"Muffled" vocals

bearhack

Disciple of Aoede
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Noise removal is only useful on recordings that are already decently high quality. But doing it either way can add artifacting and distortion to a sample so it's not a good fix in this case.
I agree in this case, definitely. I don't usually have bad results with noise removal though, maybe its just because I have decent equipment to begin with. I couldn't imagine trying to repair a crappy recording on a nasty dynamic mic like the rock band mic with noise removal. You would destroy the samples.
 

na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
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Guess I'm screwed then :sad:
well...don't put it that way.
You can use what you have now to practice, even if you can't make a bank you like enough to release it.

When you can finally afford/get a better mic, just go for something cheap (but decent) like a CAD u37 as an upgrade in the future. It'll fix most of your immediate issues somewhat
 

UTAUKimi-Yamamoto

Ruko's Ruffians
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well...don't put it that way.
You can use what you have now to practice, even if you can't make a bank you like enough to release it.

When you can finally afford/get a better mic, just go for something cheap (but decent) like a CAD u37 as an upgrade in the future. It'll fix most of your immediate issues somewhat
I'll keep that in mind. Thank you for your help. :smile:
 
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na4a4a

Outwardly Opinionated and Harshly Critical
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Post processing won't fix muffled vocals of this type unless you really know what you're doing and are also very lucky.

When you record you should be 8 inches to 1.5ft from the mic (unless it's a headset). too close will actually risk muddling it more due to proximity effect. (generally cheap mics have a very bad proximity effect where more expensive/high quality mics have a much nicer one).

There are two types of noise imo, environmental and electronic.
Environment/ambient noise can be fixed by controlling the area in which you record. Electronic is caused by the components that make your microphone and if you mic is cheap it can make a lot of this. There is no way to generally fix electronic noise.
You should avoid any sort of noise removal since this will also cause artifacts on your samples. Which can be ringing, chirping, etc and will make the render through Utau even worse.

All the "Levelator" is is basically a fast compressor for vocals, I also suggest against this as it can bring in a whole 'nother can of worms. If I compress my samples I often will do a few more things to them to make sure other various aspects are well under control.
 

수연 <Suyeon>

Your friendly neighborhood koreaboo trash
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@MadamaDemonSlayer why are you necroing something from several months ago? It's already been determined that this particular case is a lost cause due to...
- a lack of control over the environment (the OP lives in a rural area that has constant machinery running in the background)
- a cheap, LQ mic that's unsuitable for vocalsynth usage (not by choice, but it's probably all they have; the OP hasn't returned to say whether or not this has been resolved)

There's nothing the OP can do about this situation except try to relocate to a more suitable recording area and invest in a mic that will be better suited for recording UTAU. In the meantime, it's been suggested that they use the mic they have now to practice different recording styles, etc.

Post processing in the wrong hands tends to make a bad situation worse and it's generally a time waster to try to fix LQ output. UTAU is very sensitive to what's happening in a bank's given samples: bad quality in = bad quality out.
 

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