Category Archives for "Engineering"
- in Book Excerpt , Engineering by Bobby Owsinski
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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7 Traits Of A Great Assistant Engineer
You may never work in a studio that has an assistant engineer, and if you own your own gear, you may never be one yourself, but it’s good to find out what an assistant in a major facility like the Record Plant, Capitol, Oceanway or Avatar really needs to know. These 7 tips are excerpted from […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Undertone Audio Vari-Cap Cable
I’m always surprised when I change something as simple as a cable and the sound lights up. That’s because there’s much more to cables that you’d ever think (check out my interview with Larry Smith from Wireworld Cable Technology for a great explanation between the differences in cables). The one thing that most guitar players […]
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7 Self-Mastering Tips For When You Can’t Hire A Mastering Engineer
Let’s face it, recording budgets are tight these days and we can’t always send our final mixes to a true mastering engineer. With so many of the same tools that mastering engineers use now available to every mixer, it’s now possible to do a pretty good self-mastering job. If that’s your situation, it’s best to […]
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A Look At The Sound City Drum Sound
There are some studios that have that magic sound for tracking drums, and the famed Sound City in Van Nuys, California was one. Every great sounding tracking room that I’ve ever been in has been a product of luck rather than design, and Sound City (which ha since closed) was no exception. The combination of a smooth […]
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EQing By Frequency Juggling
One of the best ways to make all the elements fit in a mix is by frequency juggling. That’s where you make sure that no two instruments are boosted at the same frequency so they never fight for attention in the mix. Here are 3 steps from the 3rd edition of my Mixing Engineer’s Handbook […]
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Blue Oyster Cult – “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” Isolated Backing Tracks
There’s been a lot of hits from the past that you continue to hear on the radio, but a perennial favorite is “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” from Blue Oyster Cult. The song comes from the band’s 1976 album Agents of Fortune album, where it hit #12 on the Billboard charts and has been around ever […]
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How To Time Your Reverb Decay To The Track
When signal processing is timed to the pulse of the track, everything in the mix sounds a lot smoother. This applies to compressors, delays, modulators, and especially reverb. One of the questions I get a lot is, “How do you time your reverb to the track?” There’s a step by step tutorial in my Audio Mixing […]
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6 Trouble Frequencies To Be Aware Of When You Mix
Whenever an engineer has trouble dialing in the EQ on a track, chances are its because of one or more of the 6 often-overlooked trouble frequencies. These are areas where too much or too little can cause your track to either stick out like a sore thumb, or disappear into the mix completely. Let’s take […]
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Kevin Killen On Mixing With Limited Processing
Kevin Killen is a great engineer with a host of big time credits (U2, Elvis Costello and Peter Gabriel, for instance) and he’s been much in demand as a mixer for a long time. When I wrote the first edition of The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook, Kevin was one of the mixers I most wanted to […]
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Recording A Band With Just One Stereo Mic
Usually I post an isolated track on Friday, but this is something that’s pretty close. In this video, engineer John Cuniberti uses a single stereo mic, in this case a AEA R88 stereo ribbon, to record the band San Geronimo – no overdubs, no additional mics. For those of you who don’t know, John was the guy […]
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