A fun question came in yesterday regarding upgrading a mastering equalizer. EQ’s are always used in mastering, and while this question asked about specific models, I couldn’t help myself but offer my opinion on EQ’s in this capacity in general. Special thanks to the readers who have emailed in with corrections and suggestions regarding ways … Read more
A friendly fellow sent in a wonderful pre-purchase question about direct monitoring that I’m sure many other newcomers to the audio interface world are curious about too. It’s a fun ride, so please read along as we learn about… Before you even read this, you can rest easy knowing it had a happy ending: “I … Read more
We received a very insightful question recently that requires some critical thinking to explain the answer. You’ll enjoy this guitar amp mic one if you like puzzles, especially as a studio engineer and/or guitarist. As always, let me thank a couple readers for their help. Frederick notified us of an error in our mp3 compression … Read more
I’ve over simplified the question in the title above about stereo compressors, but that gets to the essence of the discussion between myself and a smart gentleman, who I thank for sending in such a high quality set of questions. Thanks to all of the people writing in. We can’t get back to everyone, but … Read more
We received a great question from a decent producer, who like many of us started out in rhythm based genres that don’t demand a ton of music theory knowledge. But he’s ready to expand his skill set… where should he start learning music theory? In addition, we want to give mad props and say thanks … Read more
We received a fantastic question dealing with one of my own favorite topics, that of acoustic treatment. Unfortunately, buying or building it isn’t enough. You have to know where to place it on the wall if you want it to do its job the best it can. And that takes a little math, especially with … Read more
Ah, the classic concern of good music-loving neighbors everywhere: “Can I use a subwoofer in my apartment without getting a noise complaint from my neighbors?” The fact that you’re asking this first before you just start bumping the bass is fantastic, because it means you have a chance to be proactive about it. If you … Read more
We’ve been receiving a lot of emails from users lately, but not questions. Thankfully, several have been corrections for errors spotted in our articles, which we always appreciate. But in the meantime we did collect several solid questions, one of which we want to share here, basically asking how to mix saxophone. Let’s get right … Read more
The world of studio recording equipment is confusing to the uninitiated trying to get a foothold, and with manufacturers marketing their gear differently to outsiders, it’s no surprise that we received this week’s question about podcasting… And thanks to Calvin, Justin, Jason, Andy, Doug, Shawn, Dominic, Daniel, Jamieson, Gabrielle, Anthony, Zaiden, and James for the … Read more
When we got this question, it was another in a string of emails asking for more information about gain staging. It’s something we’ve mentioned a lot in the Studio Recording column but hadn’t dedicated a full article to it. We since then have written a full investigation into the concept (linked below), but here’s the … Read more