Q. Do I need a bright vocal sound, and how do I achieve it?

Published in SOS April 2007
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Sound Advice

I sometimes wonder if I'm having the vocalist too close to the mic: would the proximity effect cause it to sound boomy and dull? I wonder if standing back and turning the preamp up would sound better (by which I mean to say thinner, like I'm hearing on commercial records). I realise, of course, that this is highly dependent on who's singing, but this is something that tends to affect my recordings in most cases.

SOS Forum Post

The high-frequency content of the human voice bounces off the top of the oral and nasal cavities and, as high frequencies are more directional than low frequencies, they leave a singer's mouth at a downward angle. Therefore, to achieve a brighter sound the mic can be placed slightly below mouth level, as shown in the top picture. Conversely, to help to reduce sibilance the mic can be raised slightly above mouth level, as shown in the second picture, to the extent that the higher frequencies miss the mic's on-axis (and therefore most high-frequency-sensitive) zone. The high-frequency content of the human voice bounces off the top of the oral and nasal cavities and, as high frequencies are more directional than low frequencies, they leave a singer's mouth at a downward angle. Therefore, to achieve a brighter sound the mic can be placed slightly below mouth level, as shown in the top picture. Conversely, to help to reduce sibilance the mic can be raised slightly above mouth level, as shown in the second picture, to the extent that the higher frequencies miss the mic's on-axis (and therefore most high-frequency-sensitive) zone.

SOS contributor Mike Senior replies: Recording a great-sounding vocal is only the start of the process towards a great-sounding end product, unless you're planning to mix by starting with the vocal and then cutting anything that gets in its way: not a common tactic outside mainstream pop. For most mixes, you have to make the vocals sound glossy and intelligible despite the masking of important high-frequency vocal content by other recorded tracks, and in practice this usually means that the voice needs to be brighter if it's to sound as good within the context of the mix as it does when solo.

With that in mind, there's a lot you can do to make your vocals brighter while recording, without having to resort to EQ (remember that any processing will tend to degrade the sound in some way, so it makes sense to try to get as close as possible to the final sound at the recording stage). You've already realised that moving further from the mic might give you less proximity-effect bass boost, and thereby make your recordings sound brighter. Funnily enough, though, I'm not sure that's the answer you're looking for. Recording close up to the mic will often better capture the delicate lip and breath noises which really help vocals to sound up-front, and the proximity effect is comparatively easy to control with shelving EQ or high-pass filtering, as long as the singer isn't moving about a lot while performing.

If you want to achieve a brighter recorded sound, there are more important things to bear in mind, in my opinion. Firstly, try to keep your singer dead on-axis to the microphone. If you're using a large-diaphragm condenser, as most people do, these generally sound much brighter directly on-axis. That said, given that you've already mentioned that your recording space is quite dead-sounding, you could perhaps avoid having to think about this (and, indeed, the proximity effect) if you used a mic with an omni polar pattern instead. The second thing to realise is that you'll get a brighter sound if you place the mic lower down. High frequencies are more directional than low frequencies, and in the case of a singer they tend to bounce downwards off the top of the oral and nasal cavities, so a mic placed below the level of the nose will give a much brighter sound than one placed above.