Feature articles, lessons and tutorials on audio and music

Learning by your mistakes is definitely an effective method, but it’s not a lot of fun. In this article, we’ll talk about some common mistakes that are made by home recordists and how to avoid them. There's no reason you have to learn these lessons the hard way...

Volume, more volume! Yes, but at what price? This series of articles will review the origins of the volume race, the physical considerations, new standards and tools, and their impact on public health.

All DAWS are definitely not created equal. Yes they can all record and edit audio and MIDI, host effects and software instruments, and provide facilities for mixing. But beyond those bread-and-butter functions, most offer some specific features that either none of the others do, or that none of the others can do as well. Here we present a look at …

Now that we have analyzed EQing during mixdown, let's talk a bit about the tools capable of carrying out the task.

If you’ve been paying attention to new product introductions over the last year or so, you’ve no doubt seen more and more Thunderbolt-based audio interfaces hitting the market. For many, moving up to Thunderbolt would mean upgrading to a new computer that supports it, so it’s no small decision. The aim of this article is to let you know about the …

Some people might think it's weird to see sampling considered as a type of synthesis. Indeed, throughout this series of articles, I've been telling you all the time about the creation of sounds "from nothing" and, all of a sudden, the playback of pre-existing sounds pops up out of nowhere!

Darrell Thorp is no stranger to Grammy awards. In previous years he won for albums with Radiohead, OutKast and Switchfoot. Last year he garnered a Latin Grammy for his work with Molotov. Still he wasn’t expecting what happened this year: three more Grammys for Beck’s "Morning Phase."

In this week's installment, we'll continue our focus on EQing during mixdown, with some additional tips and advice.

In the previous article we saw what subtractive synthesis, the most widespread method of synthetic sound creation, is all about and we saw that it's based on the sound production and manipulation modes described in the first articles of this series.

Whether you're a Logic or GarageBand user, you can spice up your recordings with a huge range of instrument loops and sound effects via the Apple Loops that were included with your DAW. Here's a video tutorial to get you going right away.