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Move beyond the tired arguments as to whether analog recordings sound better than digital, and you'll find few engineers who will contest the tremendous flexibility, ease and speed that recording to a digital audio workstation (DAW) affords.
The benefits of tracking to a DAW are perhaps no more compelling than when recording vocals. After capturing several takes, a composite lead vocal and background choruses can be quickly assembled in a drag-and-drop jiffy. Ear-bending vocal lines can be auto-tuned to sweet perfection in a snap. And, an untrained singer's wildly fluctuating dynamics can be readily reined in by plug-ins such as Waves' C4 Multiband Parametric Processor or the frequency-morphing Arboretum Systems' Ionizer.
With all of this power available to the digital devotee, the question becomes how much should you process the vocal performance before it hits your A/D converter vs. afterward? Here's a hint: If the ubiquitous DAW is the solution to all production needs, trade shows wouldn't be filled to the gills with analog outboard gear. But they are.
Mix interviewed three top-drawer engineers - Marc DeSisto, Sylvia Massy Shivy and Dave Ogilvie - to learn how they record vocals to DAWs, and chat about signal processing and engineering techniques on both sides of the A/D. (See "Workstation Wizards" for their credits.) In some respects, tracking vocals to a DAW motivates profound changes in the way these engineers work vis a vis working with analog tape. In other ways, it makes little or no difference at all.
THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME
Whether committing vocals to an analog or digital medium, Ogilvie says that his choice of microphones has never really changed. "My standards are Shure SM7 and SM58s, AKG 414-TLII and C12, and [Neumann] U47s."
That said, Ogilvie notes that "the SM7 gets more action out of plug-ins. That is, when you start playing around with plug-ins [on a vocal track recorded with an SM7], the effect seems to be more extreme. The SM7 is kind of a narrow-band mic, so the vocal really comes through quite easily in a mix without having to work as much to bring it out. I end up using the SM7 and SM58 quite a bit in the industrial rock world."
Massy Shivy's tastes in vocal microphones...