Can't believe the difference rooms make recording vocals sound.

[kylendm]

My vocalist came over for a session today at my place, it's untreated and has concrete walls and the other half are paneled walls. The ceiling is some kind of tiled square materials that slide in the ceiling...anyway.

We were retracking his vocals and I was amazed how bad it sounded compared to the old vocals. We had the same setup, SM58 -> Saffire Pro24 -> Sonar + plugins and all that.

I did my best to get it to sound the same but I couldn't believe how different it sounded. The vocals sounded dead and flat sounding, they also sounded like they had a lot of bass build up. Our vocalist is ridiculously loud too so I'm guessing the room played a bigger role than I thought.

His place isn't treated either but it's a bigger area. I'm worried that maybe my whole room might be a bust and that maybe I shouldn't even invest in treatment because it already sounds dead I guess.

I have an ECM8000 on the way to test my room so I'll be able to see what the falls and numbers say but damn was I surprised.

EDIT: I managed to save the intro so here's both of them.
New Recorded here.
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/kylendm/new-1/s-nNwfI[/SOUNDCLOUD]

Old recorded there.
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/kylendm/old/s-SdjXr[/SOUNDCLOUD]

 

[FarBeyondMetal]

Next time try building a fort around the vocalist with extra mic stands and the thickest blankets you can find. It should help a lot.

 

[kylendm]

Yeah good idea, I added clips of what's going on as well.

 

[szymon]

Wow. It sounds like some wave cancellation is going on in the old recording. But yeah, room make the difference, especially while using condenser mics with a lot of gain for softer vocals (and the loud vox seem to need the right room too )

 

[kylendm]

Wave Cancellation?

 

[Trevoire520]

Yeah the old vocals sound very phasey, honestly I think the new track sounds better but there's a pretty obvious room reverb coming through that isn't exactly desirable either.

 

[kylendm]

Well there's a lot of post processing on both of them like verb and delay.

 

[kylendm]

No processing

Here's the old vocals.
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/kylendm/old-noproc/s-9mcaP[/SOUNDCLOUD]

Here's the new one's we did here.
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/kylendm/new-noproc/s-Jhpls[/SOUNDCLOUD]

 

[JonWormwood]

nvm

 

[colonel_claypoo]

No processing

Here's the old vocals.
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/kylendm/old-noproc/s-9mcaP[/SOUNDCLOUD]

Here's the new one's we did here.
[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/kylendm/new-noproc/s-Jhpls[/SOUNDCLOUD]

first one sounds (old one) like your singer has more distance to the mic than in the second clip.

never had much success with building a fort of blankets around the vocalist. makes him sound dead. it helps with room reverb but it also kills neccessary high frequency content which makes the recorded vocals sound duller.

 

[HCL]

Sounds like a performance/tracking thing more than anything on those raw takes. If you're using a 58 room sound, while important isn't going to be a massively varying factor from place to place.

 

[LBTM]

There were probably differences in his voice between the two recordings.

 

[kylendm]

Yeah I think you guys are right. Maybe it was just the day we did it. I'll try again soon.

 

[kylendm]

Alright so I think we actually made some decent progress.

[SOUNDCLOUD]http://soundcloud.com/kylendm/dec2vocals-track-2/s-t6S7f[/SOUNDCLOUD]

That's the vocals we just did with post processing. What do you guys think? I think it sounds a lot clearer. We put the SM57 on a stand with a pop filter in front of it. I tried just giving him the mic and letting him rip but something sounded weird, I think it was the mic or something.

This was just a test today since we didnt have much time and are really getting down to recording them tomorrow, I'm just curious what everyone thinks and maybe suggestions.

 

[LBTM]

they sound good...