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Hey everyone. I'm currently using this setup for vocals: SM57 -> M-Audio Fast Track -> Reaper. The thing is the sound is VERY flat and I wanted to do something to give air / space / warmth to the vocals. Someone earlier in the thread talked about the MOTU 828 doing this, and I wondered if there was anything cheaper that could do the same thing. Or is some kind of valve pre a good idea? I might even be able to achieve it with VSTs but again I'd appreciate some advice if that's a better option. I play guitar the same way (using Guitar Rig 5) so if I can add some roominess to that too, that'd be great.
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Aug 13, 2015 12:49
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Trig Discipline posted:Yeah that's my experience. Get in middle of a big room with a high ceiling if you can, and see how that sounds before you start messing with the rest of it. As a good (not perfect) rule of thumb, the earlier something is in the signal chain, the higher priority it should be when you're polishing your sound. That means get your instruments and vocals right first, then the room, then the mic, then the pre, then the compressor (if any), then the converters, etc. Obviously if you've got a seriously problematic link at any point in the chain that all falls apart, but as a general rule it's served me fairly well. Thanks both. I did think about a different microphone, but didn't really want to spend money on one when I have what seems to be a perfectly good one already. I'm recording at home (a small flat) so I don't really have a lot of room (literally) for experimentation. The furthest I could get from the microphone is down a shortish hallway, but I don't think that'd help very much. I'm not a good singer (it's why I said "vocals"), and practicing to get better is difficult when what I'm hearing through my headphones doesn't sound very "alive". Guess I was looking for something that would make the vocals sound as they would in the finished mix, rather than just completely raw.
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Aug 13, 2015 14:30
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Radiapathy posted:None of those are things that an audio interface is designed to impart to recordings. Perhaps if your interface had a boutique preamp and you managed your gain levels properly you might get some warmth/character out of the interface, but that's the exception, not the rule. Thanks everyone. In response to the above, I did also mention the possibility of a microphone pre, as an alternative, but that idea didn't seem to be one people thought was good! I'll have a play about this weekend with placement and I'll try some reverb. I guess even if I add too much I can always play with it later as I'll add it to the track in Reaper as an effect.
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Aug 14, 2015 12:44
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Hammer Floyd posted:Check your levels in Mix Control. If it's getting a signal, then it's all working, so it's just going to be some bullshit setting somewhere. I use a FT and it's perfectly serviceable for recording a guitar and a microphone. I was using Windows 8 and now I'm on 10. Some update or other stopped it working on 10 but after an unistall and reinstall, Reaper played nice with it again. I also use Guitar Rig 5 with it. Bear in mind though that M-Audio no longer support it, you have to get drivers from Avid. These include the ASIO drivers. Having to use ASIO4ALL was a total ballache - glitches, droputs, the works.
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Aug 23, 2015 11:16
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Bolange posted:Thanks for that link. I did a little testing and discovered I get better latency with 48k sample rate than 44.1k. At 96 samples (2ms) I'm able to get to 11.2ms which is a much better than the 22.2 I was getting at 44.1k and 4ms ASIO buffer. This is using Focusrite drivers, haven't installed/tried ASIO since I assumed vendor drivers would work better. This is good enough to at least let me get online and check out that software and gives me solid numbers that I can objectively tweak around. Please come back and let us know if you find any more tweaks - I'm getting 20-30ms in Reaper and while it's manageable it would be great to bring this down. I haven't fiddled since setting up all my inputs and outputs because I didn't want the whole thing to come crashing down and make my whole setup unuseable again (Windows-based music production ehhh).
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Sep 28, 2016 12:45
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