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Monthly Archives: July 2016

4 Ways Music Production Has Changed

4 Ways Music Production Change

Although it may not be entirely obvious if you’re not listening carefully, music production has changed immensely from the early days of 16 and 24 track recording until now (hits made before multitrack recording were even more different by virtue of the limited tracks available). Here are some observations on how the production of today […]

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4 Surround Sound Miking Techniques Perfect For Virtual Reality

IRT cross surround miking

With virtual reality becoming more and more popular, surround sound is making a comeback. While most of the concentration on the audio side of things is on mixing, the fact of the matter is that there’s a lot of interesting information that can be captured during recording. Here’s an excerpt from my Recording Engineer’s Handbook […]

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Taishi Fukuyama Of Qrates On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

Taishi Fukuyama

We all love vinyl and if you’re an artist you’d like to release your next album on it. The problem is the long 6 month+ wait times at the pressing plants and the big orders that you have to place just to get in line. Qrates.com offers vinyl orders for as few as 100 copies, […]

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Fairlight Leaving The Audio Business

Fairlight CMI

It looks like Fairlight will be leaving the audio business soon as it recently put those assets up for sale. The Australian company has been a pioneer in digital audio in both music and more recently postproduction and has always made very robust hardware and software, but in a market that’s increasingly going downmarket in terms […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Audified MixChecker Plugin

Audified MixChecker

Even back before the cassette days engineers and producers checked their mixes in their cars. Back then, some studios maintained a low power AM transmitter on site so you could run out to your car to make a quick check, but now we use all sorts of portable files to check on everything from computers to phones to even […]

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Resolving A Conflict In The Studio

Resolving a conflict

It’s inevitable that it’s going to happen during some point in the project. There’s going to be a strong disagreement between two of the parties involved, and the producer is going to have to diplomatically sort it out. Even worse, the conflict can come between the artist and the producer, which requires a deft hand […]

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Engineer/Composer Bobby Summerfield On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

Bobby Summerfield

On this week’s Inner Circle Podcast #118 I’m happy to feature Bobby Summerfield, my compadre from the AudioNowcast, as my guest. Bobby’s worked with a variety of great artists ranging from Michael Jackson to Carole King to world music superstar Johnny Clegg to the legendary Harry Belafonte. He’s also a composer with his own music […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Sensel Morph Tactile Controller

Sensel Morph

We’ve been used to the keyboard, mouse and trackpad as our main computer interface for a long time now, but didn’t you ever wish for more control than these single dimensional input devices provide? Meet the Sensel Morph, a multi-touch pressure sensitive controller that rethinks the way we input data in just about any application. The […]

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David Bowie “Ziggy Stardust” Isolated Vocal

Ziggy Stardust album cover

Here’s a real treat. It’s the isolated vocal track from the title track of David Bowie’s iconic Ziggy Stardust album and it features not only David’s excellent vocal skills, but producer/engineer’s Ken Scott’s impeccable production as well. For those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, I co-wrote Ken’s autobiography Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust […]

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Audio Gear Manufacturer Rane Acquired By inMusic

Rane Corporation

Since 1983 Rane Corporation has been manufacturing well-engineered, well-respected audio gear that, unlike other audio gear manufacturers, is made exclusively in the United States. The Seattle-area company began in the inexpensive band and studio gear space, but soon found that it’s products were better suited to the sound contractor niche, and later, innovative DJ gear, where it has […]

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Measuring Sound Isolation

One of the things that many musicians and engineers don’t realize is that there’s a way to actually measure sound isolation, and this excerpt from my Studio Builder’s Handbook (co-written with Dennis Moody) shows a real world comparison between different materials and isolation levels. “Before we get into how sound isolation is accomplished, we need […]

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