How to record vocals professionally at home?

2017-09-12

Jak profesjonalnie nagrać wokal w domu? - wypożyczalnia kamer w Krakowie

Are you wondering if you can professionally record vocals at home on your own? This article is for you.

Of course, a recording studio is better equipped acoustically and technically for this purpose — but it costs money. A second problem for vocalists is that they are not always in their best form in the studio, and not every singer can open up enough to deliver a great performance with the right "feeling" within a planned session.

These days you can record everything at your own pace in a home setting. All you need is a computer and a few items from our rental. Before we get to the equipment, however, a few tips on how to prepare a room for vocal recording:

not every room sounds good — sing in the room where you want to record and capture it on your phone's voice recorder. If you hear reverb that is too strong or unpleasant, try hanging blankets on or near the walls to reduce it;
sometimes the room's natural reverb is subtle enough that it enriches the recording and you do not need to fight it. Rooms with lots of wood — e.g. real wooden floors — tend to sound particularly good;
the eternal enemy when recording on a computer is the CPU fan — if your computer is loud enough to be audible on the recording, consider using a long microphone cable and recording vocals in a separate room;

Now for the equipment. Let us use an example. Below is a vocal recorded entirely at home in a small room with a computer. The room was not acoustically treated — an ordinary 8 m² room with a sofa bed, a desk, and a wooden floor. The following equipment was used:

Blue Blueberry condenser microphone with a pop filter. The singer's distance from the microphone was approximately 10 cm.
UA 710 tube preamp — adds warmth and clarity to the recorded vocal; the microphone is connected directly to it, and its output goes to the audio interface.
Apogee Duet audio interface connected to the computer via USB.
AKG 271 studio headphones.
Input levels set in the audio interface so that audio is recorded at an average level of around -12 dB — this gives you good quality on one hand, and on the other helps you avoid clipping on louder passages.

This set up was used to record the music in the video below. And the full set — microphone, stand, headphones, audio interface, and preamp — is available for rent from us for just 120 PLN per 24 hours.