There is no doubt that a condenser microphone is preferable for recording purposes, so I have used the Audio-technica ATM33a. Normally a condenser requires phantom power, the advantage of the ATM33a is that you can power it with an AA battery (phantom power is a voltage of max 48V usually supplied by the mixer through the XLR connection). Condensers are on the whole, more expensive than dynamics, but the ATM33a is a reasonably priced, general purpose unit. I have not set out to produce studio-quality results, but merely to show how we can get a reasonable recording using just a PC and a microphone and a few leads. Another option would be to use a USB condenser ( more.. ), or just a standard low-quality PC microphone.

Fig 1. All connectors/cable laid out

Fig 2. Microphone XLR connection

Fig 3. XLR to 1/4" jack adapter (line transformer)

The first problem we have to address is how to connect a good quality condenser that has an XLR 3-pin connection to our sound card, and the answer lies in a series of adapters. I have used a line transformer (Fig 3.) which gives me a 1/4“ jack connection, I don’t have a converter to take me straight to 1/8”, so I have used a double-ended 1/4” socket (Fig 4.)

– this way I can use a cable with a 1/4” jack on one end, and a 1/8” jack on the other (Fig 5.). This completes the adaptation as the 1/8” jack will go straight into my sound card microphone input. You can of course use a USB soundcard as an option and many of the more costly ones come with XLR connections.

Fig 6. The completed set-up prior to connection

Fig 4. Double-ended 1/4" socket

Fig 5. 1/4" to 1/8" jack lead connected

Fig 7. connect the 1/8" jack into the microphone input (pink)

Importing a backing track

My next task was to get my instrumental track imported into AUDACITY. I had trouble recording straight from CD into AUDACITY, so I did my sampling and looping in my favourite audio manipulation program MAGIX AUDIO CLEANING LAB. I took a percussion break and copy/pasted sections of it, added some compression and extra effects and exported as a WAV file. It is not my intention to go into detail on this task here, as the vocal layer is the real focus of this guide. I simply imported the WAV file into AUDACITY and that became track one.

Import WAV file

Track One of the new Audio project

THE NEXT STEP - Click to jump to the next section: 'Recording the Vocal Track'

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