Audio Recording

This is a short guide on how to do home vocal recording using the least amount of resources without compromising vocal recording quality.

Credits: eyeliam

What you need at a minimum:

1.) Personal Computer with Recording Software

2.) High End Sound card, read the tips on how to Select Soundcard for Home Recording Studio

3.) Medium quality microphone: Shure SM58 Dynamic Microphone will do.

4.) Medium home studio mixer (for example Behringer 502 5-Input Mixer).

5.) Microphone cables and Microphone stand (very important)

6.) Headphones

In order to minimize background noise when recording vocals, it is important to:

1.) Record at night when everything is quite (midnight is good).

2.) Turn off electric fans, air-conditioning unit, etc.

3.) When you have a budget but not necessary, install a vocal booth in your home studio. You can build your own $30 vocal booth. Vocal booth is a must if your studio is beside the road where it is impossible to have a quite environment. If you need to buy a professional vocal booth, you can have it around 999 bucks: Auralex Vocal Booth

Configure your vocal recording gears to your computer according to this:

1.) Connect the microphone for example (SM 58) to the mixer.
2.) Connect mixer to the sound card line input.
3.) Connect headphone to the sound card line output.

Test your configuration by:

1.) Adjusting mixer volume, sound card line input as well as the recording software volume to arrive at the lowest noise recording level and loud vocal recording signal.
2.) Put some allowance, it is not always good to record at the maximum volume as it is prone to clipping which is bad.

Doing Actual Vocal Recording Session:

1.) Let the singer wear the headphones.(dubbing/minor vocal recording like backup may not require headphones, but it is recommended)
2.) Let the singer be comfortable with the play volume, too loud can be distracting for the singer to sing. Too low headphone monitoring volume can reduce perception of background music which is not good for the singer.
3.) Do a test run; make sure you have a good recorded signal.
4.) Finally, hit the record button and do the final take.