Welcome to the long-awaited third (and final) installment of All Things Being EQ-ual, a series of articles on equalization that started back in April 1998. This final article, a titanic, tussling tête á tête of software EQ programs for the PC, was supposed to appear in the June issue. It didn't. I won't go into the reasons for the delay here; suffice to say that I do sincerely apologize to all the ProRec readers who waited so patiently for this article to be published. I hope it will have been worth the wait! If you're jumping on this train late and missed the first two installments, or would like to review, please follow the links to check out Part One and/or Part Two. Have fun, and don't worry... we'll still be here when you get back. Back already? Okay... let's move on then. We'll be reviewing and comparing software EQ plug-ins from Cakewalk, Power...

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Cosmic Message... Many years ago, I had a job working at IBM, a good two hours away from where I live. Because of the distance, I stayed near the job site during the week, and drove home on weekends, which meant I was not playing an instrument anywhere near as often as I was used to. I felt I was losing touch with it. One week, I stopped into a book store, and thumbed through some sort of mythic adventure book, possibly by which was all about getting back some kind of lost spiritual art. Then I went to the magazine rack, picked up some music rag, and flipped to the back page where there was a large ad for a recording console entitled "Get Back The Art" It's still a meaningful message to me now. Time Travel A friend of mine loaned me a CD of Electric Light Orchestra's Time the other day. Wham. Some people talk about roots music being the blues, and jazz. Well, to me the roots music is the music that turned me on, blew my mind, and moved my emotions. It's what made me want to be a musician in the first...

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I'd like to devote my column this month to a subject that seems to be a mystery to most musicians, producers, engineers, and songwriters - Background Vocals. Let's start with a simple definition: "Background Vocals" are those that are not the lead or main vocal. They can come in various forms - ooohs, aaahs, actual repeating of the lyrics, completely different lyrics, or moans and sighs (especially in hip-hop and rap). The people who perform these vocals also come in different shapes and sizes - from thin, sickly looking Caucasians who can read fly-shit without a drop of feeling to great big huge African American women straight outta the Church, who can turn a collective "Yeah" into a spine-tingling chant that is far more powerful than even our beloved national anthem. Put on the radio and start singing along. Chances are that even the most tone deaf among us will pick up on the "chorus" sung by the background vocals, rather than the riff-laden lead vocal, which is usually beyond the vocal ability of all but...

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It's Deneueve! She's smiling at me from my PC monitor. Her eyes beckon and she says, "Is that an intercontinental ballistic missile in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?" I reach out for her. I touch her face and her face becomes the sun. My fingers begin to smolder and burst into flames. I'm on fire. No . . . I am fire. I fall into the sun. I am one with it. Here comes the sun. Here comes the Sun King. I am sinking in the west. I'm melting! I can feel myself breaking up into thousands of discrete puddles of molten flesh. The computer screen goes blank and suddenly all is dark . . . I am drifting though space, locked in a cocoon of metal and plastic with only the sound of my own breathing for company. I'm feeling cramped and ill-at-ease. Tiny motes of light flash intermittently around me like colorful, pesky bugs. I reach out to swat them, only to skin my knuckles on the hard surface of my enclosure. A small, oval window appears before me. Looking out, I can see what appears to be a large, space craft,...

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Here I am trying to explain Rip Rowan's survey of the Prorec readership. And he's asking about my profession, that is, my area of expertise, and whether I'm an amateur or expert. And I'm thinking, "Profession? What can this mean today, where digital audio tools are ever-more-accessible, where more people can have more control over the entire process of musical design- performance- engineering- production- distribution." It's All Me, Now! So, I'm wondering, does this profession concept make any sense at all any longer? I consider myself: - an amateur musician - an amateur audio engineer/producer - an amateur computer engineer / system integrator - an amateur graphic designer - a professional multimedia designer (I get paid) My excitement about digitized audio design / recording / production tools starts with the fact that I don't need to relate to other "professions" to get the job done. I don't have to turn over a project to a recording engineer, to a printer, to a CD mastering / duplication house. The process of creating a recorded musical performance is (at least for me) not linear, where specialists in various professions have to let go at certain phases of a project. Whether it's a jewel box tray card, or a freshly burned CD, I can see/hear some approximation of the final product minutes after I conceive it....

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Since I was a teenager, I've been enamored of music by Kraftwerk, Jean-Michael Jarre, Ultravox, Vangelis, and others. Unfortunately, with the exception of the built in Arpeggiators on some keyboards, MIDI has never been quite up to the task of producing this kind of music, unless it is through-composed (in other words, you program and play every note and filter setting). That is why I'm thrilled with some of the new software products that emulate the old step sequencers and arpeggiators. Here are some of the coolest ones I've found: Seq-303 Seq-303 from Techno-Toys is a really cool little piece of software. It is a sixteen step programmable sequencer with some really neat features. It is called Seq-303 presumably because it functions in a similar way to the old TB-303 and TR-606, and attempts to emulate the 303's style of portamento,or "glide". I downloaded it from http://www.technotoys.com a few months ago, and liked it so much that I registered it after a few days...

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Limiters, gates, expanders, multiband compressors, de-essers, normalizers, ultramaximizers. These are all variants of the basic compressor, and they all can do a lot to help you get the most out of your mix. If you missed part one of this series, go back and give it a read. It will help explain the basics of compression - what it is, why it's used, what the controls do, and when to use it. In this issue, we're going to look at the rest of the dynamics controllers and see what they can do for you. And we'll get a little deeper into our understanding of what dynamics processors do. To better explain these tools, I'd like to introduce the concept of transfer function. A processor's transfer function can be thought of as a mapping of input levels to corresponding output levels. If I put in a -12 db signal, when comes out the other side? ...

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When I was first starting out as a musician, I was blown away by even small recording studios. The studio where my band was cutting its teeth was a little garage operation. The owner had converted the utility room and garage into a control room and a studio. This was pre-ADAT, with a 16-track digital recorder, a 24x16 mixer, a couple of DATs, some standard rack effects (DBX compressors, Eventide Harmonizer, Yamaha reverbs, etc.), and a few decent mics. The problem with the studio was that the recording space was dead. Dead-dead-deadsky. Over a foot of fiberglass insulation and sandbags had eaten the life right out of the room. The Yamaha piano, normally a bright instrument, sounded limp. You couldn't get a guitar to feed back. The drum booth, about the size of a phone booth, was too small to allow the full tone of the kick drum to develop, and the cymbals would just kill you. Of course the point of all that insulation and sandbagging was to keep the sound out of the neighborhood. It worked. Metallica...

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Getting the bass sound right is one of the hardest parts of recording modern music. When the average listener subconsciously listens to music, the bass is the instrument that they're listening to. And they probably don't know it. So, how to record that killer-thumpin-groovular bass? I do a lot of work with Chuck Rainey. Chuck is one of the all-time bass masters, with credits ranging from Aretha Franklin to Steely Dan to Sanford and Son. I have learned a lot about getting good bass sounds working with Chuck - and other artists - and can share a little applied wisdom. First off, I'm a big fan of Fender basses. I do like Roger Sadowsky's basses, though... but they are very Fender-like as well. Lots of expensive basses sound great on stage or amped, but really give you living hell when you try to take them direct... they're so 'supercharged' that they either completely take over the mix, or disappear. No middle ground. If you can possibly...

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There is quite a buzz about the Yamaha DSP Factory these days. The DSP Factory is a PC-based recording system built around the DS2416 soundcard and optional input/output (I/O) components. And with the imminent release of the DSP Factory, the buzz is growing even louder. A listing of the basic features of the card has been available on Yamaha's web site for a while, but detailed information on the capabilities of the card has been scarce. Personally, I'm excited about the card too, so I went to Nashville on a quest to find out some details. I was lucky enough to have Yamaha's Mark Lopez give me a demo of the card at the NAMM show. Mark was then nice enough to spend the better part of an hour with me (on the phone), filling in details I didn't ask about at the show. Disclaimer time… Since the card isn't shipping yet, features and specs are still subject to change… Also note that I have not had the opportunity to use a DSP Factory in my own studio to verify all this works as explained to me… Although I tried to be 100% accurate, I may have accidentally misunderstood something Mark told me over the phone… Your mileage may vary… No salesman will call… Not intended for use on house pets or small children… On with the factory tour!...

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Nearly 600 manufacturers of all things musical crammed the Nashville Convention Center and the Nashville Arena from July 10th through the 12th for the summer NAMM show. There was obviously more to see and write about than space allows, so this report will focus on Soundcards and Software for the PC-based studio, plus Other Cool Stuff. As an aside, I've heard that NAMM stands for Not Available, Maybe May (when referring to the January show). It seems the summer show stands for Not Available, Maybe in a Month. Lots of products were being demo'd that weren't in production yet. I expect most of these products will be on the streets by the time of the AES show in September. PC Soundcards/Audio Interfaces Unless you live under a rock, you're probably aware that the Event Layla is finally shipping. The biggest problem seems to be finding one to buy. Stores can't keep them in stock! Combine a great mix of features at an attractive price point and you've got a winner. I got a pretty thorough demo of the Layla at the Event booth and came away very impressed. Check out the Layla review in the ProRec archives....

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I had a few people write to me and ask how I recorded my vocals. I record my vocals several different ways depending on the vocalist, style of music and my mood. But there are some basic things you can do to help improve the way your vocals sound. Next month I'll give you some specific tweaky tips. 1) Use your best mic! This is usually a no-brainier. A better mic will usually be more accurate than the $50 K-Mart special you got from aunt Edna last Christmas. Preferably, you'll use a large diaphragm condenser mic like the Rode NT-2 or AT-4050. These capture more bass and warmth then a small diaphragm like a AKG C-1000 or the SM81. A condenser mic will pick up more detail then a dynamic mic like a SM57. That's not to say that you can't use a 57. There are some times when a condenser will pick up too much detail and I'll pull out a dynamic. 2) Plug the mic into your best mic pre. A preamp is unique because it's amplifying the signal from a tiny voltage to a large voltage. A mic level signal...

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Part 1. Introduction Once upon a time there was a big and hugely successful computer builder named Dell. One of the reasons for this success was the customer relations department, which had a reputation far and wide as the best in the business. While consumers had long telephone waits and next-to-no response from other big manufacturers, Dell had aggressively pursued a policy of treating each customer as if the whole firms' business was dependent on them. They parlayed this policy into a $9 billion a year company. They were very successful. At the same time there lived in a small, quiet suburb of Los Angeles a record producer named Ted Perlman. While his annual income was nowhere near Dell's, he had worked his way up to a certain position in his business where clients knew that they could depend on his integrity and talent to provide the best records possible. He worked very hard. Now Ted had long wanted to upgrade his aging 486 Toshiba computer. While it was a very good model (T4800CT) and had been very...

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All writers want it, need it, got to have it. Ain't no stopping them. A "hit". A #1 record. The big payoff. The realization of all their dreams. Something their mama can show to the neighbors to prove that her son (or daughter) is not a bum, but a big deal songwriter with a "hit". Better yet, not just a hit but a "#1 hit". One of my clients has become a major writer. Whitney, Tina, Barbra, everybody wants his songs. He's a hero to the other writers. "If he can make it, so can I" Although, a few of his contemporaries wish he would die soon. They're so jealous of him. His death would be like passing gas. Kind of like relieving the pressure, if you know what I mean. Anyway, on this particular morning, I was working with a writer on a new song. "Did you hear that Alan's record went to #1 today?" she asked. Wow, no shit. Right out of obscurity and into the limelight. He would have something in the bank for at least the next couple of years. Definitely get his contract renewed at the publishing company. Major big-time....

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Another movie, another magic box, another magazine and another column. What does this have to do with anything? Plenty. I asked Rip if I could start writing for ProRec and after a long phone conversation about what I should write about, we came up with the idea of doing an advice column. The main difference between this column and the ones in other magazines is that I'm going to write about whatever you want me to. Yup, that's right. Whatever you, the reader want to know about just tell me and I'll fill your brains with my knowledge. My name is Jay Kahrs. I've been involved in music for about 10 years. I play guitar, bass, some drums and I also sing when I'm forced to. My main thing is engineering. I attended Five Towns College in L.I. NY for a year, then jumped head first into an internship, then freelance engineering. Now I have my own studio in the basement (like everyone else) that I run commercially. I've worked on projects for major labels, indie labels, demos, etc. I'm not all...

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It was with deep regret and sorrow that I returned the VoxBox unit sent to me by Manley Labs for evaluation. How deep, you might ask. Well, I considered selling my car or my furniture to keep it. How deep is that? The VoxBox is not your run-of-the-mill voice processor. At $4000 it is beyond the reach of many of our readers. However, in our recent survey, I discovered that the average investment our readers have made in equipment is $30K, and that 45% of them consider themselves music professionals. Then let me say that if you are a music professional willing to invest $30K in recording equipment, you should seriously consider buying a Manley VoxBox. I used to wonder about the relative importance of a mic preamp in the grand scheme of things. After all, the mic is a flimsy diaphragm vibrating in air. Surely that's the most important factor in recording. And there's the media: analog media has limited headroom until you move to 30 ips 2" tape, and digital media can sound grainy if you have poor converters....

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Hey Ted? How about laying down some funky rythym guitar on this track, I'll zip it over to you. Hey Pete? Could y'all put some of that New Orleans/Dr. John style piano on this file, using that 9 ft Baldwin at your place? I'll e-mail you the rough track and oh, by the way, I need it back in LA in an Hour. Huh? What am I talking about? I'm talking 'bout MP3 compressed audio, and I'm here to tell you that it's better than you may think. Imagine taking an entire stereo 2 track mixdown file (usually about 25 MBs) and compressing it down to less than 2 MBs with barely any audible degradation of the sound quality. Are you getting the picture? The time is coming when we can all collaborate over the e-mail, and I'm not talking about MIDI files, I'm talking about that '63 Fender Strat plugged into that Mesa Boogie. MP3 is capable of compressing audio at a 12 to 1 ratio and still producing very fine results. The question is "how dey do dat?" And the answer is your ears are playing tricks on you,...

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After reading the marketing hype on Arboretum's web site for their plugin effects package, I was almost drooling at the idea of testing them out. Are they worth it? At $299, they are certainly less expensive than some competing effects packages. One of the nice things about Hyperprism is the logical set of tools that it provides - almost 30 different plugins - if your software will allow you to chain direct-x plug-in effects, you can take, for instance, the noise gate plugin and gate a reverb, a classic effect made famous by Phil Collins and others. I was able to get quite a few chained up on a mono track in Cakewalk. Of course, the Vocoder is what I was dying to hear, but due to some technical difficulties, I got much less use out of it than I did their HyperVerb(TM), which is Arboretum's Flagship product. All of the Hyperprism effects sport a similar user interface - a set of sliders and buttons at the top, ouput level controls on the left, and a real-time controller, the X and Y axis of which can be...

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The most challenging tools for newcomers to the recording scene to understand are dynamics processors: compressors, expanders, noise gates and limiters. We are all familiar with tools like EQ, reverbs, choruses, flangers -- even if we don't know exactly how they work exactly we might understand what kinds of sounds they produce. Compressors are completely different animals because they work on the musical dynamics and their effects can range from undectectable to utterly bad. What, then, are "dynamics" exactly? Technically, dynamics refers to the variabilities in amplitudes. "Dynamic" material is said to have lots of variability in the amplitude of the audio. There is a relationship between dynamics and loudness. Loudness (usually) refers to the average amplitude of a track. Green Day is LOUD! Dynamic refers to the variability - the difference between the soft and loud passages. The Beatles' Abbey Road is dynamic.

5 seconds from Green Day...

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Which is better, tube or semiconductor circuits? And if differences exist, what are these differences? The tubes vs. semiconductors issue is both emotional and rational. Many leaders in audio technology continue to hold up the vacuum tube as the state-of-the-art in audio amplification. Others find greater value in modern solid-state devices. Many amateurs and professional alike are left wondering what the reality is. Manufacturers have been likewise polarized: a number of market-driven manufacturers have found that their equipment sells better when it's designed around a tube - regardless of the sound - because of the current "tube hype." Reputable manufacturers of tube equipment - with more esoteric and expensive designs - find it difficult to sell into this market that assumes that "anything with a tube in it is better". This reminds me of the "Mac vs. PC" debate - unending, unresolvable, polarizing - often vitriolic. Therefore, the aim of this article is not to decide anything, but you let you -...

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