neverending mix #2

[ernstinen]

Quote:Bonnie Raitt is known to insist upon SM57's for all her studio and live sessions (though I'm "Shure" there are exceptions to this).Yea, she's an example of a husky, smokey female voice. Whatever works is my motto ---- Phil Collins has been know for using a Beyer dynamic mic for his vocals. Whatever w----- oops, I just said that! My prized Sennheizer K2-U sounds great on my vocals, and it's a small diaphragm condenser. If someone wants to give me a U-87, that would be O.K., though. Ern

[kouly]

Hi Vikki, I would tend to say that you should be able to get a decent sound from a SM57. You have to know how to engineer it a bit though. Using some EQ to bring down that bump in the mid range and maybe adding a little to the lower end would help. Or just getting closer to it you would get some proximity effect (remember pop screen). I think getting a mic is a good idea but having a quality reverb is also something that is important. To show you what can be done with some 57s. here is a link to a song thatwas done with only SM57s and the stock pre-amps on a Roland VS-2480 DAW as a test to show that it has more to do with the talent than the equipment. http://www.studioreviews.com/motown5901 ... ls.mp3NOTE: This song was not mastered so it will need additional volume.http://www.studioreviews.com/57song.htmThis second link is to the artists notes on making the recording.

[grandmatarkin]

Yes I would say that no matter what mic you had, you would first have to fix issues with mixing, etc. The one thing that stood out to me (that was pretty much already mentioned) is...... watch the tuning on foreground and background vocals. Bad tuning can stick out like a sore thumb. In my opinion, you could have the best produced song brought down by poor tuning/intonation. I mean, the vocals (in most songs) are the focal point, so any problems here are naturally going to stand out. You have a great voice though, so that's a huge plus right there Overall, the problems that you're dealing with could be easily fixed with a relatively small amount of effort. And, if your experience matches mine, you will get much better at this mixing/production business quickly. (forgive me if I mentioned this before somewhere... I have the feeling I did, but try downloading a spectrum analyzer to get a visual idea of what's going on in your tracks... With this tool you'll be able to much more easily track down unwanted clashes and overlapping instruments in your mixes.)The one I use is Voxengo Span... it's free and purty. Here's the link:http://www.voxengo.com/product/SPANI found it quite useful to study some professionally produced tracks with it and see what the spectrum looks like. Eventually your ears should start to "match up" what you see with what you are hearing.Best of luck!Dave