The Struggle With Vocals

If you’ve read my blog before, you already know how much I value getting the source right.

That's why in this piece we’re going to talk about exactly that:

why your home-recorded vocals often don’t sound professional, and what to do about it. 🎙️

We’ve all seen those photos of Travis Scott recording under a blanket, and we’ve all watched videos of rappers bouncing around a pro studio and somehow nailing takes from every angle.

That looks wild, but the truth is: pros have learned how to control their environment (or how to make a mic work for them) + they work with craaaazy audio engineers that'll fix everything in post.

In a home setup it’s a different story.

Untreated room, an open window, fan noise from your PC, or people talking next door will all sneak into your recording and kill the vibe.

Today I’ll walk through the most common recording problems I see in home studios and give you simple, direct ways to attack them so your raw vocal takes start sounding way closer to pro quality.

You don’t need a million-dollar room, you just need to understand the issues and fix the basics. 🛠️

Let’s get into what’s actually ruining your recordings and how to stop it.

Eliminate Noise First (The Free Fix)

Let’s start with the easiest things you can do right away, no gear, no money spent. 💡
Seriously, just by fixing your environment you can already make your recordings sound way cleaner.

Close the window

Simple move, big difference. No wind, no barking dogs, no car horns, no sirens from outside. If you’re in the city, this one is a must. 

Shut the door & let people know 🚪

If you’re recording in your bedroom or a little home “studio,” always shut the door.
And let your roommates/family know:

“Hey, I’m recording for the next hour, please don’t come in or knock.”

Nothing kills a perfect take faster than someone walking in at the wrong time.

Best way? 

Tell them to just text you if it’s important. You’ll have your phone on silent anyway and reply after you’re done.

Kill background noise

TV, radio, speakers, turn it all off. Even quiet sounds can sneak into your mic and ruin a take.

Watch out for laptop/PC fan noise

This one is sneaky. 🥷

Laptop fans (especially on older or cheaper models) can get LOUD, and your mic will pick it up.

Pro tip: if you’ve got a longer mic or interface cable, move your laptop at least a meter away from where you’re recording.

Put it on the far end of your desk, or even to the side, the further from the mic, the less fan noise in your recording. 🎙️

Kill the Echo

The next thing to fix is room echo.

If your walls are bare, no furniture, no carpets, no curtains, your vocal is going to sound like it was recorded in a bathroom. 🚽

Yep... that't not fun.

That reverb gets into your take, makes it sound fake, and later it’s a nightmare to clean up in the mix.

Trust me, I tried many many times.

But don’t worry, there are plenty of easy, low-budget tricks.

• Throw a blanket over your windows.
• Use your mattress: lean it against the wall behind you while recording. Instant absorber.
• Bring in a rug: if you’ve got one lying around, drop it in the recording space.
• Record in your closet: clothes are amazing sound absorbers. Just make sure it’s full of clothes, not empty wood (an empty closet could actually make it worse).

These quick fixes won’t make your room perfect, but they’ll tame the reflections and get you much closer to a pro sound. 🔊

And if you wan to spend a bit these should help. 💸

• Reflection Filters: but skip the cheap ones. The $30 Amazon “filters” don’t do much. A quality reflection filter, though, can seriously improve your raw vocal.
• Acoustic Panels (Mineral Wool): this is the real upgrade. Forget foam squares, they mostly kill the high end and leave your voice sounding unnatural.
  Instead, invest in 2–3 panels made from mineral wool. Place them in a 90° angle around your mic, maybe one behind you, and boom - you’ve basically built a mini vocal booth.

You don’t need to cover your whole room. Just a couple of good panels can make a massive difference. 

Mic Technique

One of the most overlooked aspects of recording at home is mic technique.

A lot of people forget about it completely, but the way you position yourself in front of the mic changes everything. 🎙️

When you’re recording vocals on a condenser microphone, small changes in position can make a huge difference:

• A little above the mic.
• A little below.
• Head slightly off to the side.

All of these adjustments will shape how your voice sounds.

Common mistakes?

• Mic at nose height → your vocal can sound very nasal, because the mic picks up resonances from your head. 😤
• Too close to the mic → you’ll trigger the proximity effect, making it sound like you’re swallowing the microphone. This is almost impossible to fix later in the mix.

How to fix it?

• Always use a pop filter. It protects the mic from plosive sounds like “P” and “B.”
• Keep about a fist’s length or an open hand’s distance between your mouth and the mic.
• Position the mic so your upper lip is roughly at the level of the diaphragm (the capsule inside the condenser mic).

The truth is, every voice is different. That’s why I recommend recording experiments.

Take one hook/chorus over the same beat and record it 4–5–10 times using slightly different mic positions.

Then compare them and decide which technique best fits the tone, color, and style of your voice.

Once you’ve found your sweet spot, stick with it. 🎯

If you record one verse further away, another right on top of the mic, another below the capsule, they’ll all sound different.

And your mic isn’t some magic tool that “just works” no matter what. It’s a sensitive device designed to capture sound from a very specific point.

So, consistency is everything.

Find the mic position that makes your voice shine, and use it for every take in the project.

That’s how you get vocals that sound even, professional, and easy to mix. 🎶

Gain Staging

When you’re recording vocals, it’s super easy to overdo it with the volume.

That’s why gain staging matters so much. The level you set on your mic preamp has a huge impact on how your recording will sound in the end. 🎙️🎚️

If you push it too hard and clip the mic, you’ll end up with distorted takes, and there’s no fixing that later.

Once the distortion is in the recording, it’s baked in forever.

That's clipping. 👇

Sure, there are tools that try to reduce clipping, but they often leave artifacts and weird textures in the vocal.

Not worth it.

A safer move is to record with headroom.

Aim for peaks around -6 to -5 dB. That gives you about 5 extra decibels of space before you hit 0. So when you suddenly get louder, like in a hook or a hype ad-lib, your signal stays clean.

But if you’re sitting at -1 dB while recording, you hit a louder phrase and instant clipping. 🔴

And that ruined take can’t be polished in the mix.

Good gain staging is one of those invisible pro habits.

You don’t notice it when it’s done right, but you definitely notice when it’s wrong. 

Consistency

Continuing from gain staging, another thing that separates amateur vocals from pro ones is consistency in volume.

Of course, you’ll sometimes want to push harder, sing a louder ending, or add some wild energy.

That’s part of the performance.

But if your vocal jumps all over the place in volume, the engineer or producer will have to spend a ton of time fixing it.

Experienced vocalists, or even beginners who learn how to control the mic, make life so much easier in the studio. 👌

They record with solid, steady dynamics so the vocal doesn’t sound all over the place.

One simple trick is using mic distance as part of your performance. If you know a louder part is coming, lean back just a little. 🔊

If you want to whisper or say something softer, move closer to the mic. That way, the overall gain stays in the same ballpark, and your take sounds much more balanced.

What you don’t want to do is the opposite, leaning in for the loudest parts.

That just exaggerates the proximity effect and often leads to clipping. 🚫

Consistency doesn’t mean flat or boring. It just means controlling your dynamics so that the loud parts hit harder, the quiet parts stay intimate, and everything still fits together naturally.

That’s the kind of vocal that sounds polished from the start and makes mixing a whole lot easier. 🎶

Wrapping It Up

At the end of the day, getting professional-sounding vocals at home isn’t about fancy gear or million-dollar studios. I

t’s about controlling the basics: cutting out noise, taming the echo, learning your mic technique, setting your gain right, and keeping your performance consistent.

Do these things and your raw takes will already sound cleaner, fuller, and way easier to mix. 🎶

The less you leave to “fix in post,” the more your music will shine right from the start.

Master these simple steps, and you’ll stand out from 90% of artists recording at home.

And as always, If you want high-quality beats to test your new recording setup on, you can always check out my catalog. Let’s make something great together. 🚀

Take care,

Baxon 👊