For the past few months I've been mixing hip hop for some friends of mine. i have experience mostly with rock so i referenced quite a few brand new, mainstream hip hop albums. This is where my questions lie:
1. It seems as though almost all( if not all ) of the instrumentation/vocals are panned dead center, w/ the exception of chorus background vocals. Am I wrong?

yo all.i am new here and i am coming with a problem.

i downloaded a lot of akapellas and i noticed that ALL vocals are distorted in the hifieldfreq.i said i need a tube preamp since i have a Neumann u87ai and AKG solidtube i said that the preamp is actually bad.i bought SPL GAINSTATION 1 a solidstate and tube preamp..the Neumann sounds a lot better in this but again..too clean.

OK, I'm recording Hip Hop vocals and haven't put too much thought into it intially, but do spoken word and hip hop vocalist have as much need for a "perfectly" acoustic vocal room as a singer does.

I'm needing to know possible plugin combinations and settings used in cleaning up vocals, what I'm using is ok, but it's not CD or Radio ready..
I'm using Pro Tools 7 and Nuendo so I can use VST and RTAS..

I'm needing to know possible plugin combinations and settings used in cleaning up vocals, what I'm using is ok, but it's not CD or Radio ready..
I'm using Pro Tools 7 and Nuendo so I can use VST and RTAS..

anyone got any advice on heavy guitars in hip hop tracks,not sure if to comp them to the extreme or be gentle and eq them into the mix,worried about pushing the track with them when drums should do that job

I was wondering how much of an upgrade the Shure SM7 is over the SM-57/SM58?

I'm also looking at the Electro-Voice RE-20 and the Sennheiser MD 421.

Any help would be appreciated. Right now I use a Audio-Technica AT-3035...which I like. However, I want a good dynamic so I have some variety.

I monitor on some Samson Resolv80a's. .I think that they are my weekest link a my set up right now.

I went to guitar the other day and listened to some Mackie H824's and some Dynaudio B5's or something like that 5oo.oo ea price range.

I mostly record and produce for hip and r&b cats.
and I'm looking for tricks of the trade for vocals.

just drop some of your techniqes and tricks that you use to record and mix to get everything just right. .

Panning/ plugins/automation etc. open for anything.

What do you guys recommend speaker wise for hip hop or Dance music. I need extremyl accurate Bass that is tight and true. I don't want hyped upi sound. I want to be able to mix as accurate as possible.
I have right now JBL-LSR28p's They are cool but i am lloking for something that is louder and a lower extende range say down to 30hz
thanks