New Music Gear Monday: Focusrite Sonnox Soften Harshness Reducer Plugin

A number of automatic resonance reduction plugins have come to market recently and most engineers have found them useful. That said, sometimes you don’t need help across the entire frequency spectrum. The Sonnox Soften harshness reduction plugin from Focusrite only concentrates on the mid and high frequency areas, and is specialized for just three applications, […]

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This Mix Checklist Will Get You Better Mixes

A modern mix can be sophisticated and complicated, so it’s very easy to overlook something in the heat of the moment that can be important to the integrity of the mix and that can help take it to the next level. The Ultimate Mix Checklist provides a number or questions to ask yourself as your […]

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Mixing Old School With 17 Time Grammy Winner Benny Faccone On My Latest Podcast

On this week’s podcast episode, my guest is my old friend 17 time Grammy winner Benny Faccone. Benny has a rich credit history with artists like Mana, Santana, Ricky Martin, Luis Miguel, Sting, and so many more. He’s a veteran of the old A&M Studios when it was one of the hottest recording facilities in Los […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Royer Labs R-12 Ribbon Microphone

If you were to ask most home studio owners the piece of gear that they were missing that they wished they owned, there’s a good chance that they’d say a ribbon microphone. Many studio owners are hesitant to buy a ribbon mic mostly because of the persistent myths about how fragile they are that have […]

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Finally, Some Useful Music AI Tools

Whenever musicians hear the words ‘music’ and ‘AI’ in the same sentence, they immediately think of a kid in his bedroom with no musical knowledge cranking out AI-generated versions of the music legends. Yes, that happens, but AI used to alleviate musicians from some simple tasks can actually be quite useful. Case in point, the […]

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Music And Audio Companies Begin To Feel Tariff Pain – Musicians Are Next

I think most of us have been reading the news and wondering how the newly imposed tariffs could be a good thing, but we haven’t been directly feeling the effects yet. That’s about to change as manufacturers are now beginning to see the increased costs as a result of the tariff, which means that consumers, […]

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Recent Music Business News You Might Have Missed On My Latest Podcast

On this week’s podcast episode I cover some recent overlooked audio and music industry news. We’ll look at: You can listen to it at bobbyoinnercircle.com, or via Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Mixcloud, Spotify, Deezer, TuneIn Radio, or RadioPublic. Also, a video version of this podcast is now available on YouTube as well. Enjoy the show! […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Stam Audio 600 Series Module Rack

When 500 series racks first came out they took the audio world by storm. Now you could load your favorite modules inside a small lunchbox-sized rack and take them with you wherever you worked. The problem is, the 500 series modules didn’t always sound as good the standard rack version of the same module due […]

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Bassist, Author, And Music Marketing Consultant Carter Fox On My Latest Podcast

On this week’s podcast episode my guest is bass player, author and music business marketing consultant, Carter Fox.  Known as the Soulful Traveling Spaceman Bassman, Carter has toured with R&B legend Freddie Jackson and Grammy-winner Regina Belle, while also collaborating with artists and producers such as Skrillex, Leon Huff, David Ivory, Adventure Club, and more. […]

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New Music Gear Monday: D16 Group Pulsatic EQ Plugin

There are already so many emulations of classic analog audio hardware like the LA-2A and 1176 that the world doesn’t need another one. However, when a classic emulation has some truly usable modern additions, then it’s worth taking a look. Such is the case with the D16 Group Pulsatic EQ, modeled after the original analog […]

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An Inside Look At Modular Synthesis With Chris Meyer On My Latest Podcast

On this week’s podcast episode my guest is modular synthesizer maven Chris Meyer, who has done important engineering work at Sequential Circuits, Digidesign, Marion Systems with the legendary Tom Oberheim, and Roland R&D U.S., where he was chief engineer.  Along the way he created Vector Synthesis and worked on the Sequential Prophet 2000, Prophet VS, […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Apogee Clearmountain’s 8068 Channel Strip Plugin

If you ask engineers who were active back in the analog days, they’ll tell you there are certain pieces of gear that belong in any audio “Hall of Fame.” If ever a console belonged in that esteemed hall, the Neve 8068 is it. Introduced in 1976, the 8068 was the first of Neve’s in-line monitor […]

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The 2 Words That Will Bring Your Self-Produced Project To A Close

Every musician today has a their own home studio these days, and most have a similar problem because of it. While having a home studio makes recording yourself easier than it’s ever been, most self-producers find that it’s a lot easier to start a project than to finish one. Here’s an excerpt from the 2nd edition of […]

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Music Collaboration With Dominic Castro And Gary Lux of SyncDNA On My Latest Podcast

Online music collaboration is for many the holy grail for efficiently working in a home studio.  The problem is that most tools that are available suffer from latency that makes true collaboration impossible.  SyncDNA is the first online platform that allows frame-accurate synchronization of collaborators anywhere in the world, and now it’s helping mixers, musicians, […]

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New Music Gear Monday: PerfectSound Penteo 360 Upmix/Downmix Plugin

Back when I was actively mixing 5.1 surround projects, I could always count on getting a few projects where they couldn’t find the multitrack tapes. As a result, we’d have to resort to different ways of upmixing a stereo track to 5.1. Life would have been a lot simpler and the results much better if […]

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