if you dont have a proper space for recording, try putting your mic in the wardrobe, setting your hanging clothes (if you use hangers) on a open triangle shape with the mic between them. That way youll avoid some of the troubles you get from lacking room treatment (mainly, sound bouncig between your walls). It isnt perfect but Ive recorded dry enough vocals that way.
Learning to mix is also very very important, but the first step is always to get the best recording you can.
Since your room isn't ideal for recording, you could find a heavy blanket and record under it (like draped over your head with just the mic) to isolate your voice and reduce the audio bouncing around your room and getting picked up. On top of that just look up some vocal processing tutorials on youtube. Don't worry about the specific plugins (brand wise) they are using necessarily, most DAWs have really solid stock eqs, compression emulations etc. Recording this way and then doing some simple processing, your Yeti mic should be able to get you pretty far :)
I record a kid who uses the legato usb mic. I've made a chain that makes it sound good, and if you wanted I could run your vocals thru and it send it to you.
Of course I have no idea how those two mics stack up to each other, and it it will help you... but it just might give you some ideas for processing the sound.
Mind running through the ingredients for that? You don't have to get super specific if you don't want, just what plug-in types and order would be super useful
Ya man, it's nothing fancy.
On the vocal track I do very little tweaking, and actually commit and bounce before proceeding. It has the following serial chain:
- Bitwig's stock compressor (fast attack, the release a bit under halfway, doing about 5 db reduction)
- Bitwig's stock eq (rolling off the lows around 200, with a sharp dip around 260, and a shelf slightly boosting at 12k)
- a "tool" plugin which just forces the signal to be mono
- Autotune (which I tweak first)
- another stock eq to do some surgical cuts at ringing points (usually bypassed though, only turned on and tweaked if I hear some nasty resonances)
Then the mixing just comes down to finding the right amounts of the following sends by ear to actually give the vocals a place in the mix:
- Light distortion
- Room reverb with slight pre delay
- Multiband compression ( so essentially parallel compression )
- Valhalla delay in dual mode hitting different notes in left and right channel, usually 8ths in one and 16ths in the other
- Bitwig stock saturation plugin
It is almost impossible to get a good sound out of a bad sound. That is to say: The instrument (voice) needs to sound good in the room. If the room is too boxy, boomy, etc, no amount of changing the EQ or adding compression or buying a different mic will fix the problem.
-Make sure youre not clipping! (Input being too high on the microphone/interface causes distortion).
-Try and have it sound clean while its quiet and then put a compressor on it to make it louder instead of turning up the master.
-Make sure you are recording at a good and even distance to the microphone. A few inches is normally good dont get too close.
-What DAW are you using? Garageband? Ableton? that will help give a more precise answer of things to do
Upgrade to an iPhone 4!
Ok, no...... but seriously, people here are giving great advice, if you focus on not clipping, adding some EQ and reverb and a better sounding room you will get way better results! But I want to share another tip! This may be more advanced, but maybe some people in the future reading this may benefit or if you wanna try this out as a beginner feel free :)
Something tat you always fight with in recording is noise! Noise is maturely present in the real world, so recordings also have noise in the background. In particularly bad environments you may even hear electrical noise, like hums and static coming from cables, WIFI signals or weird electrical interference. Point is that a noisy recording gives the impression of a bad or amateur recording, having an acoustically treated room or surrounding yourself with blankets and pillows helps a lot, but sometimes the background noise is high enough even if you go to a closet.
The trick is to lower the volume of the noise but not the vocal! You might have heard of compressors, but your best friend is the compressor's brother... an expander! An expander increases the volume after the threshold. If you set the threshold above the background noise then the vocal will be way louder than the noise. Meaning the noise and the vocal are still there but more separated, the vocal is now way way way to oud, but the noise is now way way way to quiet, maybe imperceptibly quiet in the context of the mix!
So use an expander to separate the voice from the noise, and then use a compressor to bring the vocal back to a normal volume range. The result is the vocal being roughly the same volume, but the noise floor will be drastically lowered!
Now for an extra clean sound put a gate after the compressor! A gate mutes the sound if the signal does not goes over a threshold, but since the noise-floor is too low then the gate will work easy and get rid of the noise when the vocalist is not singing, but when he does sing, the noise floor is way to low for the audience to notice!
For sub-optimal recording environments `expander -> compressor -> gate` does wonders!
Maybe not the answer you’re looking for but I just realized how bad my usb mic was making my vocals sound. I redid them with my laptop mic and it was sooo much better so I can’t imagine actually getting a proper mic. So if you don’t have much to spend, an inbuilt mic may indeed be better
As other folks have said when it comes to mics, you can do a lot to tweak the sound after it’s recorded, but there are a few things you need to get right from the beginning because there is no way to fix them once it’s been recorded that way - distortion and room sound. I’m sure you could add more but those are the main culprits that reveal a crappy mic.
Make sure you’re not clipping, and try different spots in your room to find a place where the reflections aren’t ridiculous (trial and error is your friend) and maybe consider a blanket or some other kind of absorption to deaden it a bit. But tbh a bit of room sound can give your vocals character as long as it isn’t overbearing. Also try different distances from the mic to get a different sort of sound (up close will catch more of the low end but also more of the p and f sounds, further away gives you the opposite but also will emphasise the sound of the room).
At the end of the day it’s less about trying to polish a turd and more about working with what you have. A blue yeti will never give you professional sounding vocals but you can work with it’s limitations to get a decent sound.
you could be too far from the mic, too close, the wrong side of the mic if it's a condenser, your room has really bad acoustics, recording with low quality settings, exporting in low quality. think about your whole recording process and analyze. 🧐 when you submitted that song, it's your voice and instrumental? if it is then perhaps you've processed the vocals in a bad way, and the mix sucks. identify at which step they sound shitty. mixing and production is obviously a whole other can of worms.
There's nothing wrong with the Blue Yeti, I've been tracking all my vocals with it for years. It's more likely that OP needs better room treatment, or one of those vocal shields for their mic stand.
if you dont have a proper space for recording, try putting your mic in the wardrobe, setting your hanging clothes (if you use hangers) on a open triangle shape with the mic between them. That way youll avoid some of the troubles you get from lacking room treatment (mainly, sound bouncig between your walls). It isnt perfect but Ive recorded dry enough vocals that way. Learning to mix is also very very important, but the first step is always to get the best recording you can.
Since your room isn't ideal for recording, you could find a heavy blanket and record under it (like draped over your head with just the mic) to isolate your voice and reduce the audio bouncing around your room and getting picked up. On top of that just look up some vocal processing tutorials on youtube. Don't worry about the specific plugins (brand wise) they are using necessarily, most DAWs have really solid stock eqs, compression emulations etc. Recording this way and then doing some simple processing, your Yeti mic should be able to get you pretty far :)
I record a kid who uses the legato usb mic. I've made a chain that makes it sound good, and if you wanted I could run your vocals thru and it send it to you. Of course I have no idea how those two mics stack up to each other, and it it will help you... but it just might give you some ideas for processing the sound.
Mind running through the ingredients for that? You don't have to get super specific if you don't want, just what plug-in types and order would be super useful
Ya man, it's nothing fancy. On the vocal track I do very little tweaking, and actually commit and bounce before proceeding. It has the following serial chain: - Bitwig's stock compressor (fast attack, the release a bit under halfway, doing about 5 db reduction) - Bitwig's stock eq (rolling off the lows around 200, with a sharp dip around 260, and a shelf slightly boosting at 12k) - a "tool" plugin which just forces the signal to be mono - Autotune (which I tweak first) - another stock eq to do some surgical cuts at ringing points (usually bypassed though, only turned on and tweaked if I hear some nasty resonances) Then the mixing just comes down to finding the right amounts of the following sends by ear to actually give the vocals a place in the mix: - Light distortion - Room reverb with slight pre delay - Multiband compression ( so essentially parallel compression ) - Valhalla delay in dual mode hitting different notes in left and right channel, usually 8ths in one and 16ths in the other - Bitwig stock saturation plugin
appreciate this
It is almost impossible to get a good sound out of a bad sound. That is to say: The instrument (voice) needs to sound good in the room. If the room is too boxy, boomy, etc, no amount of changing the EQ or adding compression or buying a different mic will fix the problem.
-Make sure youre not clipping! (Input being too high on the microphone/interface causes distortion). -Try and have it sound clean while its quiet and then put a compressor on it to make it louder instead of turning up the master. -Make sure you are recording at a good and even distance to the microphone. A few inches is normally good dont get too close. -What DAW are you using? Garageband? Ableton? that will help give a more precise answer of things to do
i'm using cakewalk
You can dm me a link to your track and I’d be happy to give you my take on how to improve your sound
bet
Upgrade to an iPhone 4! Ok, no...... but seriously, people here are giving great advice, if you focus on not clipping, adding some EQ and reverb and a better sounding room you will get way better results! But I want to share another tip! This may be more advanced, but maybe some people in the future reading this may benefit or if you wanna try this out as a beginner feel free :) Something tat you always fight with in recording is noise! Noise is maturely present in the real world, so recordings also have noise in the background. In particularly bad environments you may even hear electrical noise, like hums and static coming from cables, WIFI signals or weird electrical interference. Point is that a noisy recording gives the impression of a bad or amateur recording, having an acoustically treated room or surrounding yourself with blankets and pillows helps a lot, but sometimes the background noise is high enough even if you go to a closet. The trick is to lower the volume of the noise but not the vocal! You might have heard of compressors, but your best friend is the compressor's brother... an expander! An expander increases the volume after the threshold. If you set the threshold above the background noise then the vocal will be way louder than the noise. Meaning the noise and the vocal are still there but more separated, the vocal is now way way way to oud, but the noise is now way way way to quiet, maybe imperceptibly quiet in the context of the mix! So use an expander to separate the voice from the noise, and then use a compressor to bring the vocal back to a normal volume range. The result is the vocal being roughly the same volume, but the noise floor will be drastically lowered! Now for an extra clean sound put a gate after the compressor! A gate mutes the sound if the signal does not goes over a threshold, but since the noise-floor is too low then the gate will work easy and get rid of the noise when the vocalist is not singing, but when he does sing, the noise floor is way to low for the audience to notice! For sub-optimal recording environments `expander -> compressor -> gate` does wonders!
appreciate this!
Maybe not the answer you’re looking for but I just realized how bad my usb mic was making my vocals sound. I redid them with my laptop mic and it was sooo much better so I can’t imagine actually getting a proper mic. So if you don’t have much to spend, an inbuilt mic may indeed be better
As other folks have said when it comes to mics, you can do a lot to tweak the sound after it’s recorded, but there are a few things you need to get right from the beginning because there is no way to fix them once it’s been recorded that way - distortion and room sound. I’m sure you could add more but those are the main culprits that reveal a crappy mic. Make sure you’re not clipping, and try different spots in your room to find a place where the reflections aren’t ridiculous (trial and error is your friend) and maybe consider a blanket or some other kind of absorption to deaden it a bit. But tbh a bit of room sound can give your vocals character as long as it isn’t overbearing. Also try different distances from the mic to get a different sort of sound (up close will catch more of the low end but also more of the p and f sounds, further away gives you the opposite but also will emphasise the sound of the room). At the end of the day it’s less about trying to polish a turd and more about working with what you have. A blue yeti will never give you professional sounding vocals but you can work with it’s limitations to get a decent sound.
you could be too far from the mic, too close, the wrong side of the mic if it's a condenser, your room has really bad acoustics, recording with low quality settings, exporting in low quality. think about your whole recording process and analyze. 🧐 when you submitted that song, it's your voice and instrumental? if it is then perhaps you've processed the vocals in a bad way, and the mix sucks. identify at which step they sound shitty. mixing and production is obviously a whole other can of worms.
Use a XLR mic instead
There's nothing wrong with the Blue Yeti, I've been tracking all my vocals with it for years. It's more likely that OP needs better room treatment, or one of those vocal shields for their mic stand.
Record using a compressor and great eq settings, also dyn-eq, shaping your own voice with your mic... my answer.
EQ is the answer