Super Quiet vocals- No room sound

You bought this expensive stuff.
If you can send it back do so.

Buy yourself two packeges of rockwool sonorock build two wood frames on roles and fill those with 20 cm rockwool plates, put some fabric on the frame.
Sing against those stands done.

Use a dynamic in conjunction with an fet head = dry like hell.

Thanks for the link winetree. I can definitely hear the room on the vocal. So, I'm looking for something quieter.

I'll tell you something Swurve, I can get that dry vocal sound here at my place by putting a mic up in a corner filled with bass traps from top to bottom. There's also treatment on the ceiling there and I'll take homemade partition made out of rock wool that I'll throw up behind the vocalist. It's dead as can be BUT!! It takes one helluva singer to pull off that dry sound. There is nothing of interest to the ear except that vocal. So it sticks waayy out in a mix. That Urban track is a good example for sure and his delivery carries the whole song (a well written number by Rodney Crowell BTW).

I'm nowhere near good enough to pull it off and I don't know many who are really. That said it can easily be done in a dead space. I have a friend who owns a studio nearby. He has a completely dead vocal booth, one that when you walk in you almost have to scream to hear yourself. It's very weird. He and I have talked about this before. He never uses it but it will give that dry, upfront vocal too.

Thanks yotonic. I listened to a couple of Katy Perry songs, but didn't hear the same up front focus. Do you know one in partiular that you'd reference? If it's in the middle of a large room, there's going to be room ambience even with those panels. So, how do you think they get an upfront vocal in those conditions? I have an LA2A and an 1176 and used each, and both, and could nowhere near the upfront dry sound, mainly because the compression brought out the room sound as well.

It goes without saying, but being close to the mic will help too.

BTW, on that Urban track, I can hear the UAD Roland Dimension D in use (stereo mode). Urban records at Blackbird and I know Neibank likes using that plugin on vocals. And for good reason. It really creates a picture frame like space around a vocal.

I dig the Urban vocal but I really hate that Mayer one. Super siblant to me and lacks a lot of body. Sounds like he was too close to the mic and they didn't address the de-essing enough for my tastes.

If it's a super forward, present vocal you are looking for, a lot of guys I work with swear by the Avalon M5-Summit TLA100 chain and it delivers. Some people call it the "R&B Chain". But it's used on a lot of pop like Whitney Houston to Colbie Caillat. I like it a lot. Super idiot proof chain and sits great in a mix if you are looking for that forward pop/R&B vocal feel. She's using it on the track below with the Sony C800G. Obviously a good deal of verb on her voice but it has a similar emotional connection for the listener as the intimacy of a dry vocal.





This Incubus track on a Shure Sm7 always felt like a dry vocal stylistically. (And Brandon's wife is hotter than Keith's.)

11dB of GR on sibilance to me can border on lispy, camp comedy types from the 70's depending on the singers balance.

Getting a dry sound, to me, is relatively easy. It's just about getting up close. If plosives or sibilances are too harsh, get the singer to go a little off axis.

To me that sound is the fast limiter + a relatively slow comp. Everything after that is error correction. Not that there's anything wrong with de-essing, but playing with the limiters attack time can be just as if not more productive. Multibanding to highlight midrange issues (some singers will have strong resonances between 2 and 5 K that can need taming). Vladg's Nova 67P is my favorite for mulitband duties. Nice filter choice, easy to keep a sonic balance while doing GR!

Great stuff mentioned already, of course.

Keith Urban's entire team, environment, signal chain - just killer. I believe Justin Neibank has mentioned a U269 as the mic of choice for KU.

A couple of small things that may help:

• During tracking, have you tried figure of 8 patterns? I've found that to be helpful for maintaining some depth in the vocal while still minimizing the general ambiance (thanks to the polarity reversal of the two capsules).

• For already recorded vocals that need some help, I've found UAD's version of the SPL Transient Designer (they have a preset named appropriately enough "bleed eliminator' that is a good starting point) and the gate from Metric Halo's channel strip to both be very useful (I don't normally have good luck with gates, but for some reason, the MH one just really works well, even with its default attack and release settings - very hard to make it chatter obnoxiously, which is a small miracle for an idiot like me).

• The aforementioned Renaissance Vox can really do a radical amount of compression while sidechaining some of the essy stuff (though it is still advisable to place a de-esser in the chain) - I've liked that plug for just really pinning a vocal in place. However, it will flatten out and sound more like the Mayer example and less like the Urban example - at least, in my hamfisted hands.

MJH

Totally agree. Much easier to do than it sounds, as they are really easy to identify on the wave form.

MJH