How To Prepare For Your Session
If you have read the post “How long does it take to record a song?”, you will know that I consider a band’s readiness in preparation for their upcoming session to be one of the most defining aspects in determining the quality of the end result. To rock up unprepared with a perennially out of […]
How Long Does It Take To Record A Song?
The most common question I am asked by prospective clients upon enquiring about a session has to be some variation of “How long will it take to record x number of songs?”. Perhaps, “Can we record and mix a song in a day?”, or “Can we get our EP done in a weekend?”. The trouble […]
DI Boxes: A Distinction Without A Difference..?
A good friend of mine recently purchased a new DI box; an Orchid Electronics Direct Inject box – an active DI that retails for about 40 quid. It looks like this: He excitedly proclaimed that for the money the sound was fantastic, enjoying in particular how it interfaced with his bass guitar. I was intrigued. […]
Crushed To Hell: My Thoughts About Mastering
What Is Mastering? Mastering recorded audio became its own discipline after the Second World War, when a “dubbing engineer”, secondary to the recording/mix engineer, was tasked with transferring the recorded audio from tape to a master disc, which served as the template from which all following vinyl discs would be pressed. This was a purely […]
The Bullshittery Of Audio Jargon
The topic of audio recording is vast and open-ended, and discussion about associated equipment in particular often gives rise to much heated debate with respect to perceived differences in the sonic performance between devices. It is not uncommon for hostile discussions to be waged pitting the minutia characteristics of this device against that, with all […]
Stereo Recording Techniques On Test
Often in recording scenarios it is necessary to implement a stereo miking technique. Usually this is employed to capture room ambience at a distance from the originating sound source, by which I mean the reverberant field of an acoustic environment – anywhere where the late reflections are of greater intensity than the direct sound. Whether […]
Comb Filtering In Drum Overhead Microphones
Recording drums in a small room is a problem that any engineer not blessed with an infinite budget must deal with at some point. Among the difficulties inherent in this scenario is the problem of comb filtering in the audio signal due to the microphone’s proximity to a boundary, i.e. the ceiling or a nearby […]
Binaural Recording
Have you ever wondered how it is possible for the human brain to so accurately detect the location of a perceived sound? We only have two ears, yet somehow we are able to discern the differences between sounds originating from any direction within our 3-dimensional environment – in front, behind, above, below, left or right. […]
Eliminating High-Hat Spill
When recording a drum kit one of the most perennial problems encountered is high-hat spill on the snare microphone. Some engineers claim to have made peace with this issue by utilising the signal as simply “part of the drum sound”. This doesn’t do it for me since, among other problems, it ruins my stereo image […]
Mics Or Mikes?
Studio engineers, recording enthusiasts, musicians and journalists. I hereby call your attention to an issue of utmost importance. It is something that has niggled for as long as I have been writing about studio recording techniques, and I have yet to find a solution to it. I call upon us, here, now, to finally clean […]
