Recording opera vocals in tiny home studio - mic & placement suggestions I know, you're supposed to record opera singers in acoustically perfect concert halls, but I'm on a budget and all I have is my 8 x 10 home studio which doubles as both a control room and a live room. My goal is to record live vocals over pre-recorded orchestra karaoke tracks to famous soprano arias.
Here's a recording I just made a few minutes ago of Ach Ich Fuhls from Magic Flute. I'm using a Blue Baby Bottle with a pop screen through a maudio FastTrack Pro (I normally use an Apogee Duet but I have no idea where it is right now). Using Garageband on a Mac Pro quadcore, and added a hint of reverb & echo. Please excuse my bad German and wonky voice, I didn't really warm up. :smile:
Ach Ich Fuhl's - Baby Bottle & FastTrack Pro
I *really* don't like the high notes, they sound really shrieky, and I know from other recordings that I'm not shrieky in real life.Also, the resonance is just not there in the lower register. The middle register sounds pretty decent IMHO.
I've done a lot of reading on forums and such, and I see a lot of recommendations for dynamic and ribbon mics with opera singers. I've also seen a lot of posts on using stereo pairs, preferably matched pairs, and a lot of votes for M/S or similar arrangements in close quarters.
So, I'm thinking of getting an additional mic to use with the Blue Baby Bottle, something that will capture a warmer sound, and then hopefully the final mix can be a nice blend of the two.
Suggestions on mics? So far I've seen a lot of good things about the Cascade Fatheads, and also EV RE20s. My budget is around $300 max, so a matched pair is unfortunately not in my near future. (Also I'm thinking keeping the Baby Bottle in the mix is a good way to capture sibilance that may be lost with a warmer mic.)
Also suggestions on mic arrangement and placement in my tiny room? For reference, here's a sketch of my "vocal booth" setup: the X is where I stand, back to the wall, and the big pole thing is my mic stand & boom hanging over the gobos. The mic itself is at the tip of the boom, which is about 3 ft away from where I stand. Mic head is pointing downward, tilted slightly away from me. I can probably move things back to make it 4 ft away, but that's the max distance I can arrange.
Last edited by BluMaterial; 05-08-2011 at 12:13 AM.
That's an impressive track! The Blue Baby Bottle captures your voice and its timbre reasonably well, but the FastTrack Pro does not do you any favours.
Before spending any more money on microphones, it would be worth trying to locate your Apogee Duet and re-recording the track using that. After you posted that result here, we would be in a better position to judge how you should spend your money, and whether indeed $300 can deliver a worthwhile improvement.
+1 on trying again with the Apogee. The Fast Track doesn't present the Blue Bottle fairly.
John Dutton
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Upon listening to your recording, I would skip the Cascade and go straight to an Avantone or Royer. Your voice is better than the Cascade though it might take you a bit to start noticing. Also, if I went with a ribbon I would set both the ribbon and the Blue up for simultaneous capture. The ribbons will smooth out your voice especially in the upper register but there will be some "air" missing that the condenser will fold back in. I often record classical chamber concerts with a stereo ribbon and stereo pair of condensers for that purpose. Sometimes only one pair gets used in the mixdown but equally often one is selected as the main audio and the other is mixed in just enough to augment-never equal measure unless I just happened to mix the mic levels that way at the gig.
Ok, I'll dig up my Duet this weekend and re-do the demo. I still think a second mic, even <$300 in price, would be worth it just to record in stereo.
I can't even begin to afford a Royer. Avantone CR-14 would be doable. (Probably should have posted this in the Home Recording forum, whoops!)Upon listening to your recording, I would skip the Cascade and go straight to an Avantone or Royer.
Last edited by BluMaterial; 05-06-2011 at 05:08 PM.
To record in stereo you need a pair of identical microphones. You would need a second baby bottle for instance. You can use two different pairs but each coincident pair or near-coincident pair needs to be the same type/brand. One possible exception is the mid side technique but a condenser mid and dynamic side would not work well.
Thanks for the info, Jack. I was already leaning towards using mid/side, since I could get by with purchasing only one additional mic instead of two, which would allow me to possibly spring for a better, more expensive mic. The Fathead is a ribbon, as is the CR-14 and several of the Royers. Would a ribbon work well with my Baby Bottle condenser? Also, I'm curious why you say a condenser & dynamic in mid/side configuration would not work well.Originally Posted by TheJackAttack
Ok, off to discover where my Duet is hiding...
Can it be done? Yes. Is it a good combo? No. If you were going to purposefully mismatch a ribbon and condenser, the condenser should be the side mic but it would of course need to be figure of 8. Even so, I'm not a fan of trying to combine mic types for MS.
Hmm, ok. Just trying to understand the reasoning behind your assertion: if the side mic is ribbon, which tends to drop off in the high freqs (at least for cheaper ribbons), then the high pitched notes will be picked up by the mid condenser more than the ribbon and the resulting mix will sound more mono on the high notes. Whereas in the opposite configuration, the condenser would be picking up most of the high freqs and the mix will sound more stereo on the higher pitched notes which is more of a realistic sound. Is that basically it? At any rate that rules out my Bottle & ribbon M/S plans. Curse you recording gods!
So now I'm puzzling over whether it is better to use a matched pair in M/S (or another stereo config) or a condenser & ribbon pair in M/S, given my limited budget. Basically, I'm worried that with a matched pair in my price range (if I give up eating out and Starbucks I might be able to spend up to $500) I'll end up with two mics that only have good response over a limited portion of the frequency spectrum. Whereas if I carefully select two complementary mics in my price range (maybe both ribbons, maybe condenser and ribbon) I can cover the frequency spectrum more fully between the two. Thoughts?
(PS found the Duet, but not my 400f-800m Firewire converter. Gotta get another one tomorrow.)
John's take on the M/S is conventional wisdom, but if you end up buying the ribbon you should give it a try in M/S with the Blue. The mid and the side do serve different functions and the standard configuration is cardioid for the mid and figure 8 for the side. So it's never a matched pair - though the recommendation is to get something similar. My bigger concern is that I feel M/S sounds best if you have a good room and are picking up a lot of the room with the mid. Given your constraints, I doubt that any stereo recording is going to reap huge benefits - though that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
The sad fact is, recording a classical soprano is about as good a recipe as possible for exposing the weakness of a signal chain. My guess is that the Duet is going to be a significant improvement. You should also experiment more with placement. Bracket the elevation, distance away, and the angle. Get a tape measure. Take notes. A lot more boring than shopping for mics, but probably more effective.
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