People's preferences for vocal mikes are so very personal that the only serious advice anyone can give you is to try this or that. No one can possibly predict what you'll actually like.
That said--there's no functional engineering reason that a vocal microphone needs to be large, and there are good engineering reasons to use single-diaphragm microphones. Some smaller mikes that are widely used on stage for vocals (hand-held or otherwise), can also make very good studio vocal mikes.
In the reasonable cost range I like the AKG C 535, but if you want an even less expensive mike, surprisingly good sound can be gotten sometimes with a Shure SM 58 (dynamic, needs no phantom powering). And I'd bet that there are other Shure models that would be very good, too, although their product line is large and I don't know most of it specifically. The same goes for AudioTechnica. These are both companies with serious engineering capability, which is a rare thing nowadays.
In a somewhat higher price bracket, though not astronomical, you could maybe try the Neumann KMS 105 or even their new "small large-diaphragm" TLM 102.
But the main thing is, people generally have to find their own path in this particular forest--maybe even more so than in general two-mike stereo recording. For concert recording in halls I could recommend microphones and be 90% certain that people will like them very much--but the odds are less than 50/50 that anything I could pick out as a vocal mike would satisfy anybody but myself.
--best regards
Topic: vocal mic for home studio? (Read 3632 times)