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Month: November 2012

Coming soon: Aggressive Drums Recording Guide

Way back in 2007 I wrote about the FaderWear Guides: Aggressive Drum Recording. Recently the author announced an updated eBook is coming, the cost will be pay-what-you-want.

Here’s the trailer and a quick tutorial for recording with just 2 mics.

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Video: Building your own kits in Geist

Geist is a sampling and looping tool from FXpansion. It’s great for chopping up loops, sequencing and so much more. I’ve been playing around with…

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How to get your band ready for the studio

Rarely do you come across a video that really grabs your attention and touches you deeply. Funny and absolutely true. This video is essential viewing…

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10 Reasons we need commercial studios

Over on KVRAudio Chris Halaby is regularly publishing great articles and interviews to his Industry Focus column. His latest post is a list of 10…

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Guest Post: How a Vinyl Record Is Made

Barry Gardner operates SafeandSound Mastering based in London, UK a studio proficient in mastering dance music.

How Vinyl Is Made

More vinyl is being pressed in 2012 than in any year since since the advent of digital music release formats such as the CD. There are numerous reasons why some artists are choosing to release a limited run of vinyl as part of their music distribution strategy. Some people love the warm sound of vinyl which is in part down to the medium and the methods of mastering for the format itself. Many fans have a soft spot for the sheer physical size of the artwork on a 12 inch release and find the vinyl version a highly desirable and collectable end product.

Vinyl_by_RocknRollwoman
Vinyl by RocknRollwoman

Vinyl is a very physical medium and the reproduction of sound is largely mechanical which means that when mastering for vinyl great care has to be taken by the engineers in order for the music to translate well to the format. We have to remember that the format was developed way before the first digital look ahead limiter. This means unlimited versions of the tracks must be supplied in order to get the best possible sound quality (normally at 24 bit resolution). With a digital file it is possible to use extreme limiting, very wide stereo images and any desired EQ curves. Vinyl is not the same and not a forgiving medium and unless fairly strict sonic guidelines are adhered to the end results can be lackluster or in the worst scenario not play at all.

Because of the resurgence of vinyl in the music distribution chain I thought it would be a good read to provide the basics of how vinyl is manufactured.

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Sennheiser’s Audio for Video Tutorials

For the last couple months Sennheiser has been producing some really excellent tutorials on using audio equipment for video production. So far they’ve covered Shotgun…

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