mixing vocals

[doofie84]

I have a decent condensor mic and a pop shield, and like most home recording musicians I use the whole, turn my wardroab into a vocal booth trick.
However Im really getting frustrated when it comes to recording vocals, as the recorded level seems fine but on play back the vocals never seem as loud as I thought they would.
And even when pushing the level up it never seems to getting "louder" even though its goimg into the red....
Also ive seen documentaries on artists and they are standing in the middle of a room while tracking vocals without a gobo or anything that would appear to create the same environment as a vocal booth...

Any tips please, also any advice on decent daw software...cant decide between pro tools, and ableton or any other suggestion currently I use magix audio studio 11 delux...its not great but its ok....want to up grade.

[Danny1969]

It's tricky to see what causes your problem as normally even a mild recorded vocal can be pushed higher than anything else without difficulty, especially in a modern 24 bit setup. I.e if it's tracked very low use Trim plugin or raise gain and print new track. Maybe you have everything else pushing close to 0dB so can't get the vocal above without distorting ?

Track you vocal so it's peaking no more than -10 or so. Then zero your mixer so everythings pulled down. Solo the vocal take and insert a compressor and EQ. Use the Compressor to even out the vocal take and use the EQ to remove the bits you don't want (sub 100Hz and mud etc). Once you have the vocal track nice and even and clear sounding take the solo off and bring up the other tracks to support the vocal. A lot of people will start a mix with the drums but sometimes it's better to build the mix around the vocal as that's the most important element.

If you sit in a wardrobe recording vocals to avoid annoying the rest of the house then that's understandable but you will get some unwanted reflections back into the mic, especially a condensor. If noise isn't a problem then use cans for foldback and record in the middle of the room. If the noise issue means you are stuck in the wardrobe then you might be better off with a dynamic mic with a tight pattern to get as little of those reflections into the mic as possible.