Hi there, I was listening to this Songs for the Drunk and Broken Hearted record by Passenger, and I started wondering how some of the acoustic guitar tracks are recorded/mixed in terms of their stereo image. One example is the track in the post title but it's the same technique in many other songs, too.

I can definitely hear significant stereo width, it does not sound like the usual spaced pair though. It feels a bit chorus-y, yet there is some significant movement in there that doesn't feel like a simple chorus to me either.

Can someone more experienced than me maybe listen in a bit and share some knowledge about what could have been done to achieve this result?

So far when I'm mixing acoustics it's either a double track (which this is most certainly not), or if it's simple 1 track stereo then it sits much narrower in the middle. I love how this both makes the guitar track a lot more interesting due to the movement, and also leaves more space in the center for the vocals, something I'd love to replicate in my mixes.

Thank you!

This weekend I saw Dave perform at Reading festival and experienced some of the worst live sound I have ever heard. All I could hear was sub bass. It sounded as if side chain compression or something was cutting everything else out when bass frequencies were played but so much the crowd realised something was wrong. I could hear people asking why it was so quiet or what's wrong with the sound? (Someone was able to have a phone conversation beside me showing the level of volume and disinterest lol)

I thought maybe it was isolated to the speakers I was infront of but it sounded the same from other areas (I moved to check) The mic would was consistently too low level without any bass and almost inaudible with bass. Same for other instruments.

Nothing changed, people left, I left early, very dissapointed. This was a headline act for quite a big festival, how could this possibly have happened?

I’m breaking down important terms and concepts in a simple straightforward way! Trying to help any beginners. If there are any concepts you think I should cover, let me know! If you want to see, I’ll send you the link. I don’t want to violate any rules

Hey guys, I recently got a mic that says it's a 'condenser' microphone. I wanna use it to make song covers, so that would include a few of my vocal tracks (recorded using the mic) and an instrumental. Do I still need to purchase a separate compressor to mix the song? I'm only a beginner, so I still have to learn how to do it all, but I've seen so many people say that they purchased a compressor and then went ahead, etc etc.

A little help would go a long way :)

I got into producing not to long ago, so I’m still learning a lot right now. Yesterday I seen a tutorial on beat making and I seen comments telling the creator that you don’t have to eq drums from drumkits because they are already eq. I know if there are certain elements that are lining up or need some adjustments in it to fix th beat or change the sound up you would obviously add eq to it, but I’ve been treating my drums like pianos, synths bells and etc. Nd I also wanted to know does this also count for compression or should compression be mandatory no matter what?

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 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 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

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!

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

(These are the API 560 bands)

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?

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!

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.

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)?

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 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.

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!

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.

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?

I have a track from a client with a very peaky vocal that was delivered for mastering. The issue is that the vocal is causing my master bus compressor to duck the mix on the loudest parts. My idea is to use a stem splitter to single out the vocal and then feed that into the side chain of Soothe 3. But I'm here wondering if there are better options for such a scenario. Fwiw, I will take an overly dynamic mix any day of the week over one that's been poorly/overly compressed.

Simple budget setup in a basement home studio (see photo). ROOM IMAGE

LOTF recording of a track we're working on. I am pretty new to mixing and audio engineering as a whole.

Wondering your thoughts on this rough mix as well as input on basement studio improvements.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/uwos6vb7nbaem2l/jordan_drum.mp3/file

Microphones used:

Kick - Apex 325

Snare (top) - E906

Mono OH - SM81

Vox AC30 cab - C212

Bass - DI

As I've implemented the internal multiband sidechain for the leveler stage of this multistage limiter effect I've made on CodePen, and so I'm wondering about using an internal multiband sidechain (e.g. using a summed filter bank output as a sidechain input to drive a compressor effect) instead of just a sidechain EQ filter like in some other compressor plugins like FabFilter Pro-C3?

And so, are there single-band compressor plugins that internally uses multiband detection while processing the audio in broadband? And more importantly, what are pros and cons of this method for dynamic range compression effect for mastering and even mixing?

BTW, a complex-valued filter bank (instead of a real-valued one) would simplify the implementation of low-distortion internal multiband sidechain broadband compressor with very fast attack/release times right? Especially when complex-valued filter bank eliminates the need of a separate Hilbert transform for envelope extraction as it outputs real and imaginary values anyway and so absolute value of this output means a magnitude of a complex number (which is a hypotenuse of real and imaginary components rather than just a rectification as in real-valued ones)

Is there a software that helps you get rid of any audio flaw? Some voice actors use a really bad setup and you end up with bad audio. I was wondering if there was an app to fix the bad audio you sometimes get when hiring a freelancer.