Articles to help the independent musician to learn to effectively use today’s recording software and hardware to create their music.
This is a question that comes up time and again in audio groups. “How hot should my final mix down be before sending off to mastering?” It depends on the format you’re mixing on. If you’re using analog tape, this is an important question to think about. Analog formats have limited headroom, and analog equipment […]
The above video is a quick demonstration of how your signal-to-noise ratio impacts the level of noise your analog modeled plugins will deliver. You may have seen this video floating around Facebook, which is where it was exclusively hosted until now. I thought it was high time to add it to the blog to make […]
HISTORY In the Early days of recording, music was cut directly to a disk from a single microphone. In the studio, the art of mixing fell to the music “Conductor” whose job it was to move the musicians who were recording either closer or further back from the microphone. By the 1930’s the radio broadcasting […]
Top 5 IK Multimedia Plugins Brandon Shire We all have our favorites, and in this post I want to share my top 5 from IK Multimedia! Let’s countdown, starting from number 5. MASTER EQ 432 5. Master EQ 432 The right amount of the right eq on the master bus can really bring your mix […]
Top 5 Waves Plugins! Brandon Shire We all have our favorites, and in this post I want to share my top 5 from Waves Audio! Let’s countdown, starting from number 5. MY DEFAULT HLS SETTINGS 5. Kramer HLS Channel This thing is just meaty. I use it as a low end enhancer more than anything, […]
Amp sims, like their real world counterparts, are non-linear processes. As you increase the input level, they saturate and distort more. As you decrease the input signal, they clean up more. It’s important to remember this characteristic, as you can drastically change the response of the amp sim by adjusting the input level. Let’s start […]
A four part series on creating realistic strings with MIDI ..
MELDAPRODUCTION MMULTIANALYZER NOISE FLOOR ANALYSIS WITH EXPANDER ENGAGED In the first picture, you’ll see 4 colored bands on the analyzer. The red band is the noise floor of my interface, and it’s reading down around -110dbfs. The dark orange band at the very bottom is where the expander is pushing that noise floor to, down […]
Gain Staging: What to know, & why you shouldn’t stress too much about it! By Brandon S Hire Noise Floor (This is a script to a video that will be included in an upcoming series on post production. I decided to make the script its own post because of the amount of confusion there is […]
3 Reasons Why Pre-Production Is Essential Steve Perrino of Compass Audio Most musicians agree that there is a huge difference between your live show and your recordings. There is a lot of energy in a live performance due to volume and visuals, but there are certain things that you need to do in a recording […]
