How to Eq Using Waves.

Let's talk Preamps..

Let there be no doubt that with the mic pre you pay for sound quality. That is what the whole game is about! But the preamp alone is not wholly responsible for quality, it is just one component. Your a\d converters, the cleanliness of your signal paths, the acoustic properties of your recording room, your choice of microphone and choice of monitors (so you can hear the fine differences) are all critical to quality. Those who want "the best" sound quality might spend $4,000 on preamps, $3500 on converters, $1500 on an audio interface and $5,000 on mics and $3,000 on room treatment. That's $17,000 just to get into the pro ballpark, still far from "the best", and we haven't included the cost of monitors, DAW, software or cables. So my first bit of advice is to scale your choices to your overall budget. In other words...

Face reality. If you are just starting out and have a $1000 budget for everything, you should use the preamps on your mixer or audio interface and choose your mic carefully. Do you have to then settle for crappy sound? No! Let's consider technique. You can get surprising results out of mediocre preamps and typical consumer soundcards by meticulously setting the gain or trim level till its perfect, keeping a clean signal path, training your vocalist to use good microphone techniques and doing what you can to reduce your room reflections. A poorly set level on a great preamp recorded in a nasty reflective room will not sound good. If you want to sound like a pro, work like a pro, and then, after much deliberation, saving money, weighing options, get your preamp. Don't scrimp. Remember I told you several pages back I'll tell you where you can compromise and where you can't? The preamp is a piece of gear where you should not compromise. Get one you are convinced will give you better sound quality.

-Tweak

Want to learn how to Mix with Ryan West?

Elements of Mixing 2 needs your help!!

Bob and I need to reach out to as many people as possible to announce our latest Elements of Mixing workshop event. If you know of anyone who is interested in learning to make better sounding records, let them know! If there's a website that you know of that would post our press release (see below) please let us know. We're really looking forward to this event!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ryan West
Bassy Bob Brockman
elementsofmixing@gmail.com


Elements of Mixing founders Ryan West and Bassy Bob partner with Legacy Recording for Sept. 20th workshop

New York, NY
August 27, 2008

Platinum and Grammy winning mixers Bassy Bob (Biggie Smalls, Christina Aguilera, Babyface, Herbie Hancock) and Ryan West (Just Blaze, Jay-Z, Rihanna, T.I.) have partnered with Legacy Recording (formerly world renowned Right Track and Sound on Sound) to produce the next Elements of Mixing workshop. The event will take place 10am-8pm September 20th, 2008. The Legacy 509 facility is one of the premier film scoring rooms in the US and returning students will find the experience bigger, better and full of useful instruction. Bassy and Ryan will cover all the aspects of the professional mixers' work flow, from balancing to panning, effects, and especially the use of compression to handle multiple bass signals, a key aspect of mixing in todays marketplace. A big topic of the workshop will be the degradation of audio fidelity by the widespread use of mp3 with examples of what happens to sound when it gets compressed, why it truly sucks, and why 24/96 rules. Although there will be an emphasis on Hip Hop and R and B in the presentation, Bassy and Ryan will also be tackling mix sensibilities for Rock, Dance, and Indie. Another special focus will be critical listening exercises and techniques to enhnace that ability. Students that attend the conference will also have an opportunity to have their production and mix work evaluated at the end of the day and will get a chance to see and hear their music from a different perspective.


"The seminar is not intended specifically for engineering students from college but also the independent producer and working engineer who wants his/her presentation mix to bang", said Ryan West. "The Elements of mixing seminar will give you the tools you need to make the mix hit hard and yet hear everything. If we are able to train the next generation of mixers and producers to make great sounding records then I will indeed be fulfilled. We're on a mission", says Bassy.


For more information about the Elements of Mixing seminar go to: Elements of Mixing
or email Elements of Mixing EMAIL
September 20, 2008
10am to 8pm
Legacy 509 Studio A
509 W. 38th St. New York , NY 10018
Registration fee: $249
Lunch will be served.

9th Wonder good Interview...Talks bout FL and more.

How to treat your room.

The number one consideration of a home-based project studio is not soundproofing, but the making of a quiet room. I find it kind of funny that some people will spend thousands to treat their room yet never quiet the stuff inside the room itself! You walk in and hear a noise coming from computer fans, whines coming from hard drives, zip drives, scsi drives for samplers, fans in samplers, fans in amps. This is no way to work on music or produce audio. What one finds is that this racket masks other problems in the studio, like 60 Hz hum at the console outs, poorly set up gain on mics, synths and other instruments. It's rather ironic. People who have a noisy studio create their stuff, mix and master it and never really notice that the entire production is imbued with noise problems. When the piece is done, they still don't notice it because, yep, they listen to it in their noise-infected studio. So let us post rule number one. Ready? Here it is.

To create music you must be able to hear your sounds. Doh! OK, I can see you dudes rolling your eyes. Some of you have bought the hype that you need $2,000 studio monitors to do this. Yes. Studio monitors are important, but even if you have the best monitors in the world you are still going to have major problems if you cannot clearly and totally hear what is coming out of them! So let us be clear. The number one enemy to good sound is the noise in your room, coming from the very devices you make music with. The louder your room is, the louder you have to monitor your music, the faster your ears will fatigue in a session and the greater the likelihood you may damage your hearing after years of constant, relentless exposure to high sound pressure levels. On the other hand, with low ambient noise in a room, you can find a lower comfortable volume level at which to work. This saves the ears a lot of wear and tear and you can work longer, and do those major projects that require successive all night sessions.