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In The Studio: Recording Vocals With Large-Diaphragm Condensers

Tips for capturing clean vocals, and vocals with acoustic guitars, in smaller studios.

Lusting after large diaphragm condenser (LDC) microphones has become a national pastime.

Newbies devour the recording magazines and read about this artist and that artist recording to vintage U-47’s or Tele 251’s and believe that they need those same mics, (or too often a design copy from China) to get a “hit” record.

However, the acoustic conditions that exist in the average home studio or even small pro studio do not lend themselves to the wide patterns and extreme bandwidth of high end LDC’s in the same way that high end professional studio conditions do. LDC’s function best in large rooms with sufficient isolation and good acoustics. They also work best with experienced singers able to “work” the mic for best results.

I get a lot of requests for advice from home recordists who have purchased these kinds of mics and then end up with street noise, equipment noise, headphone leakage, rumble, pops and unwanted proximity effects. They will inevitably end up fighting the mic’s natural tendencies with low freq roll off switches, pop filters, blankets on the walls, EQ and compression/limiting. Argg. By the time they are done, the mic can hardly recognize itself and certainly does not do justice to it’s well earned reputation.

Courtesy of Omega Studios.

So what is a guy or gal to do about their large diaphragm condenser microphone?

Let’s first take a look at the situation as a whole. Using high end LDC’s are akin to driving a Porsche 911 GT3. Yes, it is a pinnacle of industrial refinement. Yes, it will take you from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye. But be careful with that gas pedal or you might end up in the bushes.

Tips For How To Properly Use Your LDC Microphone In Your Home Or Small Studio:

LDC’s typically have extended frequency response. That means low end extension that reaches down to 20 hz with near linear response and then a sharp drop off. If you are tracking a vocal in a home less than a mile from a truck or airplane route, I guarantee you, there is rumble in your mic. If you are using typical near field monitors and no subwoofer, you cannot hear that rumble.

But again, trust me, it will show up by modulating your compressors and doing other nasty things to your mix.

Many high end LDC’s have minimal wind screens. That is one way they get the clarity. However, they are designed for professional singers, and putting one in front of someone not versed in how to properly use a mic, and you will have thunderous pops and distortion. And it is not a simple thing to just slap a pop filter in front of a mic and still maintain that clarity.

The process goes a bit like this. Get the pop, place the pop filter, lose the presence, EQ the top, suffer phase smear, compress to get gain and lose dynamics. Argg.

High end LDC’s typically have fairly wide cardioid patterns. That means that they are very forgiving when a vocalist moves around while singing. But that also means that they pick up as much fan noise as vocals when used within six or eight feet of a computer. There are a number of absorptive panels on the market made to try and isolate a vocal, but pointing a mic at a hard wall, with one of these fiberglass panels between it and the room, means that the mic is picking up lots of wash from the wall. Again, argg.

Moving On To Using Your LDC Microphone In The Live World:

Live vocals are created in the most unnatural and unforgiving environment possible for a microphone. We even have a course in our audio engineering school focusing on this tricky environment.

Even though in-ear monitors are becoming very popular, most stages are still high volume, feedback prone environments. Singers stuff their faces into their mics trying to squeeze the last drop of gain before feedback, just daring the mic to pop or go into distortion and challenging the grill design to maintain fidelity and protect the capsule. All the while, live sound mixing systems and speaker designs continue to improve, placing higher fidelity challenges and requirements on live vocal mics all the time. The audience demand for the artist to deliver studio quality vocals in these extreme conditions, means that every plugin effect used in the production of the album will be employed in the shows and when the vocal source does not stand up, the entire chain suffers.

Manufacturers have responded with improved designs in both condenser and dynamic microphone designs. Condenser vocal designs from Neumann, Sennheiser, Audix, AKG and other manufacturers are built with more P-pop protection and better clarity and detail than ever before.

Dynamic microphones from Heil, Audix, Shure and others prove that the dynamic vocal mic is no longer a poor cousin to the condenser mic. My personal favorite mics are some of the PR series mics from Heil. These mics provide all the clarity, transient response and dynamic detail associated with high end condenser mics with the low noise, robust nature of large diaphragm dynamics.

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