A Shure SM57 might be the only vocal microphone that you’ll ever need. Expensive studio condenser microphones are fun and look cool on Instagram, but they are 100% UNNECESSARY.
One of the biggest myths in the home studio world is that you need to drop a ton of cash on a pro “vocal chain” in order to record album-quality vocals. This is simply not true.
Unfortunately, I know people who have dropped thousands of dollars on Neumann microphones, Neve preamps, and UA 1176 compressors that are STILL stuck producing vocal tracks that sound like crappy demos.
In other words, the expensive gear did not help their vocal recordings in the slightest. Gear is no substitute for knowledge.
In reality, most cheapo dynamic microphone make for a really good vocal microphone. Most dynamic mics are fully capable of recording amazing-sounding vocal tracks as long as you know what to do. In this video, watch me record album-quality vocal tracks using nothing more than a Shure SM57 and a cheap 2-channel USB interface.
Oh yeah… I’m also getting these results while recording in a small corner of a basement with 0% acoustic treatment.
