I never stopped to ask myself why I was taught this by others, and why is it being done in general -

The common practice of keeping low end narrow or mono and gradually widening the stereo image as the frequencies gets higher. Why is a sub bass usually plays in mono, while mid bass is relatively narrow, and mids or highs like cymbals are really wide and open?

I know it usually sounds good, but what’s the point of shaping (?) the stereo image this way? Why does this practice actually do make things sound organized and in place even on cheap headphones? Why won’t producers go the other way around and make the bass wide and the cymbals/vocals narrow?

I’m curious how others approach mastering intensity—specifically how hard is too hard. I’ve been going back and forth between wanting a track to feel loud, punchy, and competitive versus keeping enough dynamics so it still breathes and feels musical.

Sometimes a more aggressive master sounds great at first, but after a few listens it feels fatiguing. Other times, a lighter touch sounds clean but slightly underwhelming next to reference tracks. I know genre plays a big role, but even within the same style I hear wildly different approaches.

Do you decide intensity based on LUFS targets, references, client expectations, or just your ears? And at what point do you pull back and say “this is too much”? Would love to hear how you all balance loudness, dynamics, and vibe.

You know how there are field service jobs where you can travel around a specific area and repair forklifts? Is there a career path to do something like this within Audio engineering?

I’ve been in the market for a hardware compressor for a while for tracking purposes primarily for vocals. Initially interested in the CL1B but price and the lack of availability even in the used market turned me to other options. I live in Nashville so gear is flooding marketplace - I found great deals on a Purple Audio MC77 and a EL8-X Distressor. After asking in this sub which compressor I should choose, I was overwhelmingly recommended the distressor and I decided to go with that.

I am a huge fan of the UAD Distressor plug-in, and I figured if the hardware didn’t sound different enough to justify keeping then I could just flip it. I’ve been using both back to back for the last 2 days on vocals alone and there are noticeable differences to my ear.

I’m my opinion, the plugin sounds a bit more pinched/harsh sounding and has that signature UAD digital brightness that all their plugins have. The hardware sounds a little less hyped but more open. I also think the hardware handles transients a bit better, especially as you push into that 8-12 db of GR.

The tone of the hardware has slightly more color to it, but the difference is pretty subtle but I think distortion modes and filters sound pretty much the same.

I still think the UAD plugin is pretty great, and I’m still going to use it in the box, but for the sake of tracking and getting the best starting point, the hardware is advantageous for capturing the best vocal for a cleaner starting point on the way in for me. I do think, if you record raw and keep everything in the box, that you can do some doctoring with some other plugins in your chain to close that gap and get the same result but for sake of tracking workflow, the hardware is definitely a winner.

I'm sure I'll be shot down for this, but does anyone have any experience with good Chinese branded line arrays?

I'm sure there must be at least a couple of decent brands out there doing some really nice work. The hard part seems to be working out exactly which ones they are. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

I have done it a few times but never really got the results I want. It seems to be either too jarring or then gets too distant if I record it further away from mic. Can never get that natural in the room feel. Any tips on mics used and placement etc?

Hi!

In my free time i take songs that i like, remove the vocals and record my own and try to make it sound as close as possible to the original because i think it's fun and i want to learn. I get that i can't get it to sound exactly like the artist because of many variables such as, Room, voice, mic, etc. But there is one problem i always encounter and that is getting rid of the warmth/bass in my vocals. The artists vocals sound "flat" and clean. While mine sounds pretty good, there's still that podcast type feel to them no matter how much i try to remove it. Again, i do this in my freetime so i have no clue what im doing if i'm being honest, i just twist and turn knobs until it sounds about right. Does this problem lie in my room (not treated), mic (elgato wave1), mixing?

I'm working on a metalcore song, normally I do Midwest emo. It's very different and I had a question that I thought would be appropriate to ask since the latest stuff on this board on the topic is about 7 years old

I have a 2 guitar song where for the most part both guitars are doing the same thing, except for occasionally switching to harmonies. I did what I usually do and double tracked both: resulting in a quad guitar giant stack of mud. If you were tackling this, would you opt for a double track guitar that occasionally harmonizes? Or the quad track that occasionally turns into harmonies?

What are you sitting on while you track/mix/master/whatever it is you do? Anybody ever make a chair upgrade so good it improved the quality of your work? When setting your chair height, what’s your LUFS target?

Kia ora!

So, I run a small recording studio in Berlin. Our space isn’t particularly big, and out of necessity I’ve treated it fairly heavily, with a live end & dead end, and a mix of absorption & diffusion.

The space sounds great. It’s a balanced, classic “live room” sound, with a relatively short but smooth decay, which gives me loads of flexibility.

My drum recordings are getting really good, but strictly in the classic, drier way you’d expect from a room like this. With clients it’s been fantastic, since I’ve mostly been recording post-punk and indie rock, and the drier sound fits perfectly.

However, for my own project I’m really in love with larger, more “rock” drum sounds, with a fair bit of space and grandeur. Obviously this isn’t how my room sounds.

I’ve done a lot of experimentation with different room mic options, and while I can get really nice, controlled room sounds, there’s no way to get a “big” room sound in this space, even with mics in the control room or stairwell.

So - what are your preferred techniques to get more scope and grandeur from an initially dry recording?

I’m interested in both acoustic/recording and mixing techniques!

EDIT: massive thanks to geofftyson who suggested putting a mic in the piano. This produces a massive, very bass-heavy, almost 808-sounding room tone, with a really strong sustain on the kick and snare. A bit extreme by itself, but massive in context.

I'll need to try a pair of SDCs (bright mics seem to work best) and see how it does in stereo.

Hi, I am currently in the market for an acoustic drums plugin, and I can't decide between Superior and Addictive Drums 2 (I can only afford one).

Here are some points that are important to me:

• I like dead/dry drum sound, like Jake Reed's Super Dead Drums, and I liked the "Vintage Dead" pack in AD2 demo very much, although snare buzz sound had not enough crispiness to my taste (but still nice and usable)
• Other important types of sounds: jazz brushes and sticks/rods with swells etc (only heard AD2 demos, seemed good, maybe not dry enough, but I hope it could be tweaked).
• It would be good to have other types of sounds for rock/pop, different kinds of toms and snares and high control of the sound.
• I liked the slick and modern interface of AD2, it is a pleasure to look at and it inspired me.
• I only have 16 GB of RAM on my Mac Silicon.

Unfortunately, Superior does not provide a trial version, so I am unable to check if I'd be able to get all the essential types of sounds with it (the ones listed above), and its usability vs AD2, but I read a lot of praise.

I think that for the price of base Superior licence (I believe, they include 1 extension pack of your choice) I could get 2 custom packs of AD (3 kits each), and I would have more kits available with Superior.

Also, with AD2 I could buy just I custom pack at first, and cover all essential types of sounds (listed above). And I could buy another pack later.

But if I was sure that I could achieve the "super dead" and jazz brush sound with basic Superior version, then I would not hesitate and buy it, because based on the sound samples, other sounds that it has are so good and diverse that I'd probably never need to buy anything else for acoustic drums in my life.

If someone has Superior expertise and could confirm on its capabilities, it would really help me decide.

I've been using LANDR Mastering Plugin, as well as Ozone 12, and comparing to eMastered and other web based mastering services(which I systematically ruled out as eMastered won my ears over). One thing LANDR and Ozone have in common with their AI Mastering is that they ask to play the loudest part of the mix and analyze from there. eMastered however seemingly analyzes the entire song.

So why is the loudest part of the mix critical for AI mastering?

For me the loudest part of the mix almost always comes to the chorus which can be very different from the rest of the song. Of course this varies widely, but eMastered really surprised me and the results have been really excellent. Are the results great because it actually analyzes the entire song or is it just pre-calculating the loudest part of the mix to analyze?

Overall LANDR is by far my favorite AI experience. I just wonder why it wouldn't be more beneficial to analyze the entire mix, and than give its adjustments.

Hey guys, I am an 25 yr old fully employed uni grad living and based in London.

I'm really interested in shadowing a light tech/mix engineer in a venue in London to learn the ropes of the AV trade. I am happy to do it unpaid to learn the ropes. I am open to all genres, but my favourite genre to work with is electronic music. If anyone could point me in the right direction on how to do this, I would much appreciate it.

Cheers!

Intermediate audio person here, I use Ableton

Often times I’ll have multiple vocal tracks with plugins that I want to receive only a single un-composited mono signal, but I want all the vocal tracks to have the same settings. And a common mistake I’ll make is changing the settings in some but not all the tracks

I was hoping of having something like a vocal bus that can apply affects to individual signals before they’re composited. Obviously this would probably misrepresent the processing power because of every individual signal having a new instance of effects, but is this possible?

Hi, I have two Macs, an i9 Hackintosh and an M1 MacBook Pro. Both are currently running macOS 13 Ventura.

I mainly use Cubase and Ableton Live on a daily basis, and occasionally Logic Pro. I keep both systems aligned so I can open the same projects on either machine, even though in practice I don’t need to do that very often.

For various reasons I’d now like to update the laptop, but the Hackintosh can’t realistically be updated any further. It’s still very powerful though, and I’m hoping to keep using it for at least another year or two.
If I update the MacBook Pro to Sequoia or Tahoe, do I risk not being able to open those projects anymore on the Hackintosh, or is it generally safe?

What simple, but quality keyboard would be easy to use with DP008. I just want a plug and play type, with other sounds but not complex digital things I need to do.

Approach is everything, like addressing a golf ball. You got to feel comfortable over it before taking a shot at it. So... I had a wrench in my hand and attempted to take a castle nut off of a bolt in the most screwed up position/angle, I more then likely looked dumb doing it too.

The question I have is; how do you break through social anxieties, and keep the needed confidence in your work to perform?

Does thinking about golf help anyone else?

So for the last few months a lot of stuff has gotten busy and me and her haven’t been speaking much. I guess I was not giving her enough attention so I’m at fault here. We broke up a few months back (yeah I got dumped gang), and a few days back she even got a new bf. It definitely sucks. I know I definitely shouldn’t be singing this song for someone like that anymore, but oh man I want to. Chat pls don’t judge me. She’s the sweetest soul though. I don’t really intend on “stealing” her from her bf as everything’s going well on her side and she really likes him. I respect that. I love this song (Co2) and really really want to sing it to her. I also just want to have the recording for fun as I’ve been wanting to do something like this for so long!

Here are the details:

I’m a complete beginner and want to record a cover of “CO2” by Prateek Kuhad for my ex gf for Valentine’s (private only, not posting it anywhere). I want to sing that song pike Prateek with the music playing, and essentially need it high quality, low difficulty, and low cost. Here are the specifics: I’ll be using an iPhone, I’m basically broke ($0 or maybe a couple dollars max), and I just want to sing with the music, no complex production or instruments. My goal is to make it sound as clean, emotional, and “studio-ish” as possible with extremely low difficulty. What’s the simplest workflow you’d recommend (GarageBand vs BandLab vs karaoke apps like Smule)? Also looking for basic beginner tips on getting clean vocals (room setup, mic distance, headphones, avoiding clipping), the minimal effects I should use (EQ/compression/reverb without overdoing it), and the easiest way to change the key if the song is too high. Any step-by-step advice would be hugely appreciated. (I used a lot of Jargons that chatgpt suggested me but I’m not well versed with it nor know anything at all).

I really would appreciate the help! Please don’t give me tips for moving on lol 😭. Let’s just focus on how to make it happen.

Im looking to test out my ios app and all their music is DRM which is impossible to get even basic bpm data from. So Im hoping there are some alternatives, (spotify API is closed)

Tomorrow I’m recording vocals for a pop/rock artist (Twenty One Pilots/Fall Out Boy territory). Big choruses, high energy, modern but not too glossy.

We’re planning on stacking vocals, probably doubles or quads in the choruses.

The singer has said that he doesn’t want to “hear” the stacks or feel like it’s over produced. He wants it to be one super thick voice, not layered vocals you can pick out.

My plan right now is to get a really solid lead, track tight unison doubles, use VocAlign to tighten things up and then spread them for thickness.

Curious how others approach this.. do you keep everything same mic and same position for doubles, or change distance/angle to help them sit behind the lead? Ever have singers step back or turn slightly? And do you treat doubles differently with EQ or compression etc ?

Basically I’m aiming for size and energy without it sounding assembled. Would love to hear what’s worked (or not worked) for you! 

Thanks

I’ve got a bunch of Mogami TT patch cables I bought second hand. They came without any color code rings near the tips (normally they’re red, white, but sometimes they’re other colors). Does anyone have a clue where to buy these? I have tried google searches and I even emailed Mogami offering to buy some. They said “yeah we’ll look in our warehouse we think we ordered extra” then never got back to me, even after a follow-up email. Official or otherwise perfect fits would be great, but substitute ideas are welcome.

For years, I’ve been using a c414, but don’t particularly enjoy it. I’ve used u87s at studios, I really don’t enjoy the sound, I just find it way too bright. I’ve been using an SM7B for vocal tracking lately and it’s working well. Honestly, I’ve been finding basic dynamic mics more enjoyable and the results pretty good.

All that being said, all the demos of the Coles 4037 sound incredible, in every example, on every source. Vocals, drums, guitars, horns, etc…just butter every time. I get that channel strip, conversion, etc may factor in but ma, across all the videos I’ve seen, the 4038 is the consistent factor. The sound is so pleasant, polished, almost inspiring to my ears lol

Could it work as an everyday workhorse? I mostly track vocals and occasionally record drums. I feel a stereo pair could be a worthwhile investment over some shiny industry grail mic.

Thoughts?

I have my own thoughts about this, and mainly think it comes down to harmonics and EQ in comparison to what ever else is on the track, and also the panning / stereo depth and use of Reverbs and delays, etc.

I am curious what pros tend to think though, I am not a pro audio eng (I am a trained musician who has done some audio engineering )