Mic Shootout: Recording Metal / Rock Vocals at Home
In this post you’ll find a mic shootout for recording metal and rock vocals at home. The microphone shootout is between Shure SM 7 B, Shure SM57 and Rode NT1-A. In addition, you’ll see my home vocal recording setup and settings for metal / rock vocals.
As you can hear, all of these mics sound good enough to be used in recording. There’s no need to buy an expensive high end microphones. You can make professional quality recordings with any of these mics.
Shure SM 7 B is my favourite for heavy vocals productions. It sounds really clean and clear even with really loud screaming vocals. It’s a bit more expensive option for home studio budget, but definitely an awesome mic for rock and metal vocals.
Shure SM57 is a great mic for basically everything you can think of. It’s truly a versatile microphone and you can get it for around 100 euros. Good mic for vocals too.
Rode NT1-A is a condenser microphone, whereas the Shures I mentioned, are both dynamic. It has detailed and crisp sound and comes with an integrated mount and pop filter. Great mic for vocals.
When it comes to settings, set up the preamp gain from your audio interface so, that theres plenty of headroom left. Loudest peaks around -8 to -12 dBs is a good.
I like to use EQ and compression on the vocal track when recording, because I want to get a better picture on how the vocals will sound after mixing. More close picture anyway.
Hopefully you found this video helpful. If there’s anything you want me to cover in the future videos let me know. Send me an email or leave a comment below. Ask if there’s anything unclear or if I left something out. Cheers!
