DPA d:facto Front and Centre For James Blakes Unique Vocal Chain

The tight polar pattern of DPAs d:facto Vocal Microphone is helping British singer-songwriter James Blake deliver crystal clear vocals in a live setting, with minimal interferences from extraneous ambient noise.

Front of House engineer Jamie Harley suggested trying a d:facto because he needed a microphone that could truly focus the sound of Blakes vocals within the space of his instrumentation.

We needed a great live mic that could clearly deliver James sound without too much unwanted ambience, especially as he does a lot of vocal looping on the fly, Harley says. The d:facto is solid as a rock with a tight polar pattern for on stage vocals, which allows our monitor engineer to achieve a fantastic, clean vocal sound for James and a superb sound all round. It is the perfect microphone for this kind of music, which has a lot of space around it for the vocal to sit in. It is also very solid and you really notice the difference between d:facto and some of the old faithfuls that we used to use.

Integrating electronic music and sampling with soul-inflected vocals has become something of a trademark for James Blake. It is a style that has earned him numerous accolades, including a Mercury Music Prize for his 2013 album Overgrown and an Ivor Novello Award for his single Retrograde.

However, when an artists sound is as unique as Blakes, transitioning from a studio to a live venue can be tricky, as James Harley explains: The challenge is translating what James has in his head to the live venue. This requires some patience and communication between both of us and some open conversations about how the sounds translate to big rooms and big speakers. I think James changed his perspective on his sound for his most recent album and that meant creating perhaps a leaner, less processed mix.

For Blakes current tour, Harley is using an analogue desk - either a Midas Heritage or XL4. The mic pres on these desks are proving to be perfect for the job in hand and far more suitable than the 500 series high end studio mic pres he originally tried.

With those, the detail in the very higher frequency spectrum became somewhat overwhelming, especially when James mic pre enhanced a lot of unwanted ambient stuff, he explains.

For EQ and compression, he is using an insert of the Empirical Labs Lil Freq and a Distressor. For vocal effects he uses a Meris Mercury 7 as his main reverb because he likes its sense of body and character and its meatier sound. He also uses other processing effects for specific songs.

James has two outputs from the stage for his vocal: one clean (Dry) and one effected (Wet) and he swaps between them depending on the song, Harley says. Most of the newer songs have Dry signals. The older songs like Limit and Lindisfarne require some heavy duty on stage vocal processing and come to me fully formed Wet. I tend to tune all FX EQs with top end taken out and body left in, which enhances the presence of the voice not the reverb. The d:facto Vocal Microphone has a great presence. The reverb then creates space.

Both James Harley and James Blake have been delighted with the switch to d:facto and the microphone is now a key part of the current tour, which runs through to the New Year and takes in venues on both sides of the Atlantic.

James is very happy with the situation - I think things only affect his performance when hes not happy with what hes hearing, Harley says. Hes an accomplished studio engineer/producer and knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it. For my point of view, Im very happy with the results and it makes my life much easier because I dont have to worry about the performance of his mic.

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