sound trapping

July 18, 2005 7:22 PM

DIY Guide to Recording.Set up a home studio. This seems to cover a lot, and not being a pro at audio recording, I found it pretty useful.
posted by ginbiafra (13 comments total)

see also: TapeOp
posted by Satapher at 7:27 PM on July 18, 2005

Nice. I've not seen this one, but there seem to be plenty of useful resources around the web to get started with music production.

I'd also second TapeOp for lots of techie tips for getting good recording results - plus they'll mail you the monthly subscriptions for free!!

O'Reily has also done some nice brief intro tutorials for audio software. Here's one for Ableton Live.
posted by p3t3 at 8:14 PM on July 18, 2005

TapeOp really is a far better resource than the site posted here. Start with a recording techniques book, then read TapeOp or Mix magazine and look at online recording communities for specific advice.

A mixing room set up like their photos suggest will never sound accurate enough to hear the sound quality of a recording.
posted by thebatmanager at 9:11 PM on July 18, 2005

This is an awful site, no insult intended. Lots of text, very little content, no deep understanding of the material at all. Three pages on EQ and not one single intelligent thing to say about it.

For a beginner, there are no explanations of how things really work. Worst, there's no real troubleshooting section... that's the most important thing a beginner can get!


Rather than just complaining, I'll give you a deep secret of audio engineering.

When you mix, consider three properties for each sound that you're trying to place:

EQ: where in the sound spectrum the sound lies?
wet/dry: how much reverb is on the sound?
left/right: where is the sound panned?

The secret: If each sound you mixed together had a unique frequency band, reverb level and left-right location, then you'd be able to perfectly hear each sound separately. If each sound was the same on all three axes, they'd blend perfectly.

(And EQ is more important than wet/dry which is more important than panning...)
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:00 PM on July 18, 2005

Thanks, lupus. That is helpful.
posted by Evstar at 11:28 PM on July 18, 2005

Lupus - this probably belongs in AskMe but I can't resist. Can you point to good EQ discussions? I've got the concept of EQ-ing each track so the frequencies in it don't step on the predominant frequencies of other tracks and make the total sound go all muddy. I've got the concept that it doesn't work to make each track sound good all by itself, and then dump 'em all together.

But are there examples out there of typical instruments, dry and after EQ? What should an individual instrument sound like, properly EQ'ed before mixing? Yes, I know it varies for every possible instrument and place in the mix, but surely some helpful person has listed some good starting values for common instruments. I have several commercial recordings that are good examples of what you're talking about -- there's lots going on in the mix but every single part is clear as a bell -- and I absolutely ache to listen to these recordings part by part (and look at each separate part played with bargraph-style frequency display software) but you can't, y'know, do that without having the separate tracks themselves. Help! Pointers, please!
posted by jfuller at 2:25 AM on July 19, 2005

Firstly, I agree with lupus - the site linked to is simplistic at best, and often wrong worst. TapeOp is cool, as are the SoundonSound Forums and the forums are recording.org.

In terms of EQ jfuller, your question is difficult to answer for the reasons you yourself understand. In short though, the first decision you need to make is about which instruments are important in that particular mix. You really need to hear the mix you're after in your head before you start, at which point you'll know which instruments need to be infront and which need to behind. (lupus' comments about reverb are right and it should be added that, while pan is left and right, you can think of EQ as up and down, and reverb as forwards and backwards). Once you know that, you can start by looking at a Music Frequency Chart to see where your various instruments are likely to lie.

Of course, each of your instruments won't conform exactly to the chart, so finding the funamental frequency of your instruments is useful. A good technique for doing this is to solo the channel, put an EQ across it with a very narrow Q and then sweep that across the spectrum until you hear the resonance. Once you've got that, if this is your important instrument then you open up that frequency on competing tracks - remember, it's always better to cut than boost. Remember the harmonics too. (And if you need to cut (or boost) more than about 6dB, you need to rerecord, not fix-it-in-the-mix...)
posted by benzo8 at 3:54 AM on July 19, 2005

I also generally gravitate toward forums rather than instructional sites. Good forums will occasionally have tutorial threads anyways, but also they'll address all the various types of questions that everyone ends up having when getting into desktop music. Plus you get interactive access to the folks who have been recording for years and years.

I'm a mac person, so another forum I use is OSXAudio (which unfortunately appears to be down at the moment).
posted by p3t3 at 4:32 AM on July 19, 2005

See also Acoustics101.com ("Practical Guidelines for Constructing Accurate Acoustical Spaces"), produced by Auralex.
posted by Dean King at 8:27 AM on July 19, 2005

Back in the nineties I installed a home studio in my London flat. 8-track quarter-inch reel to reel, 16-track desk, mixdown tape unit, Quadraverb Plus and so on. It was, you could say, of - and at the end - of its time. After I bought the thing I spent several hours peering at the "instruction" manuals and slowly feeling tears of frustrated incomprehension begin to prick my ducts. This, in spite of a scientific, numerate degree and half a lifetime in a technical career. I am simply incapable of understanding electronic equipment in anything other than a most superficial, high-level way. And sometimes not even that: don't ever ask me to operate the baffling array of remote control devices which seem to be de rigeur with modern audio-visual entertainment equipment. Whenever I have been foolish enough to attempt that, the result has always been confusion, terror and shame, and a friend screaming, "WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE, YOU CRETIN?" at me while I flinch and fidget on the couch.

Anyway, fortunately I had a friend who had worked as a sound engineer. He set the thing up for me and basically told me which buttons to press. Since I stopped using it several years ago it now collects dust. I know that should I ever be foolish enough to attempt to use it again I wouldn't know where to start.

Now I am in New York and my sweet, lovely partner bought me a mixing unit for Christmas last year. I assume it's reasonable to call it a 'unit' rather than a desk, given the typically modern compact size of the thing. I'm aware that I'll need some sort of software to make this thing useable with my computer. I'm aware I'll need some sort of cables and connectors. Of course I know I need to connect microphones and guitars and so on to it. In some way. I have peered at the "instructions" just long enough for a familiar feeling around the eyes to begin. It sits in its box to this day, collecting dust. I am afraid to look at this link because I know it will shatter my already fragile sense of self-worth into a thousand tiny pieces. I hope it proves useful to someone more deserving and less useless than I am.
posted by Decani at 10:16 AM on July 19, 2005

Decani: have you ever tried Reason? It's a virtual studio – a rack of synths, samplers, effects, mixers etc. on your screen – which seems to be extremely user-friendly. Build it any way you want. It will do anything except recording sound (but will work seamlessly with a sequencer). Get a trial version from propellerheads.se.
posted by Termite at 1:08 PM on July 19, 2005

i dont ever use reverb cause i heard jim o'rourke says it distances the listener from the music. Thats also why i only use the A-Chord because i heard its the best chord because it comes first.
posted by Satapher at 9:18 PM on July 19, 2005

Termite: thanks for that, I'll take a look. Sounds like Reason is a fully self-contained digital recording package, right? I think I need something that lets me take finished (or near) output from my physical mixer and then simply drop it into a file. But as you may have surmised, I don't really know if that's the way to go. What I really need is someone who knows what the hell they're doing so I can concentrate on the music. :-)
posted by Decani at 7:50 PM on July 22, 2005