Many young engineers, and home recording enthusiasts, have never worked with an analog console before, and they only mixer they have ever used is that built into their DAW software of choice. They may have had no formal training, and thus may be unfamiliar with the way channel inserts and effects sends, or aux sends, are traditionally used, especially in the big studios with big analog consoles. While there is no right or wrong way to do anything, and modern DAW software and computers have enough power to do almost anything you want, there are reasons why the more traditional methods of using inserts and sends were established.

I use Cubase SX 3.  I have a question regarding where one would use an effect like Ozone in the stereo bus chain.  Should it be used pre-fader or post-fader.  In Cubase there are eight slots on the stereo output bus.  Six of the eight are pre-fader and the last two are post-fader. Also, now […]

Doctor:I've recently become aware of phasing and attempts to correct it.  It's a bit tricky.  An out of phase track or instrument really disappears when you listen to the final product.First of all, is it good to have some amount of phase differential in a song.  It seems like phasing can add a bit of […]

Greetings Master of All-Things-Audio: I really need your help. About a year ago I had asked you which audio production software you liked, why, etc.  I chose Cubase SX3 and I really enjoy it -it's relatively steep on the learning curve, but once you get that down, you can go nuts. I spent a few […]

Recently I had an artist ask me why the mixes he does in his home studio sound so much softer than the commercially released music he buys. I thought that everyone already knew about the whole "loudness wars" craze that has been going on since the late 1990s, but apparently there are still many people […]

One of the problems with recording technology today is that you can have pretty much unlimited audio and MIDI tracks. Today's computers and hard drives are more than fast enough to easily handle 100 audio tracks or more, and virtually unlimited MIDI tracks, all at the same time. The problem with that is that many […]

So, you've put a lot of time and energy into recording and mixing you latest and greatest song. You've finally got it to the point where it sounds great in your own studio and you can't wait to play it for your friends! But, when you play it for your friends for the first time […]

Recently, someone was thinking about buying a digital recording system and was wondering if he really could get major label quality results from a low budget home studio system.  He was specifically concerned about whether or not he would be able to obtain the "warmth" he was used to from analog recordings with a computer […]

My simple explanation of compressors, how they work, and how you can use them. A compressor is basically a variable gain device that is used to either try to smooth out the dynamic range of a signal, or is also sometimes used as an effect.  Different compressors have different types of characteristics and sounds that […]

Here is a reply of mine to a person who asked about sound sculpting during a mix. Regarding sound sculpting, let me tell you about a very common mistake that beginners make during mixing (and sometimes tracking): An all too common practice during mixing is to solo up each sound all by itself and then […]