Live Recording Setup Advice

I got a question and would like to hear some feedback about volume levels and eq adjustment suggestions for live recordings. Here is the setup for our mics. I am using a Shure Beta 87a at my keyboard using two 5" keyboard monitors to hear in stereo the whole mix, and my wife is using a sennheiser me 3-ew headset with monitors at her keyboard as well.

First in my mix downs I have noticed that her headset is VERY good at cutting out background noise of anything else other than her vocal, as a matter of fact I can not hear my vocal in her headset bleeding through her monitor when it is soloed out. I just switched to this Beta 87a from a traditional sennheiser cardioid mic. I really like the 87a as it really cuts in the mix and for its tighter super-cardioid pattern, I think it helps greatly with any feedback, however I need some suggestions as to how to keep out as much as possible the music and now even my wife’s vocal is being picked up through my mic a lot more. This is not good for mix downs as everyone knows, but it is a live set cranked up.

I have been mixing now for a few years and I am learning each time new things to help get better.

Would it help if I sang closer to the mic and turned the pre-amp gain down on it? For instance, my mouth about 2-4 inches from the mic? However I don’t want to have the plosive sounds either and I don’t want the mic TOO far away as I’m concerned it might record too thin on my vocals.

We do use a Steinberg UR824 and I just purchased Cubase 7 to upgrade from 6, if that helps anyone with pointers.

Appreciate the good advice and many thanks in advance.

Gary

After some research on this new 87a mic it just now occurred to me that our last recording was with me sitting next to a wall. So the monitors were reflecting off the wall back into the mic and I also did some more testing this evening and turned the pre-gain down and followed some setup directions per the Shure owners manual and now it is much better, now the meter on input of my mic in Cubase is showing about -40db of volume hitting it. Least this way I can have maximum sound isolation. Gary