TT's

Top Tips

Just an off-the-cuff thought. Do you have a "default" way of, say, EQ-ing vocals, a particular mic you always seem to wind up using, or a tried and tested way of constructing a recording? You get the idea. Might be cool to share some TT's so that everyone can try them out.

I am, naturellement, waiting for some wag to refer to teetee's whilst adopting a salacious and entirely unconvincing French accent. a-hoh-he-hoh-he-hoh......ma leetle MeFiMuette..............

posted by MajorDundee (14 comments total)

Hi there Major. You'd asked in another thread about what mic, etc. I use, and I hadn't gotten around to answering yet, but this thread seems the place to do so, now. My mic for vocal and virtually every other acoustic instrument I record is similar to this MicroTech Gefell, but it's much older and I'm not sure if the specs are identical. I was fortunate enough to buy mine used, years ago from a studio in NYC, for about 1/2 its original retail cost. It was made when MG was still an East German company, propped up by the beneficent state. Hail the Worker's Paradise!

As far as EQ, I don't do nuthin'. Just flat. Never touch the EQ on vox tracks. The mic has a bass roll-off notch, which I use when recording vocals.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:12 PM on July 15, 2009

BTW, I'd love to try that Rode (plus preamp) as you described in that song thread of yours. Your vocal sound through that is really good.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:55 PM on July 15, 2009

Wow - no EQ on vox.... Well that just shows the basic high quality of your voice, Flapjax, which I'm sure we'll all attest to.

I use the K2 on vocals, a Rode NT1A on acoustics and, more recently, an AKG C4050B for micing up amps (picked it up on eBay for a song - metaphorically obviously). It tends to be able to handle high SPL better than some other mics, but my old SM57 is pretty good for this purpose.

I guess one TT that I was going to offer up was that, through trial and error, I've found that EQ-ing anything (particularly stereo masters) above about 7 or 8kHz is a total waste of time and can actually fuck things up royally. There seems to be - to my ears at least - an "effective range" that's between about 100Hz and the aforesaid 7 - 8kHz. And very modest tweaks can have major effects on the overall sound - getting into a mix with a large spoon and stirring vigorously rarely produces anything worthwhile.

Another related question is how people monitor the recordings - headphones predominantly or speakers? near-field or fuck-off floor to ceiling monsters etc.
posted by MajorDundee at 1:25 AM on July 16, 2009

Should have added to that - as a way of stimulating wider discussion - that I used to have a Neumann TLM103. This allegedly used a U87 capsule and was more or less the same mic in a different package at half the price. It was rubbish. the Rode NT1A produced a better sound. And the K2 pisses all over it. I sold the Neumann (at a profit, thankfully). So.....I for one am distinctly unimpressed by the so-called "industry standard" Neumann mic. Any champions for it amongst our community??
posted by MajorDundee at 1:31 AM on July 16, 2009

I record almost all my vocals now with a ShinyBox ribbon mic which I like a lot. I've used it for the last few songs I've posted here. I dunno if it's the ribbon or my imagination or what, but I feel like it smooths out the nasalness of my voice somewhat. (Also, I've been singing quieter, which has the same effect.)

I also like the Copperphone, which has a really warm old-timey sound to it (and, hot cats, it is built like a beast). I used it for vocals here and here.

I don't use EQ on most stuff, but this is mostly because I don't really "get" EQ. I don't use a lot of effects in general, although I've been thinking about it more lately.

I monitor both on headphones and near-field speakers. Headphones help me pick out the lip-smacks and stuff like that.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 3:28 AM on July 16, 2009

i use an audix om2 for my vocals although lately, on stuff no one's heard yet, i've been using an electrovoice pl80 for background vocals - my first 30 or songs were done with a radio shack cheapie mike and i really don't recommend that - it was all i could afford

i always EQ my tracks and believe that everyone else should too - first, there's a lot of subsonic noise below 40-80 hz that is unpleasant and takes up headroom - recordings are much cleaner and clearer if you can get rid of that spectrum for non bass, non kick drum tracks - a vocal track simply isn't going to have anything going on down there anyway, so get rid of it - i tend to roll off vocal tracks around 160 hz and boost at 5 khz

if i have a kick drum separate from the rest of the drums, then i roll that off under 40 hz, have it up to about 80-100, cut it around 160 - bring it back up a bit around 200 - bass gets rolled off under 80 and over 2k - electric guitar and other instruments get rolled off under 200-300 hz, even if it makes the individual track sound a little trebly and tinny, because it's not how the track sounds by itself that counts, but how it sounds in the mix - something that sounds like crap by itself may be perfect

frequencies above that tend to depend on the individual song and what instruments are playing

i monitor on headphones, which isn't good, but it's pretty much my only option - i have been able to go to a friend's house occasionally and check mixes on a real pair of monitors, enough that i've pretty much learned what the shortcomings of headphone mixes are likely to be and know how to compensate for them - bass tends to be tricky and the one thing that's hard to catch on headphones are phasing problems

tip - always listen in mono, too, if you can, so you'll get a true picture of what level the instruments are at

also leave off mixing for another day after you're done recording something
posted by pyramid termite at 5:27 AM on July 16, 2009

I have such a minimal setup that I don't really have any equipment-related options—I've got one mic, one little cheap mixer, one little cheap USB sound interface. Pretty much keep everything flat on EQ on hardware, would love to get myself a compressor for the input path but don't have one at this point. Mix in my Sennheiser headphones but try it out on my stereo too if I'm taking the mixing seriously enough to want a second opinion.

I lay gentle compression on pretty much every track, do occasional spot EQ cuts on individual tracks if something is popping out too much but otherwise don't touch it. Use little if any reverb—I tend to record in the bare-floored living/dining room of our house at this point, so there's some room noise in every track anyway, and I'm not a big fan of noticeable reverb beyond the room sound anyway. If I want to give layered/harmony vocals a little more depth I record an extra track or five standing a few feet from the mic, off-axis.

I'd like to care more about mixing details, but most of the time the mix is not the biggest problem with a given recording and I tend to want to spend my energy, if I'm going to spend it at all, on repairing or improving the biggest red flags first.
posted by cortex at 7:02 AM on July 16, 2009

Major - I had the same experience with the tlm103. Sounds like garbage. I have a u87ai that sounds amazing for up front vocals and any lead intrument for that manner.

As far as tips, I recommend the Cascade Fathead for cheap ribbon mics.

I do a fair amount of tracking for others to mix so I obsess a bit about getting quality sounds into the box. The most useful tidbit I can add is that dynamic mics (eg sm57) can sound very different depending on the quality of preamp. Condensers (eg akg c1000) are less dependant on preamp. As I've upgraded my preamps over the years to top quality gear (ssl, neve clones, Avalon) I am turning more to dynamic mics as they smooth out the sounds a bit (kind of like tape might) and sound a bit tougher than condensers. So yeah, if you want to get more use of your dynamic mics get some really decent preqmps. You'll also get more value if you buy a single unit with multiple channels.
posted by dagosto at 2:02 PM on July 16, 2009

Interesting discussion around "to EQ or not to EQ". Over time I've found that I EQ less and less - the last couple of things I've uploaded here have only had EQ on the vocal and the stereo master with perhaps a little on the kick drum and bass. I've found that if I go any further than that I will almost certainly end up with something that sounds worse than it was to start with. Personally, I put that down to ignorance on my part - I don't really have a clue what I'm doing technically and there are some EQ facilities on my DAW that mean jack to me - "Q" for instance - what the fuck is that? I piss about with it regardless.....

In terms of monitoring, I have a pair of AKG K271 closed cans that I use when recording so there's no spill, and a pair of AKG K701s that I monitor and mix on. My nearfields are Alesis M1 MK2. The trouble with monitoring on speakers in an environment that isn't properly acoustically treated is that you can end up EQ-ing the room rather than the actual mix. If I trust my speakers everything ends up too bass-light and lacking in oomph because te room tends to accentuate the bottom end. So I tend to trust the AKG K701 - they're really fantastic and haven't let me down so far. The AKG K271 are too bassy and I wouldn't use them for mixing.
posted by MajorDundee at 2:40 PM on July 16, 2009

oh and on the effects discussion - apart from reverb and compression I've more or less stopped using outboard effects, particularly on guitars (ok, so I used amp tremolo on Venus In Furs...). Apart from the fact that they just make you sound like everyone else (chorus pedals - oh gawd no....) some of the frequency ranges tend, to my ears, to use up a lot of headroom in a mix and sort of swamp everything else. Dagosto - you know a lot more than I do about sound engineering - is there any truth in that?

Thing is, loads of effects and funny noises won't make a bad song into a good one. Shit is shit even if you spray it with perfume..... (what a revolting analogy)
posted by MajorDundee at 2:54 PM on July 16, 2009

I have a question about recording vocals ('fraid it's a bit of n00b question) - what's the benefit of putting recording vocals with compression? Isn't this is a problem in that if you don't like the results you can't turn the compression off because you recorded it?

Thinking out loud - I guess compression on a vocal will help even out the dynamic range of the performance, compensating for when the singer moves away from the microphone for a bit and then moves back. Is that what it is?
posted by awfurby at 1:37 AM on July 17, 2009

Tracking with Compression:

I think its quite common to Track with some compression for Vocals, Guitar, Bass Guitar. The purpose being usually to smooth out the Vocal Levels a bit because its near impossibel to sing / play at exactly the same volume constantly.

You are right that if you record or 'track' with Compression you cannot get rid of it. however I think in general when people do this the settings they use are relatively Mild and I think they are hoping that it is an improvement.

Also traditionally this was done to allow you to Record at a Louder RMS level to tape or digital and hence reduce the Relative noise floor, or utilise the available headroom.

I record at 24bit and i'm not that great with using a compressor so i almost never Track with Compression.
posted by mary8nne at 6:57 AM on July 17, 2009

Yes, compression on vocals while recording helps to even out any louder passages so you can have a strong signal without going into clipping and distortion, and it helps raise the level of the quieter sections as well. It's not so much the closeness to the mic, but rather the difference between a hummed, soft section and a hard plosive chorus.

I find that compression on vocals needs to be very subtle or you quickly lose brightness and the desirable dynamics. I rarely go above a 2:1 ratio (compared to 4:1 or 6:1 for tracking acoustic guitar) and only catch the loud peaks, rather than squashing everything.

If you're looking for an excellent outboard compressor, the FMR Real Nice Compressor (RNC) has been a favourite of mine (and many, many more amateur and pro studios) for years.
posted by Paid In Full at 7:08 AM on July 17, 2009

I use a Korg TP2 tube pre-amp on just about everything involving microphones. It has optical compression, and I find that a modest amount of this does tend to produce results. I then might add a little more in the mix - same as Paid In Full: never more than 2:1 and with only a little gain. The optical compressor isn't so great on electric guitars though - it tends to be noticeable - a real "bump" - and, in my view at least, the golden rule with all these processing treatments is that they should not be noticeable to the listener.

I don't know about everyone else, but I have to confess to not really understanding how compression and limitation works. Trial and error will get you so far, but real understanding would be helpful. How about someone who really knows about it posting a short tutorial?
posted by MajorDundee at 3:50 PM on July 17, 2009