Which is the best raw material?

Hi there, while I was mixing a new song today, I realized that the vocals sound very different to what they sounded in other songs. I then discovered that even the raw material sound entirely different. It is the same equipment (same mic, same interface). So, which of these three recordings would you consider to be the best raw recorded material? 1) 2) 3) The new recording I am talking about is number 3 btw. (What is different here?) Thanks a lot, fladd

1 has the best clarity and immediacy on my crappy laptop speakers. 2 sounds boxy and 3 sounds muffled and seems to exaggerate the incidental sounds. As an aside, if the world were going to settle on a common language intelligently, I think it would be Italian. Italian is a language with cadence and easy rhyme, well-suited to poetry and eloquence. It's based on Latin and very easy to learn for most speakers of European languages. It does not have the difficult pronunciations of French, but it has a similar beauty. American English (my own native language) is by contrast exceptionally complicated and inconsistent in grammar, singularly un-beautiful in enunciation, hard to rhyme, astringent in cadence, and incorporates an impossible hodge-podge of grammar and spelling rules. It is a very utilitarian language, mostly because it is such a random amalgamation of different languages. Find a word, stick it in an english-language sentence, and it's part of the language.

I could make out that dynamics are different in all three recordings. Apparently, it is result of distance from mic as Lokasenna has pointed out. I will vote the second recording the best among three. as It has less room effect than the first and less closer lip sounds(if you think that is undesirable) than the third. and...I am listening it on a pretty decent headphone.

Thanks again for the answer. I agree that the vocals do not have to be exactly the same on every song when the difference is not to much. I think it is still fine with our songs, but at first the difference was very obvious to me. So what would you suggest for the future? Recording as close to the mic as in the third example, or farer away like in the others? (Consider that the room I am recording in is not a perfect recording surrounding). Cheers, fladd

Okay, I have to bring this up again: I started to mix this into the instrumental now. But somehow it does not really fit in. Can anyone tell me what exactly this is? What would you do when mixing this. Also: I feel that it is difficult to bring it in line with the second verse (different vocalist, me :-) ). So here is the current version: Any comments, suggestions and the like would be highly appreciated! Cheers, fladd EDIT: I moved this now to since it is different from the initial quesition