Adding Echo on a live Mic

I am a relative newbie to digital recording, but recently downloaded Audacity (2.whatever) onto my Windows 7 OS. I also recently purchased a Blue Yeti (Silver Model) USB Mic. I simply am recording vocals over karaoke music tracks. I first record the music track, then add my vocal on a separate track. In the short time I have been using this setup, I have learned a few tricks to help with production, such as adding duplicate (or even triplicate vocal tracks), time-shifting them accordingly. I generally leave the master vocal track as a stand alone, then maybe add a bass boost to another and a treble boost and some echo to another…all good stuff. What I would love to do…and it may not even be possible…is to add some echo/reverb to the live mic so that I might simply practice with some audio effects in my headset while singing. Is there a plug-in or some other way to accomplish this, or am I saddled with post-production as my only means of hearing any effects in my headset…?? I stopped by my local Guitar Center hoping they might have a simple pass through vocal effect box I could plug my mic into before the USB PC plug-in…but no such luck. Any ideas would be very much appreciated. It would be great to have a little live sound effect/ambiance while simply practicing.

Audacity is post-production editor and doesn’t do anything in real time. OK, it does Voice Activated and Timer, but that’s about it.

This is where your Yeti is going to cause problems. The next production step up from what you have is a sound mixer with special effects. That means an analog microphone which means you can put the Yeti in the garage.

Yetis and microphones such as that are good starters, but they’re aggressively non-expandable. Even just two Yetis is a pain in the neck and three is impossible.

If you play your cards right, you get a USB mixer with Zero Latency Monitoring and you can use that and headphones for perfect overdubbing.

This is how I did it with my analog mixer

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/peaveyUCA202Lenovo-650.jpg

I use a USB stereo interface. That’s where you plug in your headphones so you can hear yourself live as you perform to the backing track. That mixer is pretty simple, but it does have an Effects > Send and Effects > Insert so you can send your voice out to a stand-alone echo or reverb generator. I know they have those.

Koz

I plug my Shure 57 mic into a delay pedal then plug the output into an amp. I set the USB Blue Yeti mic in front of the amp to record the sound with the live delay. Of course I space these set ups far enough away from each other to prevent feedback.