News and views about the world of DIY music and audio recording

Welcome to diyrecording.com, featuring news and views about the world of DIY music and audio recording for musicians.

Do you ever feel like you just can’t wait to get the update to your favourite DAW software? I know many Logic users feel that way right now, but this feeling doesn’t apply to them only!

I was reading through some forums the other day and ran across a post criticizing people for dreaming about Logic Pro 8. The post said (I’m paraphrasing) “Do you really need an upgrade? Have you already mastered all the features in Logic Pro 7?” To be fair, many amazing recordings have been made using much less than any of us would stand for now. Thinking about using Pro Tools on a 66 MHz PowerMac using OS 7 makes me shudder! But really, do we need to know every inch of our software? There are lots of features for synchronizing video and printing notation that I hardly will — if ever — use. Bring on the new loop recording modes, software synths and plugins. That’s the fun stuff, and I’m willing to pay to upgrade to get it.

Finally, there are the bugs. Every piece of software has glitches. Usually they get fixed one by one in the free decimal upgrades (you know, v5.0 to v5.1 to v5.2 and so on). But sometimes they stay. Sometimes they make it past full number upgrades and more decimals. That’s when we get frustrated and hope the software developer finally fixes it in the next big revision.

Maybe I just make up reasons to buy new software. Hey, if it makes me happy and feel more productive, that’s okay with me. -mc

Ah, the ubiquitous CD. I remember my very first CD – Ravel’s Bolero, given to me by my great-aunt Denise. (In the 80s, classical music on CD was big.) I also remember she had thrown away the jewel case, thinking it was just excess packaging.

The compact disc recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, which makes me feel old. But never mind that. Ever wonder how CDs work?

By now, pretty much everyone gets that digital information is stored as a bunch of 1s and 0s. The CD is a pretty elegant way to store all those 1s and 0s. Here’s how it works:

• The underside of a CD (the part that the laser in your CD player reads) is really just a bunch of tiny microscopic pits covered with a reflective layer, which is in turn covered with a clear plastic layer for protection.
• When you put your CD in a CD player and hit play, the CD player sends a laser beam up towards the CD. The beam travels through the clear plastic layer, then reflects off the reflective coating that covers the microscopic pits. It bounces back to a scanner in the CD player.
• The scanner records the time it takes for the beam to return. A beam that bounces off a pit takes a tiny tiny tiny bit more time to bounce back than it would take to bounce off a non-pit area (think about it – it has farther to go). The scanner catches this minute difference, and thus recognizes “pits” vs. “non-pits.”
• In fact, each “edge” of a pit represents a 1, and the non-edge surface in between represents a 0 or series of 0s. While sound information is encoded digitally as 1s and 0s, this is how the 1s and 0s are actually encoded onto the surface of the CD. (This also explains why CDs can actually be used to encode any digital information – i.e. computer software, digital photos, etc.)
• The information gathered by the scanner is then translated into electrical current in order to reproduce the sound of the recording.

Is this stuff taught in grade school yet? -kf

Mixers are so 1998. Actually, I don’t really know when they became obsolete, but it has certainly been years. I haven’t used a mixer on a session since 2003 when I moved my studio “inside the box.”

Mic preamps

Of course we need mic preamps. In most situations we only need one or two at a time, and many interfaces come with built in mic preamps. In addition, there are a number of companies that make very nice banks of eight of them, in a convenient rack-mount format. This is necessary when recording a drum kit or a group live-off-the-floor.

When it comes to analogue electronics you want to get the best you can afford. If your budget in $1,000 you could get:

1. A good mixer with eight mic preamps, 4-band EQ on each channel, four aux sends, four subgroups and 100mm faders on each channel, but how much of that $1,000 is invested in the mic preamp?
2. On the other hand you could buy a bank of eight mic preamps with a digital output to connect to your interface. With the only extra circuitry being the converters, you’re bound to get a better quality device for the price.

So if you need eight mic preamps, why buy a mixer that also has a lot of stuff you don’t need?

In the photo to the above right, you can see the rig I used to record some of the bedtracks for Showroom’s album. MOTU 828mkII, PreSonus DigiMax and a Line 6 Bass POD Pro. This set up is a a lot more portable than a mixer and a bass rig! And it’s especially important because we did this recording in the drummer’s bedroom.

But mixers look cool

I agree completely. If I had lots of money and lots of space I’d think it would be awesome to have an Audient ASP 8024 or TL Audio VTC. But large format options aren’t realistic for most of us. And the quality we can get from a rack setup will be noticeably better than a mixer based setup on the same budget. If you want the knobs and faders, take a look at Mackie’s MCU or Digidesign’s Command 8. Or have everything you need (and some bells and whistles you don’t) with the M-Audio Project Mix I/O or the Tascam FW1884.

Say good-bye to latency issues

I’ll use MOTU’s interfaces as the example here. They include this great software called CueMix that lets you control all the inputs on your interface before the audio signals make the trip to your computer so you can monitor your inputs with virtually no latency. Amazing. Why do so many people set up complicated systems when once again things can be done inside the box? Other interfaces from PreSonus, Apogee and RME have similar systems.

With MOTU’s system you can set up four completely different stereo mixes so you can have individual mixes for the drummer and the other performers during tracking.

If you have hardware synths or guitar amp modeling modules such as a POD, you can leave these hooked up to the inputs of your interface (like you would a mixer) and they are ready to go when you are.

Why make things complicated?

I see lots of complicated set ups in pro studios and in people’s bedrooms. It can be very frustrating working in larger systems where, by their very nature, there can be so many places for problems to occur. If you’re new to the whole recording business, don’t let someone talk you into buying a mixer. Chances are they’re just conditioned to the mixer being an integral part of the set up. But it’s not anymore. To me it’s like suggesting you should buy a stand alone CD recorder. There was a time when it made sense, but that time has passed. -mc

In a nutshell:

• Doubling is recording a second performance of the same part onto another track in order to “thicken” the sound. This is a technique that’s often used with vocals (i.e. Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John).

• Comping is combining the best sections of several different takes of the same part onto one “composite” track to create the best possible performance.

Now go impress your friends at cocktail parties with your new nerdy engineer-speak! -kf

When starting a session I always ask, “do you want to do this to a click?” Most of the time the answer is yes. When recording on a computer it is so tempting to always play to a click so you can have all the parts of your song aligned nicely on the grid. Editing is easier this way. It makes it easy to set up delays or tremolos that sync perfectly with your song. It can also kill the feel of the track if you’re not careful.

Preproduction is important here. Decide weeks (or months) in advance of recording if you want to use a click track. And spend time finding the right tempo for your songs. It’s amazing how much difference there can be between 112 BPM or 113 BPM. Many metronomes, and all DAWs I’m aware of, allow for more tempo detail than that (try 112.6534 BPM, for example).

Now that you’ve got your tempo, make sure everyone in the band practices at that tempo. This will make a world of difference when it’s time to record. It’ll also make a world of difference to your live shows.

Practicing with a click will help you improve your timing in general. This advice doesn’t just apply to drummers. It doesn’t matter what instrument you play, practicing to a click will help you perform better with a click in the studio, or without one at gig.

Electronic music aside, the click should just be a reference. The drummer should choose where the beats actually fall. Without practice playing to a click can be very awkward. You can end up listening to click more than thinking about the song, and that’s not good. Once the drums are recorded, turn off the click, and play to the drummer!

If you chose to forgo the click, practice is just as important, perhaps more so! Choosing to record without a click track is better suited to live-off-floor style recordings, where the band all play together with minimal overdubs.

A third option is to start with a click to get the tempo right off the top, and then turn it off halfway though and let the rest of the song go on feel.

Some bands are so good they don’t need a click. Some bands are so bad they can’t play to a click! Ultimately, it’s up to you. But the key is to decide before you start recording. -mc

In a nutshell:

• Mastering is the final stage before manufacturing. It’s done in order to ensure all the tracks on an album have a consistent sound. An important goal of mastering can also be to get your recording in the same “sonic ballpark” as current recordings of the same genre.
• Typically, the mastering engineer will start by listening to your 2-track mix in order to identify problem areas. S/he’ll then try to correct these problems using volume controls, EQ, and dynamic processing equipment (compressors, etc.)
• Finally, the mix gets transferred onto a format that will be accepted by the manufacturing facility and information such as start IDs and track info is encoded into the subcode.

Should you do your own mastering, or leave it to the pros? The answer is: it depends! I’ll cover this in another post… -kf

Constant listening levels during mixdown is critical, as our perception of frequency changes according to sound pressure levels. In plain English: we hear pitch differently depending on the volume.

For example, at high volume, our perception of sound frequencies may resemble this:

…whereas at lower listening levels, it’s more likely to resemble this:

So when you alter your listening level halfway through mixing, you might inadvertently overcompensate for the “missing” lows and highs. This doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t ever raise/lower the volume when mixing – just be aware! -kf