This is my first post so I didn’t know if I should have posted this in technique or this one.
Anyways.
I’ve been recording vocals and I keep getting really crisp, clear sounding vocals…
Which would be fine if I wanted that.
I’m trying to add a lot of room to my vocals, and I’ve tried doing it naturally by placing the mic far away, but a good distance always means the input is really quite.
Things I’ve tried:
Placing distance between myself and the microphone (from 3-10 feet)
I can’t seem to get a good room sound doing this. I’m either too close or too far away.
Adding GVerb.
Again, I can’t seem to get a good reverb sound. It either has a too metallic feel to it, or is too subtle.
Multi-tracking vocals.
I’ve been experimenting with doing vocals far away and some up close and trying to set them right in the mix, but again… failed.
Equipment I’m using:
Shure SM57
Alesis Multimix 4
Audacity (duh, I guess)
Any kind of EQ settings or mic placement ideas would be grately appreciated. To close it out, this is the vocal sound I’m trying to get:
To get that “distant” sound, record quite close up (not really close, but close enough to get a good signal) then roll off a bit of the bass and add some reverb.
The default values in GVerb suck and the Audacity version of GVerb does not support presets.
If you are on Windows, try the “Anwida dxreverb lite” http://www.anwida.com/product.asp?pid=7 which has some nice presets.
You’ll need a fairly short reverb but quite “wet” (“Dry” = no effect, “Wet” = all effect and no dry signal).
A good way to get the Wet/Dry mix right in Audacity is to duplicate the track and apply the effect 100% Wet to the duplicate track. You can then adjust the levels of the original (dry) track and the duplicate (wet) track while you listen (use the “gain” slider on the left end of the track.
The example track has the vocals quite low in the mix.
If you mean when the guy says “1,2,3,4” … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtDCm56SDHw&#t=4s
try severely cutting back the frequencies below approx 300Hz with Audacity’s equalizer, then apply a 5ms delay* , ~5 echos, with 10dB decay, then apply a stereo reverb ( like the Anwida freebie Steve mentioned above ) …