The two biggest issues that come up when clients send vocal files they recorded at home are distortion and room noise. Hard surfaces create reverb reflections that bounce all over the room and back into the mic. This makes a real unpleasant “reverby room” sound that you can’t take out after it’s been recorded. The best way to get rid of that is to add soft surfaces. That can be as simple as adding some carpets and couches, or you can get a bit more advanced and put up acoustic panels.
The other problem is distortion. I think the main reason this happens is artists can’t hear themselves and instead of turning the music down, they turn the gain of the mic pre up thus creating distortion. Check out the step by step video on how to avoid this, and please let me know if you have any questions.
I used to do this all the time. Turning the gain up too high because the vocals didn’t feel powerful enough and I had trouble hearing myself. One thing I found helpful was turning the music down and the vocals felt a little more dominant without heating up the recording. Also, keeping some space between you and the mic, set the pop filter so it is a good 10 inches away from the mic. With a good mic it will still pick up well. Now when you record all your vocals and mix it all the levels can be brought to the right volumes and sound great. The obstacle I’m trying to tackle right now is my vocal playback in the headphones. I am experiencing a delay and it is too distracting so I’ve turned it off. I can manage without but would be nice to find out how to fix this… This is more a tech problem with my PC I think…