Here's how I record my vox these days:



Scary thing, huh?

What I have there is an SM57 with popscreen for close-miking my vox. From there the signal goes to a DBX 387 tube preamp, and from the preamp it goes to my 8-channel Presonus soundcard and also via a Boss SE-50 Fx unit to a behringer MiniMon mixer, allowing me to sing and hear effects that won't get recorded, plus mix the level of vocal monitoring as I sing in relation to the backing. The recording is however straight from DBX to Presonus.

I also have a little farther off an AKG 414 large diaphragm condenser, which provides a natural ambience sound and, mixed in and phase-corrected, also adds a nice air and sensitiviness to the vocal sound...this goes straight to DBX not to monitors.

Then I also have on the stand a headphone output, and a Shuttle jog wheel device for remote controlling the DAW (play/rec, fwd/rwd, undo, change channel) so I can carry the whole mic stand monster with all its features to the bathroom and sing there in quiet :-)

Only of late I have had intermittent problems with scratches and pops...maybe a bad lead, seems hard to pinpoint where it comes from really, but it's driving me nuts ruining great takes now and then with garbled tracks. I just went over all connections and all seems to work fine...we'll see when the next track gets done!