Wassup John, I see you know a lot about mastering. Well I am PRETTY new to mastering and I want to master my vocals better but I need some direction.

Everytime I listen to an acapella from a commercial artist it is so crisp and clean. I want to get my vocals as good as possible.

A BIG QUESTION -I noticed when I input a commercial song into Cubase or Adobe Audition it doesnt go over 0.0 dB EVEN with the beat and vocals together. Im thinking it is some sort of limiter but what type of limiter is it and how did they achieve that??

Software Im Working with:
Adobe Audition 1.5
Acid 4.0
Nuendo 2.0
Cubase SX 2.0
(ANY PROGRAMS, VST'S, PLUG-INS, HARDWARE I should get to help, list it and I'll get it.)

Please tell me what should I do and what shouldnt I do to my vocals. I have better equipment at my cousins house but the vocals here are my equipment at home that I am going to be using for practice albums (mixtapes). So I will show you an example of my mastering (dont laugh lol).

Here is a link to some vocals I have recorded
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/5/inyourfacerecordsmusic.htm

Help will be very very appreciated...

Oh yea..And this isnt the best of work here, if your wondering this is for a school project I had. Commercial for Super Greens Drink

>>Everytime I listen to an acapella from a commercial artist it is so crisp and clean. I want to get my vocals as good as possible.<<

This has more to do with your front end (mics, pres, converters) than anything else. What are you using on your vocals?

drbam

When you say, pres, do you mean "Mic Pressence??" and Im not familiar with the term "Converter," is it a piece of equipment? Software? I probably have it but call it somethin different or somethin lol.

And if you mean effects I used my vocals...I used this tutorial

http://capheine0.tripod.com/print-part2.html

By pres, he means Mic preamplifiers. What are you running your mics into? By converters he means your Analog>Digital or Digital>Analog converters. If you're recording to a digital recorder, you have them.

I agree it has much to do with your front end. The old saying, "you can't polish a turd" comes to mind.


As far as the link to your VOs, they sounded a little sibilant and plosive. These are things that you need to get right during tracking, not mastering. Once it's there, it's there. You get sibilance from severl different things--the voice itself interacting with the mic's diaphragm (disparities between the sound and the mic's frequency response for instance), maybe, or from poor EQ or compression technique.

DISCLAIMER: Haven't had a chance to listen, but I did read it all...

Yeah - Especially with a capella vocal, the front end (from the vocal chords on up) needs to be right in the pocket from the start.

Mastering can "polish a turd" to a point, but you still wind up with a shiny turd.

As far as the signal chain is concerned, the only thing I can tell you is this - I've had the pleasure of engineering and recording some really knock-out performers. Many times in live situations with nothing more extravagant than an SM-58 through an Allen-Heath console.

A truly great performance by a truly great vocalist almost takes care of itself. Great microphones through great preamps are certainly the next step...

quote:

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Software Im Working with:
Adobe Audition 1.5
Acid 4.0
Nuendo 2.0
Cubase SX 2.0
_(ANY PROGRAMS, VST'S, PLUG-INS, HARDWARE I should get to help, list it and I'll get it.)_

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Why do you run Cubase SX2.0 and Nuendo 2.0? That's $2,000 worth of software and they're the same audio wise.

War

^^^lol yea i know, but i didnt buy'em anyways...a few of my friends had them..

I know this is old as crystal coke but im still facing the same problems lol...

dirtyragamuffin - Okay thank you, that helps out a lot and clears those questions up..

John Scrip - lol okay, i didnt think the pre-amp would matter so much..And yea i feel you on that tho..Thats why I want to keep practicing but i just wanna hear myself with the beat at least =|..

So what should I do to at least blend my vocals with the beat?