Wow! It’s been a while since I last updated the ol’ Stereo Bus. But I haven’t forgotten about it. I’m settling into San Francisco nicely, keeping myself very busy. Unfortunately, space is too expensive for me to open up the studio that I planned to open here, but the good news is I’ve started playing bass guitar for the band Cuban Cigar Crisis. CCC is gearing up for recording an album Summer 2010 and I’m already doing research into the production process. I have decided that we should go with a high sample-rate recording this time around. I’ve been working pretty much exclusively at 24-bit/44.1khz but now DAWs are fast enough and hard drives are cheap enough that there’s no good reason not to step it up. 192khz is simply overkill. Most DACs simply upsample to achieve that rate and response can actually be poorer as a result. This leaves the choice between 96khz and 88.2khz.
Recently I was hired to finesse a rather rough live recording of Michael Franti’s performance at the protest concert outside the Republican National Convention in 2008. The recording was done with a pair of shotgun mics placed fairly close to each other.
by Dan Connor
The guys over at Ohm Force, an indie plugin development group out of Paris, asked me if I wanted to do a review of some of their plugins. I was happy to do so, as long as I could give an honest appraisal. So in this post I’ll be reviewing one of the four plugs I had the opportunity to try out: Symptohm, a synthesis plugin.
by Dan Connor
This article isn’t about mastering a CD so that the songs are all at the same perceived volume, it’s about getting your music collection to play back at reasonable volumes relative to each other. It’s also about providing this feature to your digital distribution customers.
I’m sure you’ve at some point put your music collection into shuffle play only to find that the transition from Rachmanninof’s Symphony #2 into Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animals is enough to make you piss your pants. You aren’t alone. The audio geekery community has come up with a solution to the problem of CDs having drastically different volumes: ReplayGain. Apple has their own solution they call Sound Check, although by most accounts it seems to be less sophisticated.
This post focuses on an experiment with my new Focusrite Liquid Mix, with which I mixed and mastered a song of mine that was in need of polishing.
First of all, I will be out of town until the 19th… meaning that I won’t be making any posts here at TSB until then. But, I thought I’d offer you something to make up for it: free music!
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by Dan Connor
This post focuses on ways to use visual audio scopes to gain more understanding about what’s going on in your audio.
It’s important to state right off the bat that working with audio should primarily be an auditory experience. In general people won’t be looking at visual representations of audio as much as they will be listening to the audio. And ears are more accurate than eyes. There are lots of situations where audio looks awful on a scope but sounds incredible. Scopes can, however, be very useful for gaining a different perspective on your material. Sometimes the speakers available don’t reveal as much of the lows or highs as is needed for the material, for instance. Using scopes to dissect phasing, frequency response, and peak levels can further inform the impressions your ears are giving you.
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by Dan Connor
This post focuses on the use of analog tape’s warm, unique compression as an effect.
When engineers and producers started to make the switch from analog to digital, they found that digital was not only cleaner sound, but it was also somewhat unforgiving. Most producers were quite fond of ‘driving’ the tape a bit by sending it slightly higher levels than the tape was normalized for. Turns out that the sound produced by this overdriving was a subtle compression resulting from the saturation of the magnetic medium. If you try to throw signal at digital above and beyond what it is normalized for, you’ll end up with brick-wall distortion. This is one of the reasons why tape is considered by many to be warmer and ‘fatter’ sounding. Drums, in particular, work extremely well with tape because the compression allows for a rounding of the transients and a certain punch not typically found in the digital domain. I know some engineers who still track drums to 2 inch tape.
Digital captures exactly what it’s given, whether good or bad. As a result, piping in warm, punchy signal from an analog tape machine will be captured warm and punchy. So, if you have access to a high quality tape machine, why not take advantage of it?
by Dan Connor
This post focuses on the use of MIDI Time Code (MTC) and MIDI Machine Control (MMC) to synchronize multiple DAWs together.
SMPTE timecode was create for the purpose of synchronizing audio systems together, such as tape machines, computers, and other time sensitive audio devices. MIDI timecode is an extension of SMPTE timecode into the MIDI format and is very useful for synchronizing MIDI enabled devices, such as DAWs, together. Some possibilities for these sorts of arrangements include using one DAW’s transport to control other machines, using transport controls on your keyboard or controller to control the transport in your DAW, syncing sequencers/samplers to your DAW, and tempo-synching filters in synthesizer systems.
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by Dan Connor
This post focuses on the process of getting the vocal chain right for the given performer.
The signal chain for vocals is probably one of the most important production choices in pop music. Of course, it helps to have a healthy selection of devices to choose from. Every voice has unique qualities, some of which should be emphasized and some of which should be de-emphasized. The tools available to accomplish this are, in order of affectiveness: microphone selection, mic placement, and preamp selection.
by Dan Connor
This post focuses on the topic of using direct injection/input to bring clarity to traditionally recorded tracks.
When you were first starting out in the world of audio, you probably tried something along the lines of plugging a guitar or bass directly into your audio interface or mixer. I know I did this and learned very quickly that the tone that results is less than stellar or interesting. It’s extremely dry, lacks harmonic content, and sounds brittle. But, in the right situations, these very same qualities can be a godsend when blended with a regularly amped sound. Hence we end up with the technique of blending DI sounds with their amped counterparts, which is most commonly used with electric bass.
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