Ozric Tentacles 30th aniversary tour and album review

This album review coincides with Ozric Tentacles 30th anniversary tour, any band that has been going for 30 years through thick and thin deserves respect and thats before you have even heard their music. The music itself will satisfy dance heads, rock aficionados and ambient lovers, and often within the space of a single track !  A band that has remained true to their counter culture and free festival roots. This will hopefully explain why this awe inspiring band has been uncompromisingly making their unique style of music for such a long time….

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Choosing a studio power amplifier

We all need an audio amplifier to drive our loudspeakers so we are going to discuss the different types available. This is a music site so we will keep this focused on the needs of a project studio. For a typical home studio I recommend an amplifier with around 150W per channel into 4 or 8 Ohms (speaker impedance) 150 Watts per channel will be able to drive most 6.5 inch driver near field monitor systems.When you check out an amplifier try and avoid fan cooled ones as they will add to the ambient noise floor of your studio and this is not desireable. Amplifiers up to 150 watts are typically using passive heatsink cooling without cooling fans.

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What is clipping ?

What is clipping?

Clipping is the name used to describe the result of a digital recording or mixing system being over loaded by an input or output signal level. Clipping means the the mathematics that represent an audio signal in the digital domain have exceeded. The finite numerical values end at 0dBFS and beyond this point invalid values are recorded or reproduced which produce distortion.  

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Lossy audio file formats explained (data compressed formats)

Almost all distributed audio files online use lossy, data compressed file formats. Formats such as MP3 (a shortening of MPEG-2 Layer III), AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), .wma, .m4a files and the slightly lesser known and oddly named Ogg Vorbis. These files use complex algorithms to reduce the file size for faster upload and download times and allow more tracks to be stored on phones and iPods. Streaming services such as Spotify, online radio stations and Soundcloud also use compressed audio streams which reduce the data rate of the music that is heard.

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Analog vs digital in mastering

So what is best during mastering, analog or digital sonic processing? This is an old debate and the fact is a good mastering studio should be using a combination of both types of equipment. Mastering means getting the absolute best out of a piece of music before it is released this means compromise is not an option. I believe digital only mastering is a compromise. The reason being is that analog equipment excels at certain types of signal processing and without it purely digital mastering is leaving something to be desired.

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The rising appeal of the EP release (Extended Player)

The Extended Player (an EP) has often been a popular release format for musicians, bands and labels. EP’s have been released for decades as the industry knows it is a great end product for numerous reasons. It is a good show case product allowing a number of tracks for a band to express continuity between their music offerings or show diversity of style. An EP would typically span between 3-5 unique songs or musical compositions.

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Dispelling the myths surrounding audio mastering

Being a mastering engineer allows me to explain some of the common misconceptions that surround this important final music production process. Whilst mastering has become a somewhat expanded service over the last decade there seems to be some online confusion as to what audio mastering is capable of and what constitutes a professional mastering job. We are going to look into some of the misconceptions surrounding audio mastering in order to get a clearer understanding.

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Top tips for building a reliable music production PC

For musicians, bands and project studio audio engineers there comes a time when their existing music pc is just not cutting it anymore. Eventually the software becomes more demanding and freezing music tracks gets tiresome. As plug ins become more CPU hungry there is a need every 4-7 years to buy or build a new music production PC. This is to keep things stable and capable of keeping up with todays demanding software. There is absolute merit in buying a ready built music production PC, no hassles and support is provided but there are many people still up for the challenge of doing a DIY music pc build.

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Why peaking near 0dBFS is unnecessary when mixing audio

Modern digital audio workstations can operate at 24 bit resolution and above, this provides a theoretical dynamic range of 144dB. This in practice is usually limited to around 120dB due to the limitations of the analog circuits that convert the audio to and from digital. The small analog operational amplifiers in the sound cards will produce a noise floor slightly above the digital noise floor. With this in mind it comes as a surprise that many people mix with their DAW meters peaking very close to the top of the scale.

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Dance music production intro...

There are always new muscians taking their first steps into the realm of electronic dance music production and this covers the basic concepts which may initially appear confusing for someone starting out.

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The basics of side chain compression

This is a post by mastering engineer Barry Gardner who operates SAS Mastering
http://www.masteringmastering.co.uk/onlinemasteringservices.html

What is side chain processing?

Side chain compression is often seen as a complicated production technique but assuming you understand the basics of compression there should not be any troubles understanding how it works. Most audio compressors work by controlling the input signal using the same signals dynamics, so for example when there is a loud section in a vocal recording the peak in the vocal gets reduced in volume. This has the effect of evening out the level of the singing. It is a very common and useful technique for many types of instrument and most modern music mixes will have a reasonable amount of compression occurring.

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Considerations for dance music mastering

Dance music is split into a number of genres and sub genres so it covers quite a wide range of music such as house, garage, trance, dubstep, drum and bass, techno, breakbeat and electropop. A good mastering engineer should be capable of mastering music in any genre. His or her experience should be all encompassing, being able to understand enough about all genres and how they should sound. Most mastering engineers will have their own internal references and intimate knowledge about their mastering set up. This gives the engineer a high chance of satisfying clients needs across a wide range of genres.

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The basics of using an equalizer

Equalizers are a very common tool in audio production. In essence they allow us to adjust the tone of an instrument or voice. The most basic equalizers can be found on a home or car stereo, they are commonly known as the bass and treble controls.

Equalizers can be used for correction of the tonal response caused by the recording process or for enhancement. An example of correction could be taming the high frequencies on a vocal recording that was recorded using a very bright sounding microphone. An example of enhancement could be adding some extra bass to a kick drum to make it sound more powerful.

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Using online video as a means of musical promotion

Video is quickly becoming very important when promoting goods or services and that means your band and music. Your music is an important service to humanity and is doubly important because it brings you an income. Youtube is of course still the most popular of the video hosting sites and you can use this site to promote yourself and your bands website.

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