Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio (Sound On Sound Presents...)

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Find out where you don't need to spend money, as well as how to make a limited budget really count. Figure 4.2 The top graph here shows four equal-loudness contours. One of the things they show is that our sensitivity to frequency extremes increases with listening level—for instance, moving from the bottom to the top contour (in other words turning the volume up by 60dB) has roughly the same effect on the perceived tonality as the EQ plot shown at the bottom. Spectrum Analysis and Metering Another set of clues about your bass balance (and indeed your mix’s overall tonality) can be gleaned from a spectrum analyzer, and there are now so many decent freeware models that there’s no excuse not to use one—RN CHAPTER 16 Mixing with Reverb..........................................................231 CHAPTER 17 Mixing with Delays...........................................................255 CHAPTER 18 Stereo Enhancements.......................................... 261 CHAPTER 19 Buss Compression, Automation, and Endgame..................273 CHAPTER 20 Conclusion.......................................................................301 APPENDIX 1 Who’s Who: Selected Discography....................................303 APPENDIX 2 Quote References............................................................321 APPENDIX 3 Picture Credits.................................................................329 INDEX...................................................................................................331 A Jury of Your Peers Nervous about playing your mixes to other people? Well, grow up and get over it! I’m not trying to be macho for the sake of it here, it’s just that mixing on a professional level is about taking responsibility for your output, and that means playing it unflinchingly for all and sundry. By the time you’ve worked your way through the mixing process, your own ears will probably be the least

Audio metering may be built in, visually displaying the signal levels for various channels as well as for the group, monitor, and master mix signals. For a person with a limited budget who is willing to put in the time to work through Mike’s lesson plan, Mixing Secrets is an invaluable resource. It is a book designed to scale with your budget. As you become successful enough to justify more expensive equipment, Mixing Secrets will be there to help you make the most out of your time and effort. Additional value is derived by providing a firm and comprehensive foundation of mixing fundamentals. After reading Mixing Secrets, books and articles on more advanced topics become easier to grasp, even if they are written poorly. Ok, one of the difficulties in reviewing this book is based on the title. I’ve learned, after buying many books with similar titles, that it is usually a marketing gimic. However, it’s also subjective. If you’re brand new to the mixing side of things, then indeed this whole book could contain hundreds of secrets. But if you’re already fairly versed, not so much.Figure 2.8 Top-of-the-range headphones, such as the Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro (left ) and Sony MDR7509HD (right ) shown here, are a good investment for most small-studio operators, especially when budget is limited. Flutter Echo Although the main resonance problems in studio rooms are at low frequencies, you can also get higher-frequency resonances too, often referred to as flutter echoes. The simplest test for these is clapping your hands in the sweet spot and listening for any hint of unnatural metallic-sounding buzz as the sound dies away in the room. If you’re suspicious, then another patch of acoustic foam on one or both of the offending parallel surfaces should put an end to it with minimal fuss because high frequencies are so easily absorbed. As a project studio operator, Mixing Secrets has been the single resource I can point to that got me over the hump and into the territory where I can begin seriously competing with established professionals - all while remaining on a humble budget. Mike Senior gives the novice the fundamental information necessary to understand and execute all basic mixing tasks as well as many advanced mixing ones. Where an advanced technique is not included the fundamental knowledge to understand it has nonetheless been provided. In other words, as a result of working through this book, articles on arcane mixing techniques become easy to digest, even if they aren’t described in the book. Part 3 Balance processing strategies in each instance. Lead vocals, acoustic guitars, and pianos, for example, are often of much more sonic importance during sparser verses than during more densely populated choruses. Finally, the book is straightforward in the sense that Mr. Senior seems to be free of faddish biases or particular hardware/software fetishes. He's not selling anything other than better mixes. He is simply devoted to telling his readers what works.

For a number of other monitoring requirements, however, there are more modest systems that can actually outperform even a decent small-studio nearfield rig, simply by virtue of being better adapted to specific duties. This chapter introduces some of these additional systems, specifically the ones you can’t afford to do without if you’re seriously planning on competing with the big guns. Let’s start by looking at the most powerful of these, as epitomized by one of the most famous mixing speakers in studio history, the Auratone 5C Super Sound Cube.Amsterdam • Boston • Heidelberg • London • New York • Oxford • Paris San Diego • San Francisco • Singapore • Sydney • Tokyo Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier Professional recording engineer and regular Mix Rescue author Mike Senior has just written his first book, Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio. The book is published by Focal Press — the same publisher that brought us Bob Katz’s highly regarded Mastering Audio and Eddy Brixen’s Audio Metering, which we reviewed last month — and was written with the aim of helping small‑studio owners achieve professional‑sounding results using affordable equipment. Figure 3.4 The effect of DC (0Hz) on a mix file’s waveform. Notice how the positive waveform peaks are clipping, even though the negative waveform peaks still have headroom to spare.

Using Nearfield Monitors Chapter 1 usually be as obviously apparent in their own right when you’re listening to a real-world mix, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, and the ripples they put into the frequency response treacherously undermine your ability to judge both the tone and level balance of critical sounds in the midrange—things like lead vocals, snare drums, and guitars. Studio Recording & Mixing Services: Bring some specialist knowledge on board for your next production to improve the quality of your results, and see for yourself how successfully big-studio techniques can be adapted for even modest studio setups. As you might guess from Mike’s Mix Rescue and The Mix Review magazine columns, he specialises in mixing work, but he can also offer advice and hands-on guidance at the recording stage to avoid many common mixdown problems at source, as his many Session Notes articles demonstrate.Preproduction & Programming. The music is written and arranged. Fundamental synth/sampler parts may be programmed at this stage and musicians rehearsed in preparation for recording sessions. Clashing Timbres A common problem in less accomplished arrangements is when two sounds clash in some way, usually by operating in the same register. “The aim is to get all the sounds working together so you don’t get any nasty surprises at the mixing stage,” explains Steve Power, sharpening his scythe. “If two things sound crap together, you probably shouldn’t be trying to [fix that] at the mix. If they sound crap, just don’t put them together in the first place, because you probably won’t rescue them.”12 Eliminating a part completely may not be an option, however, in which case this Fleetwood Mac anecdote may provide some inspiration. “When we were recording Rumours,” recalls Ken Caillat, “[keyboardist Christine McVie] would ask, ‘How does everything sound, Ken?’… Sometimes I’d say ‘You know Chris, I’m having trouble hearing the keyboard and the guitar.’ The first time I said that I didn’t really know what I meant, but she said ‘Oh, yeah, you’re right Ken, we’re playing in the same register. Why don’t I invert the keyboard down a third and get out of [the guitarist]’s way?’ Which is what she did, and it worked brilliantly!”13 The less money you’re going to spend on monitors, the more you should approach ported models armed with holy water and cloves of garlic! If you’re using ported monitors, work out their porting frequency and make a note of the pitch it corresponds to. n Find yourself a level meter that shows both peak and average levels, and also a high-resolution spectrum analyzer. Use them while mixing and referencing so that you get to know how they respond in practice. This is the second book that I bought for my home studio, and I have read it cover to cover more than a few times. The book continues to provide useful information and references and is always close by when I am working on a new mix.

great way to start building your knowledge. The two books cover just about everything you need to get your home studio up and running. Book Review of ‘Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio’ by Mike Senior Figure 3.2 Spectrum analyzers have a lot to offer the small-studio mix engineer. Two good freeware models are RN Digital Inspector and Voxengo SPAN.By strategic, I mean that the author has a vision to which all the advice of the book is oriented: producing commercial grade audio mixes. Yes, there are lots of tactical tips sprinkled throughout the text, and they're quite helpful, but these are always in service to the greater goal. This is not a 'mixing tips' book, per se - it's something much better than that, a mixing strategy book. First off, he proudly states in the beginning that this book is based on his research into the studios of over a 100 engineers. Yet, we only get occasional quotes from one or two of them on any given topic. As a huge fan of older Bryan Adams records, I’d kill to know, for example how R.J. Lange or Bob Clearmountain approach a mix. How do they handle guitars? Vocals? None of that is in here. If you’re looking for more meaty info specifically on how different producers handle these subjects, the book “The Mixing Engineers Handbook” has huge amounts of that. Full interviews with engineers/producers on these subjects. This book is a fantastic resource that I expect will dramatically improve my mixing abilities. What more could you ask for than that?