HI, i havet done much vocal work, but recently i tryed to do 2 vocal tracks, (i have posted those below) they arnt complete however.

anyway, ive just bout a slighly better mic...is nothign special mind... but im getting fairly hollow sounding vocals...is this somehting that can be fixed with compression and filters? or is it that my vocalist simply doesnt have it?

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/koolk26/Charlie.mp3

Last edited by ReflexLawn on Aug-23-2006 at 06:58

The 2nd example... it sounds like the quality of the recording just doesn't sound good at all. It could be from any number of things (clipping, being to close to the mic, bad mic placement, etc.). What kind of mic do you have?

No amount of filtering or compression will fix that unfortunately.
The vocal is clipping everywhere, there's lots of low freq rumble, and the quality of the mic/recording doesn't seem to be very good. Also you might want to get another vocalist cause the pitch is all over the place.
Get yourself a decent budget mic (TSM MT47 is very good. I got mine for about 70 EUR), and record in 24 bits. It's alot easier to record in 24 bit, the increased dynamic range will reduce the chance of clipping by alot.

rito, thanks for that. Im off to uni in a month, so perhaps ill meet a few good vocalistts there.

9 times out of 10 you'll want to reach for EQ rather than compression, and even then only when you're sure you've captured the best recording possible.

EQ changes the tonality of the sound, so you can use it to bring certain frequencies up or down to counter any 'hollowness', if that's what your mic, vocalist, placement, etc. gave you.

Before you do anything though, I seriously advise you remove the limiter from the master channel and leave the natural dynamics of the mix intact. You can compress individual instruments as needed, but if you go to compress things again at the output you can't accurately monitor how you balanced and compressed things previously.

You might find you already run into clipping when you remove the limiter, in which case I suggest you start out with your kick peaking around -8.0 dB on a PPM (peak program meter) so that you have enough room to build on for the rest of the mix, and end up with a maximum peak level no higher than -3.0 dB.

Try it, and I'm sure you'll find things will improve tenfold already. I can help a bit more just as soon as you provide me with a proper mix.

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Put an end to the loudness war. Don't limit or compress your mixdown until mastering; leave the master channel alone.

Contact me for mastering.

very helpful many thanks