hi
the question is:
how to record vocals with a condenser mic in order to not record the noise of the pc (when it's hot) too?
any suggestions?

I know its not the answer you want but either record in a different room than the computer or get a dynamic mic.

or just turn the heat down, you should be able to juice it up in your computer, just set your gain on your pre amp to where it doesnt hear your computer, then speak up into the mic. < if your recording vioce>

bridge man, thanx
i got a dynamic mic but the condenser one has a way way way better sound with no discussion .
i considered the fact to record in another place, but if i do that then i will record also, in order:
-cars noises
-whasher noise
-babys cry noise
-tv noise etc
so i stay in my humble (and shitty) cellar...


how to turn the heat down? i use a sony vaio laptop since 2003...

maybe one solution is to be far enough from the pc and use headphone with long cable and then rec into the mic...

Pretty brutal situation it sounds like there, but completely manageable

I would treat one corner that is away from the pc with some foam material or whatever you can get your hands on and record into that corner --- you will read about recording in the center of the room, but that is when you have a room that is silent and has good acoustics, if you got lousy space you wanna create a smaller controlled space like in a corner and deaden it as much as possible...cover up the pc with a heavy blanket during the recording to deaden the hum - basically you gotta use some ghetto engineering tactics to create silence within the mics range and also control reflections which is biggest problem you get with bad recording space

if possible, try putting the mic in another room and run the cables into the room where the laptop is.

another possibility may be to use something like a 4 track cassette deck and record your vocals into that...bouncing the cassette recording into your computer.

what about costructing some sort of "mini room" for the comp. I have taken a chair, placed the laptop beneath the chair and draped a packing blanket over the chair. Kind of a hassle to hit record and stop-but it works. I just add a bunch o silence to the begining of the track to give me time.

have a friend who did the same thing as adapter pilot ^^ describes. he put his pc tower in a cabinet and rigged up a fan in there. with the cabinet door closed his mic doesn't pick up the pc noise.

i remember the photos of your cool studio.
the "blanket solution" is maybe the best for a lazy one as i am...; to control reflections it's hard in this place because of its irregularity (there are also stairs with its sort of empty space)


lodger ,man see the answer i gave to Bridge for this

this is cool but then you have to remove analog recoding noise...
but you gave me an idea however: i could record vocals with pc noise and then treat the recording with the nice Cool Edit Pro noise reduction tip...




thanx guys.
is this the "ghetto engeneering" Sinapse talks about?
cool tips

I have a few ideas no one thought of yet.

1.Use your microphone's null point (if it has one)

Some mics have an area in the pickup pattern where it will reject any sound coming from that direction[it's usually the opposite way the from the way the ball of the mic is facing].
Point this null point at the fan. If your mic is omnidirectional, this won't work.
A unidirectional mic is the best solution, cardiods were designed for this task also.
You'll still get a bit of the sound reflecting off the walls, but this technique will greatly reduce the noise. It's what a studio engineer would do.

2. Perform your vocal louder!

If you get used to doing your vocals loud it will force you to be more confident, and confidence always makes for a better performance (turns the ladies on too ). This way your background noise will be way quiet compared to the vocal and I bet once you get it mixed in with the music you will hardly notice it.

Some classic records have a lot of hum and background noise on them (the Who and Led Zeppelin spring to mind - You can hear the studio phone ring a couple of times in 'The Ocean') and the listener hardly notices because they aren't focusing on it. I find a bit of background noise is only really a problem when you start layering up lots of tracks with the same noise on top of each other.

3. Check out your computer fan. They come loose with time, and this makes them get noisier. Tightening it up will probably help reduce the sound a lot.

This is my first post by the way, I've had my SP (the 404SX) for about six months, been lurking on here a few weeks - Great forum.

P.S. I have another idea for eliminating the fan noise but it's techy, nerdy and a bit complicated.

hi man, welcome aboard!
thanx for this tip
i found this interesting article about it
http://www.audiomidi.com/content/articles/adams_mic_patterns.aspx
by the way this is the mic i own http://recordinghacks.com/microphones/Alctron/HST-11A, bought some years ago with a "partecipants group of buy" from china. it's a clone of some (very expensive) mics. but i don't know if it's omnidirectional or not.






this is interesting. led zep rec i mean. cool.
and yes, when you layer different tracks i noticed that too.



what is a computer fan?




don't worry man, go ahead with your engennering tips too, i'm curious to be teached.

Wow, that's a very versatile microphone that can be switched to different pickup patterns, the article it says it does cardiod, omni-direcional, and bi-directional. There's maybe a switch on there to change the pattern. Look out for the symbol for cardiod on there, It looks like a mix between a heart and a circle.




If you open up your computer, it's the plastic thing that spins around and sucks air in to cool down your computer when it gets too hot. Take a screwdriver and make sure it is screwed in tight.

I've also heard of people putting thin foam rubber in between the fan and the computer to reduce the noise a bit. It's always going to make some noise, but this can cut the noise down a bit because the fan can cause vibrations in the metal casing of the computer.






Ok, here goes. You will need to use a DAW that allows you to flip the phase on a channel in post production, I know Reaper lets you do this, not sure about other DAWs.

You'll need two mics and a mixing desk of any size. Get the mics as close to each other as possible facing in opposite directions, one facing the vocalist and the other facing the source of the unwanted noise. Plug the mics into the mixer and pan the two mics hard left for one and hard right for the other, then send the stereo output of the mixer to your computer's line in (make sure it's set to line-in rather than mic-in so it accepts a stereo rather than a mono signal).

Set the input channel on the DAW to accept a split stereo signal rather than a combined stereo signal, so you have the two mics on their own channels in the DAW.

After the recording is done, pan the two channels you just recorded to dead centre in the stereo field. Flip the phase on one of the channels and the background noise should be cancelled out, leaving the vocal. You might need to bring the level of the vocal up a bit, but most of the noise should be gone.

This technique is called phase cancellation, it should get rid of 90-99% of the unwanted noise, it will work best using two identical mics.

dam!!! This last tip is insane. Didnt even think you could cancel noise like that. makes sense tho. Its like ducking the noise.

@theOrganism
man thanx for all the imputs!
now i have to study a bit
this "phase cancellation" is intriguing.
ps
i never used enough this mic to "discover" its own potentiality...

i've read about using a similar method (phase cancellation) to get acapellas from songs, but that shit is crazy, some serious studio tricks right there