Setting Up Your Mic And Preamp Levels

[Music] yeah yo what's going on you guys your boy devontor in raw form and welcome to another help me devon raw tutorial in the studio and today in this help me devon tutorial i'll be showing you guys how to set up your mic and pre-empt levels when it comes to recording so first and foremost let's create a vocal let's record a vocal so we can work with and then i'll show you exactly how i accomplish that from the start to finish i'm going to record into one of my healthy divine templates as well just so it can be a little bit more interesting let's do it let's put this here okay first thing i'm going to say is don't make fun of me because i'm about to say absolutely nothing test test test test all right let's do it let's create a vocal [Music] yeah yeah yeah i had problems [Music] everybody coming [Music] stop right there and let's cut this off back to you guys okay cool so we created a vocal and basically what i'm going to do is i'm going to show you guys exactly how i created that vocal what is the recording chain everything that goes into creating something like that okay so the first thing that i like to do when it comes to my vocals is deciding my placement and when i say mic placement what i'm really really getting at is the distance between you and the microphone because this makes a huge difference so long story short the closer you are to the microphone the more bass that you'll get out of the sound source so it's something called the proximity effects so basically the closer i am to the microphone the bassier it'll sound i'll experiment and show you what i mean so let's take off all my bells and whistles from my session and from my template test test and now we're hearing a very bare vocal test test test this is a very bare vocal from my uh session so now watch this i'm gonna go really close into the microphone listen to the difference and then i'm gonna back away listen to the difference test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test yeah test test 1-2 testing 1-2 yeah testing 1-2 testing 1-2 testing 1-2 testing one two so you can see that when i got closer to the microphone there was more bass there was more of a bottom to it now this is something that you have to decide say for instance if you're looking for a certain sound from an aggressive rapper maybe you want him more up on the microphone or maybe you want him pulled back a little bit more so that he's not so plosive and things like that so where you place your sound source varies and it should vary from song to song listen to the song in context with the sound source when you're doing it and decide how far back you want to record and how far forward you want to record for me typically i'm about three to six inches off of the mic so right here i typically found to be a sweet spot so right about here i found to be a sweet spot which is about i'd say three to four inches off the off of the microphone i found a sweet spot but for everyone it's completely different and i'd highly recommend that you choose what you want it to be next thing i'll explain to you guys is this when it comes to your preamp levels your pre-app levels are very very important basically when i say pre-amp i'm saying uh basically the thing that is boosting and amplifying the signal of the actual microphone so i know some of you i don't want you to get discouraged i have the ua twinfinity 710 i have an external preamp that then feeds my audio interface for you yes you still have preamps if you just have an audio interface it's just that your preamps are built on two uh uh you're using the built-in preamps on your audio interface for me personally i'm using external preamps and bypassing that don't worry about it don't get caught up let's just say it like this so if you look at my preamp i like to hit the sweet spot of negative 10 db peaks now you may be saying why are you choosing negative 10 db peaks and the reason why i'm choosing negative 10 db peaks is because it allows me enough headroom to come add more compression more eq and do all kinds of cool things that we do processing wise and it also keeps me far enough from the noise floor so that i can still have a really clean recording now you may be saying what is the noise floor why are you concerned with it we'll see it like this if you record your instrument or your vocal really really low what's going to happen is when you start to boost you're actually going to be boosting more of that noise floor no matter what you do when it comes to boosting you're boosting some of that noise floor so if you record really no close to the noise floor you're going to bring up that noise with you so that you can get more volume out of it as opposed to recording it somewhat higher like a negative 10 db and then when you do boost you're not boosting so much of that noise floor now why does the noise flow exist what is the noise floor long story short your electronics your microphone your preamp your audio interface the electricity in your studio all produce noise it's not perfect these little bells and whistles these little things in the circuitry inside your interfaces and then like things like that uh actually create noise so what you're trying to do is you're trying to get ahead of that and record a little higher than that noise floor because it's actually really quiet just so you can avoid that noise secondly the reason why you want to record maybe in that negative 6 db to negative 10 db range is because now when you start compressing and boosting uh at least you have a lot of headroom to work with as opposed to if you record really hot you're going to be introducing clipping and probably going to distort your vocal so i found for me personally especially in my vocal tin chains i found that negative 10 db is really a sweet spot that i like to record it so you can keep that in mind now how do you figure this out i know you're saying to yourself well how do i figure out my peaks are at negative 10 db check this out let's turn on my recording and i want you to pay attention to my preamp so take a look at my preamp right now look at my preamp yo yo yo i got it nobody told me nothing about it i guess i gotta everybody know i got it nobody sought it now when you looked at my preamp you saw that it was hitting that 10 spot which is i like it that's telling me okay i'm at like the negative 10 db when it comes to my peaks now for those of you that may not have uh a built-in meter for your preamp i'll show you another way of figuring out uh exactly how much signal is coming in uh to your actual daw so this is what i'll do so let's turn off everything so everything's off right in my actual program everything's off and if you see right here you see the meters so turn off all your plug-ins all of them let all your plug-ins off and now you can see a natural um uh signal of what's actually coming into your daw it's not being compressed it's not eq'd there's nothing going on to it you're just seeing a very natural signal so now i'm going to yell into it and see where it peaks at yo yo yo when you see it i gotta get it nobody tell me you write the titties i love it i hate it i guess nobody told me nothing but thought and would chase it i gotta love it gotta pace it nobody base it and you can see that i'm around that negative 11 in db range and that's basically how you can figure out where your peaks are try to scat go for your vocal try to record as as much as possible just to see where you're peeking at and then you turn down your preamp accordingly check this out if i start to record right here i can just turn down for my preamp so watch this test whatever you want i get it nobody told me anything and that's what he did to children and you see it got lower now watch this i'm gonna try and keep yelling until i can get to ten how i want it nobody told me nothing about it i flaunted i gotta get it nobody told me nothing i wanna cheat it i love it i hate it i love when everything gets sick you see what i'm saying so basically i'm at negative 10 db i saw it and i'm like okay great i'm at that negative 10 b that's my peaks that's a loud part and that's great usually with a client i'll tell them record go as loud as you want yeah go ahead get it out and then i'll find that sweet spot to try and get that peaks to negative 10 db and honestly guys that's really the way i like to set up my microphone and my preamp i literally can do it from my preamp i decide my mic placement i look at my daw and see where my peaks are hitting and that's it a lot of people in a lot of amateur recordings don't even look at how much signal is actually coming in some of you guys record way too low and some of you guys record way too hot and that's either you're clipping or you're too close to the noise floor so that when you start boosting it sounds really bad you start to get a lot of noise and hiss and all these things because you're recording too quiet or when you're recording too hot you're clipping so pay attention to your meters when it comes to this and choose wisely when it comes to just doing all of this stuff all in one so i hope that was really helpful this was my uh tutorial on showing you guys how to set up your mic and preamp levels uh make sure you comment like subscribe uh let me know in the comments below if there's anything else you wanna guys wanna see you can also download this small child template available at helpmedivan.info and um make sure you follow us at help me tomorrow on instagram and until next time

Channel: Help Me Devvon

Views: 59,476

Keywords: microphone, recording, gain, mic, sound, home recording, preamp, setup, microphone preamplifier, recording studio, home studio, audio, recording vocals, cloudlifter cl-1, vocals, rap, mixing, logic pro x, clipping, sean divine, pro, mic preamp, studios, recording levels, gain staging, how to, vocal, audio interface

Id: uBT0hNoburg

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020