Transcription
Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel, Home Studio Pro. So happy you're here, and I can't wait to share these settings I use in the vocal chain I've got for the Shure SM7B in tandem with the Universal Audio Apollo Twin X.
Now, a couple things I need to disclose right away. I'm going to share all my settings with you. People have asked, "How do you get your mic to sound like that?" But this room is acoustically treated, and that's important to know because if you just copy these settings and you have this mic, and you have this interface, and then at the end you say, "Well, why doesn't it sound the same?" Number one, everybody's voice is a little bit different, so you may need to tweak my settings to get them right for your voice. This is just a good place to start for you. But number two, your room needs to be acoustically treated so that you can get a similar sound. You don't get all of this, uh, reverberation in your, in your recordings, because your room is an equal part of any processing you do, EQ'ing, compression, expansion, all that stuff. Your room is, is the foundation and the platform of sounding good and getting the most out of this microphone and out of this interface.
I should also just let you hear right off the top, by the way, I'm, I'm processing all of this here on channel number two. It's labeled as such. But if I take off all of the processing for this mic, this is what it sounds like. Right? So this sounds very different than what you just heard a second ago. And I'll adjust the levels to make sure everything's close, but the sound is clearly different. And some people would say that I even process my audio too much. I'm not here to argue that. I like a certain sound. I like the way that I've got this. So I'm not saying this is perfect for every application, but I do prefer my processing over the way you're hearing it right now.
Okay, let's go back to the processing. And one more thing here before we jump into all the settings. The chain goes like this: microphone, XLR cable, into a Triton Audio FetHead. What is that, you ask? You can search it here on my channel. It's an inline mic preamp, like a mic activator, or some people call it. And it's powered by phantom power. So that's why phantom power is on here. Typically for a dynamic microphone, it's not. But the, the Triton Audio FetHead uses phantom power to boost this microphone signal by about 28 dB going into the Apollo. That's why I'm able to keep the Apollo's gain so low, also at about 28 and a half dB. You do the math, you get to what, like 56 or 57 dB? Well, guess what? The sensitivity of this mic is about 59. So that gets me right where we need to be in terms of gain staging.
Okay, all of that established, took a few minutes. We now need to jump into the Unison preamp. This is the SSL 4000e Channel strip. I use this on almost all the microphones. I've got boosted up at 28.5 dB, you can see that there. The Transformer setting is actually on. Here's what it sounds like off. I'll put that back on. Obviously, no phase adjustment here, and definitely no pad. Dynamics-wise, no compression here from the SM7B, at least yet. We'll do that at the very end. I always believe EQ first, and then compress at the end for vocal applications. That's just how I've found the most success. But I am using expansion. You can see right here, my settings with threshold just inside -12, my range is just below five, and my attack and release are as fast as they can be. I've got the fast attack light on, and I've got the release as fast as it gets. I'm not using the gating modes, to be clear. Again, I'm on the expansion setting here. You can change through these, they sound a little bit different, but ultimately, I found the gating modes a little choppy, a little chattery for my preferences. So when I'm not talking, see how those two lights come on, and it goes to six, as in 6 dB of noise reduction. Expansion is kind of like the opposite of compression. It's really here to keep the lowest noises low, or, or eliminate them as much as you can. And that's kind of the self-noise that I'm trying to get rid of here. Watch me toggle this on and off. It's on right now, expansion is on. But listen closely, I'll be quiet. I'll turn it on and off. Do you hear that? A little bit of self-noise, a bit of hum. I mean, inevitably, a dynamic microphone is, is going to be noisier. Let me toggle again on and off, and you have to listen closely to really capture that. Anyway, expansion is on to try and cut down on that noise.
Okay, then we get down here into the low and high cut filters. I'm not cutting on the low end. I am cutting on the high end at about 15,000. And for this pre, or this, uh, signal chain in this plugin, I am using pre-dynamics here. So this is all coming before the actual expansion. Typically, I don't do that on all my mics, but I, I am doing that on, on this particular, uh, signal chain.
Okay, let's get into the EQ of the channel strip here. High frequency. Each one of these dots is about a plus 3 dB gain or reduction. So a plus 3 dB at about 4,000, kind of pushing those mid-range frequencies. I know this is the high frequency setting, but that's where I'm boosting there. I'm not on a bell curve there. Then let's show you here the, um, kind of the cut I'm doing at about 700 Hertz. I suppose that is between six and eight, and I'm cutting about, about 2 dB. Let's say if each one of those is, uh, three, each one of those dots is three, I'm about two on a relatively tight Q. Now watch, if I turn this up here, I mean, this has a totally different sound right now. This is two. And, you know, fully show you how bad that sounds, but that's the area right there that I'm cutting. And it's similar here. I'm also cutting down low at about 275 Hertz, right? So that's where the blue knob is there. Uh, by the way, I'm on the black equalizer settings here. Down below, you can see that those change from black to brown. That's a totally different video, eventually, but we'll get there. In just a second, cutting here at 275, pretty heavily at about 4 dB. Now watch, if I bring this up, listen to how this sounds. Also very boxy, very just muddy right there. So let's go back to about minus four on a pretty tight Q. Then down low here at 100 Hertz, I've got it boosted up about 1.5 dB, and I'm on a bell curve. Watch, if I bring this all the way up. Oh, that's, that's hurting somebody's ears. That's hurting their subwoofer. If I bring this all the way down, it, it kind of sounds a little bit chopped, right? So, uh, one and a half is where I think I had it. So here's with the EQ all on, just on the channel strip alone. I'll take it off. You can kind of hear how that tonally sounds. Not totally tonally sounds a little bit different. Then I'll add it back in. It gives it just a nice little punch and pop.
Okay, on the slider here, I'm boosting this signal by about two and a half dB. Same thing here on the output, just a little bit of a boost everywhere I go along this signal chain.
So that's the SSL 4000e Unison Channel strip plugin. The 1176 Low Noise. It's here. I don't use it. I'll turn it on for you so you can see that. I mean, I'm not even getting it to activate here, but that's actually not even a part of my, part of my chain anymore. It used to be. I think I just leave it there for sentimental or superstitious reasons. I don't even know.
But then we get to the 1073. This is the 1073 Legacy. It's actually a preamp, but I'm using it as well as the EQ portion here as a plugin. So I am boosting just a little bit more right here. The red knob is gain up a little bit. Then I'm also using utilizing the high shelf. I think this is it, like a 14,000 Hertz shelf, boosting just a little bit. And by the way, should have also told you before, there's, there's a low cut and a presence boost switch on the back of this SM7B. You've seen it here before, you can engage it. I do not have that engaged right now. Should have said that before. So I am boosting just a little bit here on the top end, even more. Cutting right here at about 700 Hertz, which you saw me cut a little bit with the SSL. Cutting even just a little bit more, uh, maybe 2 dB. If you're in the 1073, and I'm also boosting on the low end at 60 Hertz, probably boosting at about 3 dB. Watch, if I take this away, sounds totally different. If I add way too much of it, it's got some rumble to it. It's got movie trailer guy rumble to it.
Okay, so let's put that back. And then here, I'm also low cutting at 60 Hertz. So you can hear what everything sounds like with the EQ on versus off. Maybe off sounds even better. Maybe I'm processing this too much. I don't know. I kind of like, I kind of like the settings. When I turn this back on, I feel like it's crisper and it's got just a little bit more punch to it.
Okay, that's it for EQ. Then we get into compression. And the LA2A Gray is one of my longtime favorites. I use this on almost everything. I've got it in limit mode. You can see where I'm dialed in here with the compressor settings, and then gain and peak reduction. Gain and peak reduction, I found work best when they're about plus or minus 10 apart. Sorry about that, 10 apart. Almost. Uh, I did pop a P there. For example, if, if your gain is at 30, your peak reduction should never really be up here at 80. Like that's, that just doesn't work. It also shouldn't be at zero because now that needle's not doing any work. And now I've realized I've lost my settings for a second, but that's the great thing. I can just dial them right back up.
Okay, so 30 and inside 40 are where I'm set here. I, I think I could even actually afford to maybe dial this up even just a little bit more. I'll leave it right there at about 40. Um, but what I'm really aiming for is that needle to be constantly moving during normal speech and, and pretty much from zero to minus three the entire time. That's a good indication that this is compressing just enough, but not too much. My levels are right, and the ultimate output that this is creating is in a good range. If I'm zero to minus 3 dB. Now, that's because this is on gain reduction mode. If I turn this off, it's going to sound a lot different, right? Because I'm, I'm not getting that kind of final ending to it. This is where it's gained up and it's cleaned up at the very end. So that's why I always do compression last, at least for vocal applications.
It's also important to notice that if I'm off axis here on the mic, like that, that needle is not moving. Right? Or if I'm way on the mic, if my lips are all over it, now it's really slammed. I've come up with these settings because, you know, I usually am a hang loose distance away from the condenser mic here. I'm about half that, like knuckles to my thumb, basically. You really have to work this SM7B. Same thing with the RE20 I've got over there. Dynamics just need a little bit more proximity. But these settings are fine-tuned and tailored, tailored, excuse me, didn't mean to pop it, tailored to this microphone and how close I'm actually, how I'm working it, how I'm actually using the microphone. So that's important to note too. But these are my settings, and yeah, zero to minus 3 dB on the gain reduction, that's pretty much what I'm aiming for there.
Is one more thing to show you here that I can use. I don't always do it, but this is the HLF 3C, a Pultec. And what this allows me to do at the very end is just cut the high and low frequencies. If I were doing an audiobook, which I'm, I might do with this microphone, and I wanted it to kind of have more of a refined sound on the top and bottom end, I might do exactly this. Roll off the bottom to 100 Hertz and roll off the top to 10,000 Hertz. That's what 10 KCs is. 10K as in 10,000 cycles. KCs. And so this might be a sound I would use for an audiobook. Chapter one. Here are my settings. I have made this video for you to show you your settings. I'm not going to pretend to read an audiobook, but you understand how that sounds totally different from this, right? This way more in your face, versus this might be a better sound to less fatigue your ears over a long period of listening.
So that's it. I've made like seven videos in a row here. So if I'm ending this one, uh, more, uh, quickly than I normally do, that's the reason why. Uh, this is what the signal chain looks like for the SM7B. And by the way, if you're somebody who does voiceover and you need a little bit of assistance or you want some consultation, that is a service I provide. Hit me up in the comments section of this video, or go to the about section of this channel and find my email address and send me a note. I'd love to work with you. Again, that's something I've done for clients. We always get exceptional results with some fine tuning and some tweaking. But let me know what you think about this video and my settings. Thumbs up on this video if it helped you find out something or learn something new, and subscribe to the channel. You know I've got lots more great stuff just like this coming out on Home Studio Pro.