Vocal Chain Help!!!!

[Vdub]

First off i'm new here. I'm a R&B/pop producer, and i've heard a lot of great things about this site from Futureproducers.com. I'm looking for a place where i can be helped.

Anyway i want to imrpove my vocal chain.
My equipment:
baby bottle mic
ua solo 610 mic pre
presonus firestudio interface
krk rp 8 monitors.

now i am recording in an open room (my bed room)
But i'm currently building a studio with the a vocal booth digi 02 and all that good stuff but that's not done yet. But i want my own home set up going as well where i can just hop out of bed and get going when i want.

Here's some of my material with some of my artist.
Vdub aka Mr. Music on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos
"My Boy"
"Mr. Wonderful"

Jay Jamerson*Imakelove&music* on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos
And everything on his page i recorded and mixed.

I don't know if i need an eq, compressor, and/or ad/da converter, i've even concidered selling my mic and or mic pre and upgrading those as well.

Now i don't have fat pockets so don't tell me about some 4k unit. My budget is about 1500 atm.
I've heard about the chameleon labs 7602 mic pre with an eq. i've even heard about the ssl alpha channel with an eq limiter compressor and all kinds of other stuff. also i've heard about apogee ad/da.

I'm just clueless when it comes to hardware, and i didnt plan on getting into doing this vocal thing, but the more i do it the more i get into mixing and vocal producing.

So what do you guys recommend me to do about my vocal chain and upgrading with a $1500 budget.

The idea is to make it so i don't have to use so many plugins to make my vocals sound the way i want if you know what i mean. I want a good signal already pretty much coming through.

[MASSIVE Master]

You might get more responses if you post this in the proper forum...

[Docmattic]

your mic pre isnt bad..hold onto that. If i had 1500 bucks id look at a compressor for now. see whats around for your budget. Perhaps a distressor (i think they are about 1500)

If you can go 500 series, you could grab a case first for like 600. then a comp at a price for about 1500. Then slowly build it up later as you want more gear. If i was to buy there id go JLM 1176 compressor (999aud). then later on when you have more cash look at upgrading your preamp, prehaps an advedis MA5. Ive always thought about it but am happy with my gear at the moment.

If you want to upgrade your mic, you cant go wrong with an SM7b. And i couldnt recommend a beesneez james enough.

[goldenlotus]

Yeah either get a distressor or a lunch box with MA5. I'd go with the distressor, pop vocals are all about getting the right amount of compression.

[andrewj]

There is a lot to improve IMO.

At first I would buy a better converter.

Metric Halo ULN-2 (expanded) should be a good choice for you

This would be my recomendation around 1500 EUR. The internal Preamp isn't too bad there, too. The converters are awesome and the character-DSP-Plugins are great! Of course you can still invest much more into converters, but these units are a perfect base.

I admit that a digi 002 is not the good stuff in my opinion! The good stuff I like to work with or will buy in the future is the following:

Monitoring

For real good monitoring nothing beats these babies: Left & Right.

Of course also ADAM has nice stuff! But I love the Klein & Hummer o300 and 0410

Microphone

CharterOak SA538B for a good price you get a great mic.

Of course you can also buy high class units from Neumann, Horch, Telefunken USA or Brauner.

MicPres


Brent Averill 1272 for great vocals with glue. This is my MicPre number one.

Avalon VT-737 - not only for RnB a real classic unit! You can get them used for aroung 1600 bucks

HighEnd-Converters for the mainsignal

Lavry Blue AD DA to get fine monitoring and superb vocal AD conversion

Universal Audio 2192 may also be an alternative

Crane Song HEDD 192 would probably be my choice in that genre! But it is a matter of taste and there are additional alternatives!

Compressors

Hmm... what should I say. I started with analog summing and experienced a big improvement for my sound. Than I got various recommendations for analog busscompression to get a better sound. Some guys even told me that this makes bigger improvement than summing analog.

I started with an Alan Smart C2 which is a clean and very transparent compressor whichg can really rock the party if you start the crushmode.

After a while I missed some dirt and warmth and I got a recommendation for the Fatso as a buss compressor, FX compressor and tapesimulator. I admit I am still 100% in love with this unit and it was my best buy in 2008.

Currently I use both units on the buss. Sometimes mixed and sometimes just the warmth from the Fatso and the compression from the C2, sometimes only one of them. It is a perfect combination that I love.

If I would have some money for additional compressors I would buy a STC-8
or a pair of Crane Song Trakkers or two Distressors

Well I hope this will help you a bit. However there are thousands of ways to improve your current setup. I always think that converters & monitoring, mic & micpre than compressors and finally EQs would be my way. I would also recommend to look at highquality gear! It is better to buy one damn fine expensive unit in three years than two or three middleclass wannabe units in short time!

Good luck!

By the way: I am not a partner of VintagKing.com, but you are from the USA so they had nearly everything in the US.

[Jonkr]

Man, thats actually not a very bad setup for a home studio... My best 2 suggestions would be:

1) Room acoustics - Try some of those broad band sound blankets, bass traps, DIFFUSERS!, etc... this is probably the biggest improvement you can make as far as effectiveness/price ratio. A booth is probably not a very good idea IMO. Unless they're extremely well built and well treated they almost always present the problem of the proximity effectRealTraps - Vocal Booths
I was actually thinkin about a vocal booth until I went inside of one of those Whisper Room booths at school and it sound terrible...like a big resonating speaker box. I use a combination of Audimute sound blankets, Auralex foam, and DIY bass traps in my bedroom and get pretty good results even with a lower quality signal chain than you are using (AT4050>Presonus FP10)

2) Master Clock - I've only used the Firestudio a couple of times and it sounded good... and according to the specs the converters in it already have a pretty decent dynamic range (114db I think). What im getting at is that if I were you I would probably try renting or borrowing a higher end master clock and see how much difference it make with your converters... and if you like it then go get one. That way you would be able to keep all the features and functionality of your firestudio and a good clock should make the firestudio's converters perform significantly better. This method might be more resourceful than buying a whole new converter because $1500 probably will only get you 1-2 channels of one way conversion as far as high end converters go, whereas a master clock upgrade will let you keep the 8 channels of a/d and d/a in your interface. (peep the links)

Apogee Big Ben 192kHz Master Word Clock - eBay (item 200353139787 end time Jul-15-09 13:36:13 PDT)

Antelope Audio Isochrone OCX Audio Master Clock Demo! - eBay (item 330340546453 end time Jul-03-09 14:13:40 PDT)