but bass traps aren't expensive.
Vocal reflection filters. I've done extensive testing, they aren't completely useless, just mostly.
Noise gates- you have strip silence, use that noise gates are a blunt instrument for vocals.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
When I sorted out the old flat with acoustic treatment, I didn't need to do any of that. The room was perfectly acceptable for tracking vocals in.
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https://soundcertified.com/speaker-ohms-calculator/
For some recordings you want no reflections at all. I've done vocals for computer games recording actors and actresses doing their lines. making panting noises, dying of swords being stabbed in their guts etc. All completely bone dry as you don't know the acoustic properties of where this audio will be used .... you can add reverb but you can never take it away. We used to do stuff like this all the time as well as podcasts and meditation audio books ...boring work and all have to be dry as a nuns which meant building a special vocal booth with massive absorption to avoid chest hump.
For your average rock \ pop vocal though you can get away with a very amateurish setup as your generally gonna add verb, delay, lot of compression etc. I've done shedloads of vocals in my house just getting the singer to face a wall. During lock down I built a vocal booth in my garden and just hung a load of towels on the wall, did 3 or 4 songs with that which came out fine.
I think this is the lowest budget vocal I ever recorded, I had an Mbox mini and a cheap condensor, can't remember what it was but like a C1 or similar. The I hung a dog blanket in the corner of my dinning room and Katie did the vocals under it for this promo.
Producing the vocal comes from experience, as you can only mix what you tracked but over the years I've tried some things which have came out well so I tend to track vocals in this tried and tested fashion
I tend to at least double track a lead vocal, checking in solo'ed mode to make sure the phrasing and length on end notes is the same before moving on to the next line. I also sometimes do a lower monotone vocal, so the singer sings the line but only on the root note, not following the melody. Then that's compressed quite heavy and mixed very low under the lead vocal .. you don't really hear it but it thickens the voice. then use harmonies on little parts of the line but again mixed so low it thickens it without being an obvious harmony. For the harmonies I really want to be heard as proper harmonies I will quad track them and mix them panned across the stereo field.
@Danny1969 As it happens I have to record some stuff like that really soon. I can DIY a dry recording and would be interested in your thoughts as to what might be necessary afterwards. Even though my big computer is dead I can edit the audio on my laptop to get rid of the sounds of swallowing and all that, but what about compression? Wondering what settings might be a ball park for Voice Over? Anything else?
Basically the more level you can get from their mouth the easier it is. On the softest podcast speaker we had to use so much gain that the noise of the mic preamp was a problem and I could hear the sound of the voice hitting the control room / live room divide glass. Their producer never mentioned it so either couldn't hear it or didn't know what it was . Another time we recorded an audio book with a modern day witch who spoke so quietly the gentle hum form the air con blower 5 metres up in the air was a problem despite the fact we had her in the booth
So acoustically it's actually harder than recording vocals ... as generally when people are singing they are generally creating a usable SPL .. and you get to put on effects and the music masks a lot of things. When you hear the spoken word on it's own you can generally tell where it's been recorded. like when a BBC radio presenter gets to present from home you can hear the difference straight away from the normal studio show. Of course being podcasts means it will be heard on headphones so any crap refections will be heard more so.
There can be a paranoia about it where it's possible to think that cheap gear will limit the record to rubbish before it's even started but it's really not the case at all.
The price difference between budget gear and "pro" gear is enormous but the actual difference it makes to the sound is nowhere near proportionate.
I think it's true that most listeners wouldn't ever think about the sound quality of the vocals for a second, they'll just be listening to the song. The worry comes that the recording could be so bad that it stands out immediately as bad sounding without anyone having to listen for it. And that's what isn't at all the case - even very cheap gear won't stand out as sounding unusual so most people would never appreciate the difference if you used 20 grands worth of gear instead.