Help Recording Vocals?

Question

Just recently bought the Samson C01U USB Condenser Microphone, despite reading reviews of it being sensitive to noise up close, mines actually quite low..

I record in a small box room, can this affect the sound?

What does a pop-filter do, and would one be necessary?

I'm currently using basic recording/editing software (Audacity). How much can editing the vocals affect the end product? If its major what software can you recommend? and exactly how do you edit the actual vocals?

The vocals sound amateurish and unpolished, cant get that 'professional' sound like crisp and clear, its more like dull and flat.

Quite a few questions there like, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

  Hey,

The "box" room is good for recording the vocals as it has low reflection of sound. This basically means the sound that is recorded will have a reasonably low background noise and sound reverberation. I usually record in my small room and i use room padding curtains to absorb any unwanted sound reflection from the walls and ceiling.

Pop filters stop the annoying "pop" sound which is formed from the build up of air getting thrown at the diaphram of the microphone. When saying a word like "pineapple" without a pop shield causes a loud boomy "pop" sound on the recording which is un proffetional and very hard to get rid of after the recording process so get one.

Use something like Cubase or Ableton if you really want to get into the proffetional stuff. Cubase and Ableton both support VST (virtual instruments) and VST effects that can be assigned to any audio track within the software. This means you can use things like compression effects, gating, etc to really beef up the vocals and get the proffetional sound quality.

Theres loads of tutorials out there to do with cubase and effects usage etc just have a google for stuff, or youtube some vids

Hope it helps

Stu