ProRec is considering a new style.

We've been laboring under the assumption that you want to read about stuff monthly. We never bothered to check out the facts.

We were trapped in our paradigms. Lost in our mental models.

Sufferring terminal hardening of the categories.

After all an e-zine is supposed to be an electronic magazine. Magazines don't send you articles one at a time as they're written.

But we want to keep giving you the scoop. We were the first source with in-depth information on many of the leading products available today. Like DSP Factory, Layla, DSP/FX, and Pulsar.

Nothing sucks worse than having the latest information on a killer product and sitting on it for two weeks while we get the 'zine complete for the month.

So we're planning on dropping this monthly convention in favor of a new model of continual news and information as it becomes available.

Does this sound like a good idea or not? If you lik ... Read More »

Frequency filters

What in the world have we here?

Can it really be true? An $85 high quality sampler?

Well, err, yes! It seems so!

For years the very word "SoundBlaster" has been enough to send shivers up and down the spine of any self respecting digital audiophile, and rightfully so! From poorly written drivers to, shall we say, "somewhat misleading" advertisements, to package info that boldly claimed "full duplex" when such was not the case at all has left a bitter taste in the mouth of those who have attempted to use these cards with a digital audio sequencing app.

The real truth is that these cards were not primarily designed for digital audio they were designed for gaming and here, as any rabid "Unreal" player will tell you, they have greatly succeeded.

However, in an attempt to garner a bigger market share, Creative Labs decided to try and grab a share of the rapidly rising "computer musician" market. With the release of the SoundBlaster 32 series of cards, Creat ... Read More »

The time has finally arrived.

Your latest and greatest work is almost done. You started with what you feel is a damn fine song. You carefully planned the arrangement. You've captured some killer tracks. And then, you sweated every detail of the mix. You tweaked, pulled, pummeled, and then re-tweaked, re-pulled, and re-pummeled those tracks until it all sounded something like what you thought you were hearing in your head when you started. And finally, you now hold in your hands The Final Mix. No more hedging. You're ready to commit forever. This is the sound you're going to leave to posterity.

Your magnum opus is now ready to be mastered.

Right?

Well, maybe. Or, maybe not.

One of the most important things you should expect from any good mastering facility is a well-trained set of ears listening to and evaluating every minute detail of your music. That facility should then give you a brutally honest, totally objective opinion of the quality of y ... Read More »

I just love microphones.

I am constantly scouring the classies, garage sales, web sites, and music stores for deals and steals -- the vintage, the obscure, and the just plain weird. I have a smattering of just about everything, from the common workhorses to the all-time classics to the super-el-cheapo pieces of junk.

None of them are the perfect mic for everything (I don't believe any one mic can be), but all of them (well, at least the ones that function!) are the perfect mic for something. As my dear mother used to say, "there's somebody out there for everyone," and so I believe it is with microphones as well -- for every task there exists the perfect mic, and for every mic there is a task to which it is perfectly suited. I also believe that if you can acquire the knack of choosing the proper microphone for the job, and can place it properly to obtain the sound you're striving for -- before that sound hits the rust -- your job as a recording engineer is about 80% accomplished.
Read More »

Hello readers. This month I'd like to concentrate on the songwriting aspect of the music business, as I've come to know it.

Over the past 8 years I have had as clients some of the biggest-selling songwriters in the music business. They are in addition to the other ‘as of yet unknown' writers who like what I bring to their songs. From working so close with these people I have come to learn a few things that seem to be consistent with all of them:

1. You are only as good as your current hit.
2. Nobody cares what you did yesterday.
3. Nobody cares at all which software or computer you wrote your song on
4. Nobody cares.

I had always assumed that just because you had a few big-time, #1 records to your credit, that automatically entitled you to special consideration by every record company A & R person when it came time to pick songs to be recorded by an artist. No such luck. Just because you had a big hit on Toni Braxton's last album, don't expect her to ... Read More »

Introduction

Mastering.

The word is a meaningless black cloud to many musicians and amateur engineers. And, sad to say, some pros.

I used to wonder what the hell the mastering engineer even did. After all, the song is mixed, right? What else really needs to be done?

Also I got really suspicious when the same names kept popping up. Bob Ludwig. Bernie Grundmann. Eddie Schreyer. Ted Jensen. Stephen Marcussen. Do these guys ever sleep?

Maybe - MAYBE - they really don't do anything at all.

Or maybe they are the operators of the Magic Mastering Machine - one button, that's all. Feed your mix in and out comes the mastered product.

Well, this is sheer balderdash. Mastering is one of the most important and least understood roles in commercial music production, and you have to understand it if you're going to engineer a product that will stand up on CD, on tape, on RealAudio, and most importantly, on the radio.

This article does not presume to teach anyone ... Read More »

A couple of months ago, I detailed Samplitude 2496 (from SEK'D). Since this DAW software supports 24Bit recording at Sample Rates up to 96kHz, and all major DAW software is soon to follow... it makes sense to also review the hardware side of a 24Bit 96kHz system. That brings us to this month's review of the Prodif 96 and the SEK'D 2496s A/D D/A converters (AKA the little guy).

Prodif 96 - The Audio Card

Features

Cosmic Message...

Time Travel

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 ... Read More »

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 ... Read More »

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 ... Read More »

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!

Part 1. Introduction

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 v ... Read More »

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 nei ... Read More »

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

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 disa ... Read More »