Performance Over Audio Quality Every Day of the Week

I was talking to an artist this morning, and the conversation turned to a concern that comes up all the time with clients who are getting ready to finalise their production before mixing.

He loves his vocal take, but it was recorded in less-than-ideal conditions, so there are a few gremlins in the audio.

Firstly, it was recorded using an SM58, which ironically is probably a better choice than a condenser mic if you’re recording in an imperfect environment, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole here...

The more pertinent issues were that there’s a little bit of room echo in the recording, there are occasional clicks and pops, and a few other onomatopoeic terms you might find on a box of Rice Krispies. There may even be some of the dreaded preamp clipping in there too. (That last one actually can be a bit of a nightmare, so please avoid it!)

He’d tried rerecording the vocal in better conditions and got plenty of takes with much better audio quality, but none of them matched the performance of that first, imperfectly recorded one.

So here’s the big question: which take should he send for mixing? 

Line break for suspense.

The answer is easy. Performance trumps audio quality every day of the week.

Literally no one has ever been listening to a track in the car on the way to work and thought, “You know, I really like this song, but I just wish there was a little less room resonance on the vocal.”

We as artists and engineers listen out for these things because we’re odd like that, but no one else will. Seriously! What matters to listeners is that they’re hearing a killer performance.

What matters to us as engineers is making that killer performance sound as good as it possibly can.  It doesn’t matter if a worse performance could technically be made to sound better. You could give an immaculately recorded tractor Grammy Award-winning mixing and mastering treatment, but you still wouldn’t find many people who wanted to listen to it.

The performance is the bit that matters.  And the absence of a tractor.

Clicks and pops can be removed, room resonance can be reduced, background noise can be cleaned up, levels can be automated, harshness can be softened, and all sorts of other small problems can be dealt with in the mix.

What can’t be fixed is a vocal that simply doesn’t have the same feeling and isn't as good.  If you're expecting a different performance when you get the mix back you'll be disappointed.

So yes, of course, follow standard best practices and try to make your recording as good as possible. Record in the best space you have available, set your gain properly, keep an eye on background noise and definitely make sure you’re not clipping the preamp.  But never do any of that at the expense of the performance.

*There is one small caveat to everything I’ve just written. If the audio quality is literally complete garbage, then please do rerecord it. But I’m talking recorded-on-a-potato-while-sitting-on-a-lawnmower garbage. Anything better than that, and it’s probably fine.

Choose the take that gives you the best performance, and let the mixing engineer worry about the gremlins.