Getting expensive-sounding vocals from a cheap microphone
Like many amateur recording artists, my equipment is cheap. For my first projects, the sound wasn’t as important as just getting down my ideas, but now I want to get a more polished, expensive sound from what I have. The most obvious area for improvement is the vocals — I have an ancient Radio Shack ‘universal’ type instrument microphone that I use for all my open air recording. It has a bizarre sound profile, and on recordings it tends to sound pretty muffled. My goal was to turn this muffled sound into something crisp and defined, like what a high-end vocal microphone might sound like. Of course, I’m realistic and I know the subtle nuances of a $1000+ microphone are not going to be there, but if I can get the general character at no additional cost, that would be of huge value to me.
First, I listened carefully to some recordings that I consider to have a high-quality vocal track. I compared the sound profile of these to my own recordings with my microphone, and I tried to identify the most obvious difference between the vocal frequencies. I noticed that my microphone appears to have a much larger low-end sensitivity, so large that it overwhelms any high frequencies that my mic may be picking up. It ends up making me sound a bit like Kermit the Frog, or like I’m singing underwater.
I tried EQ and reverb, but both really had more of a post-processing effect on the vocal. They weren’t doing enough to kill off the bad frequencies. I already knew that a lot of professionally recorded vocal tracks use filters, but I also assumed that running multiple filters would destroy the timbre of my vocal tracks. Instead, I decided I’d try to find a single, simple filter I could apply that would remove just the “bad” frequencies of my vocal track, with the hope that what was left would sound better. Since my mic’s output is so low-heavy, I settled on a generic, software-based high-pass filter plug-in to a popular recording application. I left all the default settings, figuring that I could always undo it and change them later if I wanted to, but as it turned out, I wouldn’t need to. Just the default high-pass filter “fixed” the vocal from my microphone. It sounds a tiny bit telephone-like, but most filters do that. In exchange, I get a vocal that to my ear is 90% of the way to a big, expensive-sounding microphone. Is it perfect? No, but:
- It’s a better sound than where I was.
- It’s fast to apply.
- It’s at no additional cost to me.
Other microphones may require a low-pass filter vs. a high-pass filter, but I highly recommend trying either of these out if your vocal sounds either raspy or like Kermit.
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What’s your philosophy on really expensive microphones- the ones that cost hundreds of euros or dollars, work underwater, and blah blah blah! What’s the point? I figure, as long as you don’t have a nady low end mic, anywhere around the middle seems just fine. What do you think Johnathan?
Also, how about wireless for weddings?
very cool! yea, i saw it listed as beta 57A, there’s also an 87A, so i’m not sure which one i’ve seen in action, cuz i didn’t realize there were a couple of others. do they sell those in the States for under $100 or just Australia? seems too good to be true. i know regular 57′s you can usually find under $100 but the beta A’s too? nice! tell us where!
that is great i wish i could have this
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So do you mean to say that as a singer or an artist, one should buy an expensive microphone? But if you have a real talent your voice would still be great no matter what microphone you will use. But perhaps, it will be enhanced if an expensive one is used.
I am saying 2 things here:
1. If you are a professional singer and you want an uncompromising “holy cow” vocal track every time, get a microphone that will get you to 100% (this will cost a lot). That last 10% cannot be detected by inferior equipment, and if your voice is awesome, a 100% mic will get you 100% awesome.
2. However, if you are ok with 90% of that result, you can get to 90% there by using the above method which is way, way less expensive. Then, if you need 100% one time, you can rent a studio/mic and use it just for that one purpose. The vocal will be pretty good, maybe even really good, but if you compare side by side to a track done with same singer on a killer mic, the killer one will have that extra 10% of magic. If it didn’t, no one would ever buy those expensive mic’s.