SM58 home recording snafu

[Dana Salsbury]

The way I'm envisioning it, we would use in-ear monitors to stay in sync with the song. when I record vocals the lead in will be included, for syncing, then cut. I then will have a WAV of lead vocals and keyboard effects with lead in (for monitoring), a WAV of keyboard effects and vocals w/o lead in for the mains, and a WAV of just keyboard effects for the mains.

The poor drummer will have click tracks on most, if not all, songs, but we will have the layered, rich sound that I'm going for. Hopefully we never need to use the vocal track, but if we ever do, it will be an easy transition.

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by Dana Salsbury

I love the cleanness, but the proximity effect is important, too, as I want to sound big. I'm guessing the recorded sound of the Zoom played through a PA would sound noticeably different than my live SM58 through the same PA. But without a nice preamp the recording would be too noisy.

If that is the case, will my M-Audio Mobile Pre USB be enough if I record to a laptop? Should I rent something?

Actually the proximity effect is reduced in the SM58, it is designed to be "eaten" and has a low cut compared to a full range cardioid.

The SM58 also rolls off the top above 10k and delivers a pretty healthy "presence peak" in the form a of a boost in the 3-5k range and an intelligibility bump at 8-9K. You can see the frequency response curve here: http://cdn.shure.com/specification_s...et-english.pdf and might use that as a guide for some post processing EQ on a recording made through the H2n mics.

The H2n mics will exhibit plenty of proximity, at a greater distance than the SM58. You'll need to play with the level control since it will be easy to overload the H2 when it's placed close enough to generate some proximity beef. In a normal cardioid proximity begins to be noticeable as far as 30 inches or so and gets pretty dramatic once you're under a foot from the mic. If you do decide to experiment with H2n mics, you might try the rear MS configuration with the side mics set to 0. The result is a mono recording.

Fran

[Marco Leavitt]

If OP is singing into the SM58 using the same technique as the stage performance (mouth right up against the pop filter) I'm skeptical that even the Zoom pre-amp is going to have a problem with hiss. Could something else be going on? Are you sure the inputs aren't set to "line" or something? There should barely be any need for gain at all. And anyway, since this would just be just as a backup in a live performance setting, would the background hiss even matter? There should be enough ambient noise to drown it out.