recording vocals

Recording vocals are unlike miking any other instruments in the studio. The few common issues while recording vocals would be the projection of our voice and the room setting. For instance, plosive (popping sounds), sibilance (Ssssssssss), proximity effect (boost of low-ends), foot noise and poor room treatment.

The basic setup to record a vocalist would be a mic stand, together with a shock mount (which helps to reduce the vibration from foot tapping), a pop filter (to reduce plosives and also to prevent singers from getting too close to the mic- causing proximity effect) and of course, a suitable microphone for the vocalist. Other things to consider would be the type of voices the vocalist has in order for us to accommodate them with the ideal mic that could capture the uniqueness in their voice. Different types of recording microphones are popular for different genres and vocal tones. Dynamic mics (Sennheiser MD421 & SM58) are better for vocalists and genres that are rather aggressive like rock and heavy metal as they can handle loud frequencies and are less sensitive than condenser mics. Its polar patterns are also generally unidirectional (cardioid), which makes it rejects most of the reverb in a room. Condenser mics (Neumann KM183, Rode NT1A, Slate Digital VMS, AKG C414 AND AT2050), on the other hand, are more sensitive and able to pick up clearer and more accurate sounds. These mics are ideal for more controlled genres like alternative and pop while ribbon mics (CR-14) are more suitable for genres like Jazz, folk or blues.

Slate Digital VMS

For my understanding of the Virtual Mic System by Slate Digital in our studio, it basically comes in a bundle of both hardware and software-- hardware pre-amp, modelling software from the Slate Digital website, a LDC cardioid mic. What this software primarily does is to emulate few of the top tiers microphones and pre-amp models. Few of them include the FG-47 (Neumann U47), the FG-251 (Telefunken ELA M251) and the FG-800 (Sony C800g).

The mic and pre-amp are designed to be transparent signals in order for the characteristics of the mics to saturate into the processed signals. In other words, the mic and the preamp are like "soul-less" equipments and the mic plugins in the software are to add "soul" to the mic (hahaha).

As well as compressors:

(The VMS is connected to input 27 in the studio)

EXPERIMENT PLAN

Aim: To learn and compare the differences between a mic plugin from VMS (Neumann U47) and one mic from our studio (Neumann TLM 103).

Both microphones are said to have really great capture of rich tone and full body of human voice. Hence, we would like to compare a regular mic with a plugin from VMS.

Mic setup: