Archives for February 2020
Internet-based Audio and Video
This article profiles Audiovideoweb.com, a company dedicated to providing practical solutions for businesses in creating web-based multimedia content. It's certainly no secret lately that audio and video are being used on the internet in increasing amounts -- and in a variety of ways. We've all heard the hype over the MP3 format and it's use for music, but the potential of various formats of audio and video on the net have created many new opportunities outside the music industry and that's what this article is about. This technology can be used for many types of multimedia presentations that previously may not...
Achieving Your Best Studio Vocal – Part One
The voice is the signature of a band. The songs will change, the musical style may even vary, but: They know the band by the singer's sound. That's not to say there aren't other instruments that can have their own signature sounds in a band. That will make the group even stronger. But the majority of listeners will not buy an album or go to a concert of a band that has a great guitar sound and yet terrible vocals. Many years ago I was ushered into the recording studio by several voice students who were running into trouble while...
Achieving Your Best Studio Vocal – Part Two
Signal Effects: The main signal processing used in headset mixes is EQ, compression, reverb and possibly digital delay. These effects should not be recorded onto tape but can be added during the mix. If used properly per your needs and taste, adding at least a bit of reverb and correct EQing of your voice to your headset mix can make a huge difference in how you sound to yourself and add ease to your singing. How you sound to yourself as you sing in the studio is paramount in supporting and achieving a good performance. If you don't like how...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part One
Welcome to the first installment of my column on setting up and getting the most out of a home recording studio. We've left the world of tape machines and mixing consoles behind and put the entire studio inside an ordinary computer. My goal for this little slice of cyberspace is to provide, on an ongoing basis, a discussion of the process of recording in an all-digital environment. We're going to start with the basics of setting up a "virtual" studio, the hardware and software and various options therein. Over the next few installments I'll be covering the techniques of recording and...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Two
Welcome to the second installment of the Virtual Studio! We're going to pick up where part one left off and cover the remaining hardware you need to get the PC ready for digital recording... the soundcard. The soundcard is responsible for converting audio signals to digital information to be recorded, and conversely, it turns the results of your recording editing and mixing back into audio and puts it into the real world again. These days pretty much all the new home computers are sold with some type of sound card for at least basic audio capabilities. Among these commonly found...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Three
Welcome to the third installment of the Virtual Studio! In the first two issues we covered the hardware needed to put together a PC based studio. What I'm going to get into now is the software side of the equation. There is so much software out now that deals with recording and/or editing that the range of choices is enormous but we can break them down into a few categories and then talk about the features that we really need to do a given job. Since the focus of this article is on the PC as a home studio and...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Four
Welcome once again to the Virtual Studio. This is the fourth instalment in the series and I'm going to back up just a bit to cover a few items in more detail. We discussed soundcards previously and based on some of the email I've received there are a couple points I would like to make as well as a couple products that It might be helpful to mention. My first recommendation for anyone buying all the components with the intention of recording high quality audio is to get an audio card intended for the job such as the Gina from Event...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Five
Welcome to the Fifth installment of the Virtual Studio! In this issue we're going to walk through the process of tracking a song with attention to the various options available in the digital audio and MIDI environment. In the old days of tape the first consideration was usually how many tracks were available and then deciding how many tracks could be used for the drums and the various instruments and vocals. If you had 24 tracks or more you had the luxury of tracking the drums with as much separation as possible and leaving them on individual tracks so that...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Seven
Well, it's a new year and a new century and high time I wrote a new installment of this column! Over the last few months I have received many emails and have responded to as many as I can. The questions I have been getting have shaped the subject matter of this segment. What I am realising is that there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what it really takes to record at home on a computer and how this all works in the real world. When I started the column I originally intended it to be read...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Six
This is the Sixth instalment of the Virtual Studio and as I mentioned last time I'm going to go into detail about a couple aspects that are specific to digital recording. How the digital domain changes our use of EQ and compression. This is something I have heard very little discussion about and I welcome any input from other engineers and musicians in this area. As I have probably alluded to in the past, I first started recording in the days before the all digital gear was available and so I adapted my engineering practices to the new way of...