With the AES Convention in New York City this week, I’m excited to hit the show with the intention of checking out how I’m going to replace my Command 8 now that I’ve rediscovered fader mixing. It will be fun to walk the exhibition floor knowing that I have a mission: to push my home studio to the next level. And thanks to an eye infection, I’ve rediscovered my “flying fingers”—and I love it.
If an ounce of prevention is preferred over a pound of cure, then it begs the question, “How do we prevent tracking sessions from going bad?” Or, more specifically, where should we engineers focus our proactivity to achieve the expected results? Here’s my advice on the top five tracking solutions and ways to apply them.
Still lacking lighting, furniture, etc., I configured a temporary setup with gear stacked on folding tables and old cases and, while it looks a bit make-shift, it sounds fantastic. I’m now mixing in Dangerland—yep, the studio is called Dangerland! Marking its inaugural project is a live album that I recorded a couple of years ago featuring saxophonist David Liebman playing Miles Davis’ album On the Corner; Liebman was part of Davis’ band on the original studio recording.
Based on a long list of factors—with cost being at the top of the list, but also including building code restrictions, spouse-imposed limitations (“We’re not building freaking Ocean Way in our backyard!”) and a few other factors, I’ve settled on my studio build project with a control room measuring 13 feet, 7 inches wide by 16 feet, 7 inches deep. So, it’s not as big as Ocean Way, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life sleeping on the couch. It will work just fine.
Multi-Grammy Award-winning producer, engineer and mixer Neil Dorfsman has worked with the best of the best—Sting, Paul McCartney, Tears For Fears, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Def Leppard and Dire Straits, among others. With that track record, he’s obviously captured top-flight guitar sounds over the years. I recently sat down with him to talk shop on mics, preamps, phase and gear, and how he goes about capturing world-class tone.
If someone had told me that I would agree to spending the next six months of my studio life working out of an 8' x 20' Mobile Mini steel trailer with barred windows designed to be a construction site office, I would have said they were crazy. How wrong I would have been.
Twenty-three years ago, I converted my freestanding two-car garage into a studio. The Carport, as I called it—there was another studio in town called The Garage—became my home-based workspace. I anticipated being there for five to 10 years before moving on to my next studio digs and never dreamed I'd spend nearly a quarter of a century making it my sonic home.
No matter your political persuasion, you must admit that the recent election cycle has been crazy and has taken some sort of toll on all of us. I know many people, from both sides of the aisle, relaying just how weird and out-of-sorts they’ve been feeling. Luckily for us audio engineers, we’re able to retreat to our predictable world of sound waves and modulating voltages. But wait—aw, hell no! I believe Mercury is stuck in retrograde or the earth’s axis has shifted, because even my safe haven of audio has been more of a “bizarro world” as of late. Check it out ...
So I’m wondering if a Samsung-owned Harman could finally be the heavyweight catalyst we theorized back in 2014: a pro-audio conglomerate powered by a large-enough force in tablet/smartphone manufacturing to prod Google’s Android core audio engineers to finally make its mobile OS fully realized for audio recording and production purposes. What do you think?
If you’re a small pro audio-oriented business owner—studio owner, audio engineer, live sound provider, all of the above—you’ve surely warded off attempted scams, phishing, spoofs and/or hacks in recent times. Anyone who has sold expensive audio equipment via Craigslist has surely seen some hackneyed attempts at scams, but lately my in-boxes have been blowing up with a couple of interesting new ripoffs, so take note and beware. Cynics may be able to shrug off such injurious advances easily, but those who are anxious for some new business activity may be tempted to give these crooks the benefit of the doubt…but don’t.
Audio engineering does provide some challenging and lucrative opportunity, but frankly those positions are under heavy competition. With today’s audio educators doing a fantastic job of providing employers with well-trained and able-minded interns, the modern employer is cherry picking only the very best and brightest for openings. If you’re top of your class you’ll make it all right; if you’re not, welcome to the world of entrepreneurism.
As an engineer or producer, you’re surely used to seeing weird looks on the faces of the talent—maybe it’s just looking through the glass?—but sometimes, frankly, it’s almost too much to bear. You’ve been there: You set up a nice cue mix, but the moment Ms. Diva dons the cans and you “roll-in-the-red,” her nose turns up, she looks like she suddenly whiffed raw sewage, dramatically takes one or both ear cups off and says, “OMG, this sounds so weird!” At that moment, you’ve got about 10 seconds to rectify, tops, or you might just get that “tap on the shoulder” and your walking papers. Here’s some emergency help.
I can no longer sit idly by as this nation’s politics are domineered by outsiders, rogues, technocrats and ideologues. It is obviously clear what this great nation needs and I intend to provide it with my new third party as I humbly submit myself as a candidate for president of these United States. My new audio-centric party, Americans Who Care About Nothing But Audio, (in the great audio tradition of long and indecipherable acronyms) will lead this nation into the future by deciding all issues based solely on audio engineers' opinions, as producers won’t even get a say anymore.
For Rob Tavaglione, recording a phone interview with top NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson was a routine audio session—until he heard what the six-time championship cup winner had to say and realized he could apply Johnson's words of racing wisdom to his own craft.
We audio engineers are notorious for having, collecting and bragging about our rig—our ever-growing and oh-so-precious kit. Producers smile confidently for the camera against a chaotic backdrop of racks, stacks and jacks that somehow indicate the value and depth of their expertise. I found myself “too defined by my belongings,” wanting to do more with less, and so I began a journey of rig reduction about a year ago. The goal? To reduce choices in the studio, shrink the kit, force quicker decision-making and increase quality.
For years I have regretted my pierced tragus. The tragus is that little flap of skin that covers the opening in to your ear canal. The actual piercing is remarkably painless (not a lot of nerve endings there). Trying to fit in-ear monitors or earbud-type headphones around the ring? Impossible – and very painful. An earbud never stays in place for long so I can either jam it back in place every few seconds, live with over-ear headphone sweat (yum), or accept the poor stereo imaging from having one headphone further away from my ear than the other. Then, it happened. On an otherwise ordinary day at Prolight + Sound, Frankfurt, some benevolent (and body-modification sympathetic) deity guided me to the Ultimate Ears booth.
In a recent Decibel Geek podcast, superstar pop songwriter Desmond Child (whose songs are on well over 300 million albums sold) shared some stats that echo sentiments bouncing around our industry as of late: Sustainable income as a professional songwriter is disturbingly endangered. “Jon, Richie and I get six million streams on Pandora every quarter, as an average, of 'Livin’ On A Prayer,’ just the one song,” offers Child of his co-creation with Bon Jovi. “So just imagine all the other streams we’re getting. Yeah, but we got a big check for $110 [for the song last quarter] to split amongst the three of us and our publishers. Yeah. The streaming thing is a beat and we have to switch that...the record companies get 96 percent of the money and we get 4 percent because they got in there and made deals and bought into these companies. Frankly, we got dicked—all the songwriters. We’ve got to turn that around.”
Here's two recent and insightful articles on our industry as reported by mainstream outlets. Each is illustrative of the current music production marketplace, including theories as to why current CCM genres and DIY recording trends are as they are.
In my job as Reviews Editor, I listen to a lot of different studio monitoring systems in my workspace. When this ADAM AX Series three-way system arrived for review, I was reminded of how lovely, detailed and expressive I’ve always found ribbon tweeters to be in studio monitors. Meanwhile, having previously reviewed the excellent MK 4—a Sennheiser cardioid LDC made at the company’s HQ in Germany for $299 street—I jumped at the opportunity to try its multipattern sibling, the MK 8, also made in Germany.
As it happens from time to time, I get requests for advice from fellow engineers. Sure, there's questions about compressors or methodologies, but the most common is the good ol' “what mic should I buy?” question. This recent inquiry from Terry Moore of Abstract Studios in Houston—asking about affordable mic purchases for singer/songwriters—seemed like it might be informative for a lot of our readers. Terry was agreeable with sharing, so here you go
If you’re on Facebook and are public about your musical habit, you’ve likely seen ads from Monoprice. They sell their own branded musical instruments—products ranging from band/orchestral to rock band gear and associated portable PA—and, most recently, pro audio products, as in a 2.25 lb., large diaphragm, multi-pattern condenser microphone, one of the three products I review for Pro Sound News in the April 2015 issue.
Above the slogan "People who don't have time make time to read the Wall Street Journal" is will.i.am: "producer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and Wall Street Journal reader," among many other titles, accomplishments and accolades. From the photo, some of us can spot that he’s a U87 fan. And perhaps far more philosophically, he’s also a Slate Raven MTX user.
Additional insights and observations shared by some of the interviewees in the Pro Sound News March, 2015 cover story, "Touchscreen Mixing Arrives."
Personal, not-for-profit projects require blocks of free time—to think, to experiment, to create. And electronic projects—whether one, 150-in-one or literally thousands over a lifetime—require time as well as a ready source of both components and inspiration. In RadioShack, we’re losing a big one, and I hope its replacement isn’t more ubiquitous tech specifically designed for multi-tasking and saving time—and more time at work.
This evening, I’m only one day into NAMM 2015 and I’ve already seen “Android” on literally dozens of manufacturer booths, banners and promotional materials, often mentioned alongside iOS in near-equal billing (though still out of alphabetical order).
From an applications standpoint, the DL32R covers the broadest range of audio tasks in the simplest way of any single product I’ve reviewed, ever.
PAR has recently launched “PAR-Tube,” our new video initiative that commences our move into the future. The digital revolution has just begun and modern life has barely started to change. That change will spell the end to publishing as we know it and meanwhile, Pro Audio Review will not sit still. Time will prove that expert advice is valuable in whatever medium it inhabits and it looks like web-based video will ultimately be a big part of how we continue to supply our readership with crucial guidance. Rest assured that the value of PAR will not diminish, but grow into an even healthier pro audio product review mechanism for our publishing company, NewBay Media.
Surely you've heard the saying, “There are two kinds of people in this world,” as it has been creatively applied to most any discipline, topic or argument one can think of. Does such divisiveness have a place in serious discussions? Can one’s behavior really be boiled down to two diametrically opposed opinions? Are there exactly two kinds of audio engineers, or audio engineering styles? Sure, probably, and of course there are! ;)
"Today I delivered 26 files, spread across six discs (or folders), to my client for their four song project. Hmm, I remember when that would've been a single 1/4” reel ..."
Admittedly, the beginning of a recording project is the best part; all the optimism, all the teamwork, and all the focus on the big picture is energizing, challenging and fun. Conversely, the end of a recording project is almost always the most taxing and the least rewarding part. This is exacerbated by the shift to focusing on the individual; the endless detail and minutiae of editing; the seemingly infinite mix tweaks allowed by our DAWs; and so on. Oddly enough, it’s the requisite rough mixes during a project that are often the pivotal point: the fulcrum between peaceful group-think and the compromise of personalities and artistry that actually completes records.
Attention recording engineers: are you looking to inspire guitarists and capture noteworthy tones? A nice guitar preamp and digital amp simulations can quickly get you there quickly and easily, but don’t ignore the special possibilities of getting your hands dirty: creative tube implementation can make productions unique in a way that ones and zeroes simply can’t.
A new breed of engineer/hit-maker has emerged, one who tracks drums in a bedroom with questionable results, yet can "expertly" use drum replacement software; that records basses and guitars via DI and virtual "amps" to get their tones, racks and stacks; and that captures keys and MIDI instruments of all kinds via virtual synths and sample libraries successfully, well beyond the point of convincing.
Sometimes audio engineering can seem like a pretty lousy job. If you've ever spent days away from sunlight, alone in a small room, dealing with repetitive and mundane tasks (quantizing drums, editing dialogue, tuning giant vocal stacks), then you know exactly what I'm talking about. A couple of weeks ago I got to do a location job that reminded how fun and rewarding corralling sound waves can be.
The good news is that the economy is likely going to be slightly better off in 2012. Barring some unlikely lack of cooperation by Europe's super-powers on their debt reform, the US economy is likely looking at about 2.5% growth (which is slow, but adequate) with a slight improvement in employment, too. Thus, our customers will probably have a little more money to work with.
I know what you're thinking (a la Nigel Tufnel): “Well, it's 200 less, isn't it?” Sure, the C214 offers fewer features than its esteemed older brother, the AKG C414, but the C214 is only $649 list, which is more like $600 less ... right?
