Audio & music gear guides & articles

The telephone rings. Pegg's back suddenly stiffens, she adjusts her glasses before picking up the phone. She can tell by the timbre of the voice that asks for Ted McCarty that it's bad news for her b…

This time around, I invite you to discover two unusual forms of sound synthesis: Formant and linear arithmetic synthesis.

If you are like most guitarists, you are on a continual quest to improve your tone and/or discover additional tonal options. This can involve spending thousands of dollars on amps, guitars, pickups, …

Now that we've seen the basic usage of compression when mixing, I'll walk you through a couple of tips and tricks that I'm sure you'll find quite useful. This week we'll look into a technique that mi…

The tale begins in Winter 1951.

Today, I invite you to continue exploring the possibilities of dynamics processing at the microdynamic level. After having dealt with "punchy" sounds, we'll use dynamics to go for the opposite — "rou…

After looking at some applications of compression at the macrodynamic level in the two previous articles, we'll deal here with microdynamics, starting with how to get a "punchy" sound.

For a long time the mastering process was a mystery for most musicians, even those with studio skills. But thanks to all the information now available online, it's a lot easier to learn about how mas…

We are slowly coming to the end of this series!

Professional engineers typically render more than just a full version when they finish mixing a song. They also run a number of variations, which are referred to as "alternate mixes." In this article…

Today we'll continue our discovery of the use of compression with an application that will surely interest all of you: An increase in loudness.

If you are someone who’s interested in learning more about recording technology — and you probably are, since you’re reading this — you may have come across interviews with big name engineers and pro…

In this episode, we'll concentrate on dynamics processing during mixdown, and we'll see how to use compression to give consistency to your tracks. This usage, in my opinion, is the most important one…

Today we'll finish reviewing the different types of physical modeling synthesis and move on to how it has been implemented.

In this installment, we'll look at the consequences of the loudness war on music, sound and human ears.

The debate about real amps versus modeling amps is over. Numerous blind tests among players and engineers have revealed that it’s often impossible to distinguish modeled amps from the real thing, esp…

Mixing a song offers a cornucopia of creative choices. You decide how loud to make every instrument, where to place it in the stereo image, which effects to use, which tracks to mute, and so forth. I…

Today we'll continue our series on the volume wars. This time, we'll focus on mainly on compression.

Finding an acceptable level of latency is something everyone making music with computers must deal with at times. For some of us it's child's play, but for some others it can get complicated very qui…

After having explored synthesis methods that have opened the doors to the most extravagant worlds of sound, today I invite you to tread a more conventional path: The artificial reproduction of well-k…

We were spoiled at NAMM last January. While Musikmesse turned out to be a bit slower, we still found it to be quite interesting. Specifically, 15 products got our attention. So here’s the list, in no…

This week we'll proceed with the final steps of the method to learn about the sonic impact of the main parameters of a compressor. After having seen the attack and release times, now it's the turn of…

In the previous article you learned that FM synthesis allows the creation of harmonically rich sounds. Today we'll see what that means in terms of frequency spectrum....

The most direct ways to improve your studio are by upgrading the gear and adding professional acoustic treatment, but doing so requires a significant investment. If you're not ready or able to drop a…

In this installment, I'll show you a way to set a compressor that helps you understand what each parameter does. This method is by no means the ultimate solution, however it ought to help you grasp t…