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C4_Johnny 16 January 2006

Hey all, I've got a question about my vocals. They sound detached somehow. I'm pretty sure it's not my equipment. I'm using an Audio-Technica AT4040 condenser mic w/ shockmount, M-Audio firewire 410 interface, and Cubase SE for recording software. Is it my plugins? The reverb in the SE version sucks, as does the delay. The dynamics package is fine (compression, noise gate, limiter).

I generally lay down the drum and bass lines in Reason and run them through ReWire in Cubase. They sound great, almost pro quality, but when I put the vocals down they sound too "live", I guess. I'm not talking about natural reverb, because my acoustic foam has taken care of that. It sounds like my music is 10 feet away and my vocals are 6 inches away. What's going on here? How can I drop the vocals back into the mix without losing their presence?

Comments

anonymous Tue, 01/17/2006 - 05:41

Going from this:

It sounds like my music is 10 feet away and my vocals are 6 inches away.

It sounds like you need to add some reverb to the vocal. I have a feeling you've tried that and it's muddied everything up. Crappy reverb will do that. The only thing I can suggest (apart from getting a decent reverb unit) is adding a pre-delay to you reverb. Hopefully your crappy reverb has this setting. A pre-delay allows you to set a small delay before the reverb kicks in. It gives you the initial punch, then smoothes out the rest of the line. Experiment with different delay settings to see what works; every case is different.

Wes

Cucco Wed, 02/01/2006 - 12:28

JSRockit wrote: I'm going to say it is the Pre-amps in your m-audio unit... get a dedicated mic pre-amp like the FMR-Audio RNP or the Groove tube brick and it should help bring that Mic to life and make the vocals sit better in the mix.

I respectfully disagree. Quite heartily at that.

The quality of the pre should make very little difference in the problem which this person is describing. Often, I find people put WAY too much emphasis on pres anyway. Unless you're in a golden room and have great mics, pres will make very little difference. (Don't get me wrong - there are differences, but most are subtle at best and obscured when sh*t is fed to them...)

The voice should sound "up front" but not too much. It might be as simple as backing the level off a tad and maybe adding a touch of that reverb.

The other possibility is that the rest of the mix needs to come up.

One of the most common problems I see with amatuer mixes is, one or more of the drums (programmed or not) show peaks, but the rest of the drums or the rest of the mix is actually quite low. These peaks make folks think that they have a loud mix, when in reality, it's not.

If it's merely a volume thing - ride the gain. It's that simple.

If it's a room thing - go reverb.

Chances are, it's a mix thing - volume and reverb both.

J.

anonymous Wed, 02/01/2006 - 14:06

Cucco wrote: [quote=JSRockit]I'm going to say it is the Pre-amps in your m-audio unit... get a dedicated mic pre-amp like the FMR-Audio RNP or the Groove tube brick and it should help bring that Mic to life and make the vocals sit better in the mix.

I respectfully disagree. Quite heartily at that.
Unless you're in a golden room and have great mics, pres will make very little difference. (Don't get me wrong - there are differences, but most are subtle at best and obscured when sh*t is fed to them...)

I understand where you are coming from...but the level of mic pres that are in the interface in question are just not good. Bad mic pres will add to this problem IMHO.

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