Bruce Bartlett’s article on stereo microphone techniques describes 4 methods of capturing a sound source in stereo. The article focuses on recording ensembles, but the techniques he details can be used anywhere a stereo recording is desired.

One goal is accurate localization. That is, the reproduced instruments should appear in the same relative locations as they were in the live performance. When this is achieved, instruments in the center of the ensemble are reproduced midway between the two playback speakers. Instruments at the sides of the ensemble are reproduced from the left or right speaker. Instruments located half-way to one side are reproduced half-way to one side, and so on.

Tags: microphones, stereo, tracking

From the article Mixing and Mastering Tips for Your Music,

Record flat with no effects and instead find the right microphone for the singer. In the mix, roll off everything below 100 Hz and above 12,000 Hz. Add 2-4dB at 160Hz for male vocals or 320Hz for female voice for warmth. Notch out the mid-range, 500-800Hz, by a few dB. Sometimes a little sparkle in the 7-8kHz area is good, if there’s no sibilance there. Finally, a little compression after the EQ can smooth the vocals out nicely.

There are also some tips for doubling vocal tracks, and tweaking reverb for vocal settings.

Tags: reverb, vocals

This thread on hr.com is packed with information about the business of running a small studio.

Slapping up a web page and hope people come is not going to benefit you short term, don’t let your ISP fool ya Word of mouth is by far the best method in which to acquire new customers, because they come in happy before you twiddle one knob. “Bob liked your work, so I’m a referrel”. Good! But before you and all your friends can spread the good news, you need not to starve in the meantime.

If you own a project studio and have ever considered going “pro,” the advice here will either be invaluable or sobering…

Tags: business

John Scrip wrote a great article earlier in the year describing how to avoid online mastering scams.

If you listen to a “before” sample that’s completely monaural and muddy and then the “after” sample has a wonderful stereo spread with clearly panned instruments and voices and sparkly highs, you’re listening to a fake. That’s not what happens during mastering, and the guy who posted it knows it.

The tips in John’s article could prove valuable on an internet replete with discount mastering offers aimed at those of us with home studios and tight budgets,

Tags: mastering

Here are 25 tips to help tune Windows XP performance for recording and production. The site is geared towards Cubase SX users, but the tips will help performance no matter what platform you use.

Tags: performance, windows

It’s almost 10 years old, but Ethan Winer’s article Dispelling Popular Audio Myths is still essential reading.

… logically speaking, just because a large number of people believe something does not alone make it the truth. Even more important, all the audiophile tweaks in the world are meaningless compared to such basics as installing proper acoustic treatment in the control room and using solid engineering techniques.

Tags: myths

On the Songfight discussion forum, I posted a before & after mastering comparison for some tracks on Waking Up In August

the difference in the mastered tracks is most obvious in the extreme low and high frequencies. Listen to the bass guitar in the High Enough extro, and the string noises at the start of I Meant To Remember.

Tags: before&after, mastering, songfight

Habituation is the name for our tendency to respond less to something the more we’re exposed to it. While the concept is academically important to psychologists and biologists, it also has enormous significance for anyone serious about mixing or mastering music.

We likely come by this tendency through evolution. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied on habituation to “tune out” uninteresting elements in their surroundings. They depended on seeing movements among unchanging trees and grasses, and hearing small sounds amid constant background noise, both to seek out food and to avoid becoming food! But even today, this dulling of our senses to repeated information is important. We’d quickly succumb to information overload if we focused on all the stimuli fed to us by our senses, 11mbps, or 120Gb per day, by some estimations. Without the ability to filter this information for what’s important, we’d be swamped.

The mechanism by which we filter is known as sensory adaptation. In short, our brains place greater significance on changes in stimulus than on the absolute overall level of the stimulus. You’re likely most familiar with this effect as it relates to light sensitivity and temperature sensitivity. Step indoors on a sunny day, and you’ll find yourself blind for a few moments. Run your hands under cold water after handling snow, and you’ll realize that cold water only feels “cold” when we have warm water for contrast. Our sensory perception is relative.

As a mixing engineer, it’s important to realize that human hearing is also subject to sensory adaptation. Notice how you become aware of an air conditioner or fridge when the device stops making sound. Your brain keys in on the change rather than the overall level. In fact if we constantly focused on these background sounds, we’d have little attention left to notice the sounds that might really be important. We’re not listening for predators like our ancestors, but we still need to hear the phone ring, or the car approaching from around the corner!

The importance of this to people working with music is nicely summed up in a mixing tip from Sound On Sound magazine:

Don’t assume that your ears always tell you the truth. Rest them before mixing and constantly refer to commercial recordings played over your monitor system, so that you have some form of reference to aim for.

Our ears grow used to repeated sounds. And mixing is exactly that: Listening to the same sounds repeatedly. So mixing engineers need to be especially aware of sensory adaptation, and the dulling effect it has on our hearing.

By checking a reference CD periodically while you mix, you ensure that habituation and sensory adaptation don’t get in the way of a balanced sound. The reference CD gives your ears a change and keeps your brain honest.

As a practical example of sensory adaptation in action, contrast The Smiths’ track How Soon Is Now with my track Brand New Car.

If you haven’t listened critically to The Smiths song before, it’s probably immediately obvious how thin the low end is. However, as you listen your ears adapt to the mix, and by the end it sounds balanced. Follow this with the extro from Brand New Car, deliberately mixed to have a thick bottom end, and the contrast makes the bass in the 2nd track sound overpowering. But after 30 seconds or so, and your ears will again adapt.

Now alternate between the two tracks to hear sensory adaptation at work!

Tags: mixing, psychoacoustics, reference-cd

Drumagog is the granddaddy of drum replacement tools, and it’s certainly hard to beat for quality and features. However it also costs several hundred dollars, which is a deal breaker for many home studios on a budget.

But there are some great free alternatives. I’ve listed them here in order of my preference, though several features are more important to me (midi output, velocity sensing,) than might be for others.

KTDrumTrigger [VST – Windows/Mac] – KTDrumTrigger generates MIDI events by watching its input for trigger levels. When the volume of the input goes above a threshold, KTDrumTrigger spits out a pre-defined midi note. A key feature, however, (and one that puts it in the same league as Drumagog) is its ability to sense the velocity of the input, and adjust the MIDI output velocty accordingly. And something not seen in Drumagog is KTDrumTrigger’s ability to monitor a single track for input triggers in up to 3 different frequency bands. This lets a single input track drive (say) a kick, snare, and hi-hat. (The demo on the linked site highlights this feature.) I reach for KTDrumTrigger before Drumagog when it’s specifically MIDI triggering that I need.

apTrigga [VST/AU – Windows/Mac] – It’s not completely free, though apulSoft offers a limited free shareware version. But apTrigga is effectively a Drumagog clone for a tenth of the price. While it lacks MIDI note generation, apTrigga does offer a novel “sequenced trigger” mode, something not possible with Drumagog. The plugin can load multiple layers (i.e. samples) and play each in turn on successive input triggers. This allows the creation of some interesting percussive effects. The multiple layers can also be used for dynamics processing, though, supporting up to 9 dynamic levels. While not as detailed as Drumagog’s 48 layers, this is still more than enough to simulate realistic drum dynamics.

Replacer [VST – Windows] – Replacer works with a single sample (or up to 4 samples in the the full version, available for a nominal donation,) and attempts to replicate the dynamics of the input signal. As with Drumagog, one would use this tool to replace a single drum track (i.e. kick, snare, or tom,) at a time. While it doesn’t support MIDI note generation or positional samples, Replacer’s interface is clean and simple, and above all the tool is easy to use when triggering electronic drums. (I.e. when dynamics aren’t important.)

DrumTrig [VST – Windows] – DrumTrig is Drumagog Lite (or perhaps Extra Light.) It makes no attempt to match the output volume to the input volume, and can only trigger a single sample per track (where Drumagog can fire up to 48 different samples, based on velocity and position.) But Drumtrig is free, and couldn’t be easier to use. Add it to the track to be replaced, drop a replacement sample on it, and you’re done.

Peak Freak [VST – Windows] – From the linked page: “PeakFreak is a plugin that converts audio input that falls into a certain frequency and amplitude range into midi notes of a certain length.” There’s not much more to it, but it’s free, and it’s purple.

Synodeia2 [VST – Windows] – Synodeia2 generates MIDI notes based on the pitch of its input. However, it can be “tricked” to work with drums. Lack of velocity sensing, though, means it’s best suited for electronic drums.

Tags: drum-trigger, drums, plugins, vst

This “ambience clinic” from Electronic Musician has some food for thought about creating sonically interesting spaces with reverb and delay:

Another way to save CPU resources is to use two instances of a power-efficient mono reverb plug-in to create a unique stereo effect … That approach offers interesting sonic possibilities and also works with hardware processors.

Tags: reverb, vocals