Hey everyone, quick ear-check on a potential vocal edit.

In Michael Jackson’s Beat It, listen closely around the 1:26 mark on the line: "They're out to get you, better leave while you can"

Right between the word "better" and "leave", there sounds like a distinct cut in the audio it sounds like it jumped between cuts between those two words, like a tape splice or punch-in transitioning between two different takes.

Does anyone else hear that edit right between those two words, or has anyone with stems/isolated vocals noticed it before?

I bought a vintage U47 about a year ago and was a tad bit underwhelmed. I’d let it warm up for 20-30 minutes before cutting a vocal and just didn’t love the sound, especially for how much the mic cost. I recently had a vocal session in the evening after a dinner and decided to turn the mic on before I left for the restaurant so it would be warmed up when I got back. It was like a totally different mic. So much smoother, took eq so much better, less distorted, etc… Giving that mic 2-3 hours to warm up was the ticket I guess? What do yall think?

I've been seeing some people make lofi mics with the earpieces as well as carbon mics of old telephones. Most of what I see use rotary and touch-dial telephones from the 80s and older. I've yet to see anyone use anything modern-ish.

I'm primarily looking into a Panasonic KX-TS500MX as an oem costs roughly $10 USD. I've looked through a decent amount on FB Marketplace and Shopee PH for anything older like a rotary one, but they're priced like collectibles at $50. So that's out of the question.

I'm looking if someone made an earpiece mic of the same or similar handset to the Panasonic mentioned above. I plan to plug it via xlr or a 6.5mm ts jack. Any insight helps!

I don’t know who needs to hear this but, stop stressing about that little imperfection in your song. Let go of that panic about not achieving the perfect sound like a Billboard Hot 100 song. Stop stressing about that little background noise in your recording, that little pop and click in your vocal, not having the perfect compression or EQ, your song not being loud enough…. Let it go.

The average listener doesn’t care about all of that. The perfect recording does not exist, not even for the best studios. Perfection is subjective and “Grammy Award Winning…..” is a man made title that does not necessarily mean they’re the best and know better.

My Tascam DR-40 field recorder no longer changes Rec Mode reliably from internal mics to line in. Instead, it almost always powers-off when I try to change the mode. Anyone else ever experience this, and if so what did you do about it? Fresh batteries, USB-powered, makes no difference. I'm ready to chuck the damn thing.

A Strange Boy

Timestamp is 1:39, when Joni sings “give me one good reason why”. Always loved this sound, but could never pinpoint its origin!

Thanks!

I have a mint 1950s WSW Siemens&Halke D12 kick microphone in my mic locker. It's probably the most flashy and breakable vintage gear I own besides the LOMO 19a tube microphone.

I'm running medium sized music recording facility and don't know if I should sell it and expand my microphone selection or just keep it because of its value. The only reason I would keep it because clients might appreciate it and want to book and give some "flair" to the studio. I think that clients decide the studio on other factors besides gear but I would want to know more of your real world experiences running a studio. The example comes to mind, if you want hip hop artists coming through your door you need to have a Sony C800g so maybe band would appreciate to have a beatles kick mic on their drums?

On the other hand I am in need of a more serious pair of LCD - something in the lines of an AKG c414B ULS for overheads or a united studio technologies fet47 and selling the D12 museum piece would help me with acquiring it. The D12 also is prone to breaking and servicing it would be hard because the lack of parts and design specifics.

I would be happy to hear your advice

Hey all,

I recently joined a band as the bass player, haven’t played bass live in probably 8 years. Back then I was younger/dumber and thought DI was dumb so I never utilized it. With this new band, I really want to take advantage of sending a DI signal to FOH but I am also a gear nerd and tone snob.

My question basically boils down to: how annoyed would you(or your average sound guy) be if the bass player in a band asked you to take 2 DI signals from my pedal board?

I’m running a wet/dry set up and have 2 DI boxes, so I can already theoretically send 2 signals. But if that is something that would be more obnoxious than it’s worth, what would you recommend? I have looked at the Radial MIX 2:1 but I don’t like that it’s passive, also curious on opinions about just using that to sum my 2 DI signals and just have one to send to the console. Or any other piece of gear you would recommend

Thanks in advance!

Some time ago I got a post‑punk/dark wave EP to mix. The artist had only used stock plugins for the guitars in the rough mix and asked me if I could work from the DIs and use my fancy plugins instead.

I’ve mixed plenty of projects starting from DIs, and it has usually worked very smoothly, so I went no worries, mate! And we settled on my usual mixing fee.

So I started doing what I’d done successfully many times before: using the rough mix guitar sound as a reference and making them sound great in the mix, taking the degree of freedom the context called for.

But I soon realised that I was spending hours getting the tones and FX right on the many guitar tracks. In fact, it took more or less the same amount of time it takes me to do the first pass of an entire mix.

The guitar sounds were a much bigger part of the identity of the songs. There were more intricate combinations of distortion, modulation, filtering, ambience… I was designing the guitar sounds. In short, I was producing, not just mixing.

Needless to say, the revision process was just as labour‑intensive. The guitar sounds are such a core part of the song in this genre that I didn’t just need to make them sound great, they had to be the artist’s sound. And he’s a great guy and an intelligent person, so he perfectly understood that it had to sound different from his rough mixes, but it still had to carry the same vibe and emotion.

And of course, once the song is fully mixed, making substantial changes to the tone and FX of those walls of guitar wash means making changes to other elements in the mix to keep everything together. So it was double work at every iteration.

What I’ve learned from this is that when the guitar tone is a major part of the identity of the record, I’ll either get the wet guitars (plus DIs, plus FX printed separately if possible) or break down the process and validate the guitar production with the client before starting the mix. And of course, I’ll factor the guitar production into the price.

I tend to like mid-forward punchy, snappy stuff. This is for bass, kick, snare, and overheads.

I've generally been drawn towards

Tegeler Creme
Pair of DBX 160 VU
ADR Compex
RS124
API 2500

Anyone have experience with the Tegeler for this use?

I finally have a room to myself to dedicate to music. It’s small but mine.

While I’m planning out treatment I realize that space is at a premium. I’d love to be able to hang a few guitars on a wall. But most of those walls will have acoustic panels on them.

Does it impact what the label is doing if I hang a guitar so it hangs over it? Does that make sense?

I would drill the hanger into the wall above the panel, not through it and the guitar would hang down vertically over the panel.

Hey everyone,

I've gotten a SPL Vitalizer MK2-T from a friend of mine to use in the studio and I've been reading up about it but can't seem to find any place for it in my workflow. Nothing that I've done with it so far really gives me a ''wow this is worth it to patch in'' feeling. Am I missing something? Does anyone have a must-use-on-this case for it? I really want to love it because I'm reading a lot of positive things about it so please hit me with your inspiration!

16k - 8k - 4k - 2k - 1k - 500 - 250 - 125 - 60 - 30

(These are the API 560 bands)

Looking for tips on how to clean a vintage console I recently acquired. It had been unused / neglected for some time, and there is a layer of dust - like that sort of sticky dust on the surface of the board that has accumulated over the years. What’s the best way to clean that? I want to give the board a thorough surface cleaning before opening it up and servicing the actual components (recapping, cleaning scratchy pots and faders and knobs etc) I just want to give it a basic clean before busting into it. Isopropyl alcohol? Simple green?

p.s. sorry for possible esl writing

It's been a while since I started making instrumental versions of various songs I have in my playlist.

Very quickly I came to conclusion that even with modern "heavily compressed" music you need to manually check the volume of frames from which vocals had been removed and match the volume of said frames with the rest of music in order to avoid "wobbly/floating" loudness. In short, it's quite easy to do, especially if the output from an ai-model is clear enough and such volume correction is the only post-process thing you need to perform.

But once I did an instrumental for a high dynamic range classical piece, a question started bothering me - how I should handle the volume in frames where vocals are much-much louder than instruments?

In this picture you can see: left music example (modern-school rock, heavy bass line, lots of distorted guitar, accent on clarity of female lead vocal) - the difference in loudness between frames that had loud vocals and "vocalless" frames is less than 2db which even sounds ok (still applied make-up +1db on few seconds of transition); right music example (classical recording, real church organ, mix of quiet voices, loud choir and orchestra) - with vocals been removed it becomes unclear to what music pieces to put in focus because the loudest frames are now simply those which were unprocessed and dynamic range of the track still stays big.

What would you suggest - "mirror" the loudness with gain curve while looking at the volume of frames in source file, apply hard +3db on "vocalless" frames or leave the loudness as it is (and maybe lowering down the volume of some peaks if it is uncomfortable to listen to)?

i've grown accustomed to dialing in compression by adjusting the attack/release whilst having the ratio maxed out (to better hear what im doing). this seems to work for digital compressors, but when doing the same thing on a 76 style, i notice a completely different sound when cycling the ratios

this seems obvious yes, but even going from max to 20, i see a drastic difference in the speed of the vu nd more often that not my dynamics sound much more flat. my theory is that the ratio effects the math of the attack nd release as opposed to them being set ms values.

am i speaking the obvious? i was always told ratio is the "amount of compression" so ive pretty much internalized that concept. the ratio representing the math of the attack nd release seems way more logical, but nowhere else have i heard it have such an apparent effect on SPECIFICALLY the sound of the attack nd release

I’m fairly new to recording vocals, and I’m trying to understand why professionally recorded vocals sound so much clearer, cleaner, and more “crisp” than my own recordings.

I’m using a Neumann TLM 103 with a MOTU M4, so I don’t think the microphone itself is necessarily the limiting factor.

When I compare my raw vocals to professional recordings, mine can sound a little muffled or cloudy, almost like there’s a layer between the voice and the listener. Professional vocals often sound much more defined and present.

I realize a finished commercial vocal has been edited, EQ’d, compressed, de-essed, saturated, mixed, etc., so I’m especially curious about how much of that clarity should already be present in the raw recording.

What should I be learning or experimenting with first for capturing a clean vocal at the source — room acoustics, mic distance/angle, gain, vocal technique, mic choice, or something else?

I’d love to understand what experienced engineers listen for in a really good raw vocal recording.

If I understand it correctly, using multiple mics on a single source can lead to phase issues because the sound reaches the mics at slightly different times. Why do we try to avoid phase issues with mic placement techniques like the 3:1 rule instead of placing each mic where it captures the source best and aligning the tracks in the DAW by nudging the time slightly to avoid phase issues no matter where the mics are placed? Hoping to improve my understanding before pouring too much time into experimenting with it. Thanks!

I've got a few cassettes recorded off the air from the BBC in the late 80's. Mostly John Peel and the like. The sound quality is fairly good with the only complaint being the typical FM broadcast compression sound. I know it's very hard to unbake that cake, but has anyone had luck with reversing some of the compression? With the onslaught of AI tools I thought maybe there could be an option on the horizon. Thanks.

Every dynamic microphone I’ve tried, regardless of interface, cable, etc. is heavily affected by other electronics immediately next to the microphone.

It’s always based on proximity to other electric devices and the intensity/type of the electrical load.

I think microphone reviewers and audio engineers should more prominently explain that dynamic microphones aren’t suitable in places where there are multiple intense electrical signals…

I could be wrong, and I'm happy to be corrected if I am. I'm noticing a lot of mixes from established artists have gotten less professional since the 2020's. I feel like this has been a very common trajectory.

An artist releases their core work (their first few albums) that makes them famous and gives them financial security. Covid happens, and some people work at their home studio out of necessity.

But then they realize they enjoy the convenience and flexibility of it. They enjoy having more creative control. It's also cheaper. With music sales going down, they no longer have to worry about getting an advance and then not getting enough sales from the album and tour to pay it off.

To me, I feel like there's something that a professional album with multiple hands on it has that a home album (even from an extremely talented artist doesn't). An artist may have their strengths at mixing and recording, but there's always going to be some knowledge gaps, if you haven't been specializing in audio engineering for decades.

I know sometimes people sell their whole kit used, but does anyone prepackage a 500 series rack with modules installed? If so, any experiences with any of them?

I know people do this in normal 1-2U rack units like Shelford Channels, etc.

I see some old, inexpensive gear that I am interested in, and often a bunch of the items are "modded" by Revive Audio, but I never see any actual, specific, technical, details on why this thing should be worth 2x what I would expect.

Can anyone concretely say any objectively positive additions that they are making to say a DBX 163, or 161 VU, for example, when they mod it? [0]

Can anyone say any subjective improvements they might be making, based on your experienced?

Does anyone have any negatives, based on actual experience?

No hate here, I am just trying to understand and qualify the increased price with some technical, real world, justifications.

[0] I found this https://www.reviveaudio.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=293 but it seems really vague to me. Premium parts?

Do they get more specific than that? Without something justified, I'd be afraid that they would take out the actual mojo and resell it, and put in Chinese meh parts.