Achieving studio-quality vocals from home is perfectly possible. In this tutorial home studio expert James Ivey from iZotope, takes you through the process of recording and repairing sung vocals from your own home studio.
These days you don’t need a pro studio to get great sound results. But if you are going to record vocals at home, you do need to do your best to maintain quality throughout the process.
Think of the good rules, good performers, good room, good microphone, good cables, good preamp, and a good interface. It all adds up to a good result. It’s the combination of all these things, not just one or two that contributes to a great recording.
Especially when recording at home, you should consider your environment, close all the doors and windows, record during the quietest time of day. Also, remember that the more comfortable the singer is the better the results will be.
In home-recorded vocals, there are often 4 problems that can occur…
Despite our best efforts, the background noise will often be higher than if we had recorded the vocal in a professional studio.
Plosives can be a real issue, especially if you didn’t use a blast shield between the singer and the mic.
Because you tend to work closer to the mic when recording at home to minimize the background noise, there can be more mouth clicks, etc picked up by the mic.
Similarly, the breaths can be louder than we would like.
In this video tutorial, James Ivey from iZotope is going to concentrate on how to get the best from a home-recorded vocal, using some of the tools in iZotope RX7 and resolve all 4 of these issues.