Podcasts about sonarworks

Episode 73, in der es nicht nur um das audiophile Dreigestirn Karneval, Saturation und Sonarworks geht, sondern Jonas auch behauptet, dass viele Comedians verkappte Musiker sind. Und der Song des Monats bringt nicht nur Björn zum schwärmen. Das, und noch vieles mehr in .... Dohlemer Boube mit "Karnevalskamelle": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H72axVCq3hc PlayList "Song des Monats": https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1dL9eYWItUWbCelkNVXMss?si=0c0de09f82d54238   ✅ Besser als jedes VST-PlugIn, günstiger

Episode 72, in der Youtube 20 Jahre alt wird, Björn von neuen akustischen Fenstern und glücklichen Nachbarn berichtet, Jonas Superbowl schaut und Kendrik Lamar nicht versteht (trotz seiner 5 Grammys in 2025), das bevorstehende Duell der Raum-Korrekturen zwischen Neumann und Sonarworks besprochen wird und der 50 Jahre alte Song des Monats mehr Eier hat, als die gesamten aktuellen Charts der letzten 5 Jahre zusammen. Und wenn sich einer mit Google Merchants auskennt, melde Dich gerne bei Jonas ... PlayList "Song des Monats": https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1dL9eYWItUWbCelkNVXMss?si=0c0de09f82d54238   ✅ Besser als jedes VST-PlugIn, günstiger

Nic Hard answers your questions about his MixCon masterclass and approach to mixing.  Check out the main presentation here: https://youtu.be/bNQkbY7A9XY Big thanks to Sonarworks for helping make this one free to the public. Try out anything they make for free at https://sonarworks.com Enter to win more than $10k in free gear in the MixCon Mega Giveaway here: https://delicious-audio.com/mixcon-mega-giveaway/ Thanks also to Lewitt Audio, Soundtoys and Ultimate Support for supporting the podcast.

We asked questions of Nic Hard about his MixCon masterclass and approach to mixing. Check out the main presentation here: https://youtu.be/bNQkbY7A9XY Big thanks to Sonarworks for helping make this one free to the public. Try out anything they make for free at https://sonarworks.com Enter to win more than $10k in free gear in the MixCon Mega Giveaway here: https://delicious-audio.com/mixcon-mega-giveaway/ ►EQ Breakthroughs: https://EQBreakthroughs.com ►Mixing Breakthroughs: https://MixingBreakthroughs.com ►Compression Breakthroughs: https://CompressionVreakthroughs.com ►Mastering Demystified: https://MasteringDemystified.co

Au menu de cette matinale, Red Led vous parle de l'APC64 d'Akai Professional, de Sonarworks qui améliore grandement SoundID Reference, du nouveau Zoom R4 qui drague les musiciens et de Yamaha qui dévoile sa nouvelle série Montage M.--

Peter Sandberg is the Managing partner at Nordic Secondary Fund - the first and only Nordic fund to invest exclusively in secondaries. The fund has invested not only in the juggernaut Klarna, but also quite a few Baltic companies like Kilo Health, Mintos, Sonarworks, Funderbeam, Transfergo and many others. Peter has also worked with such names as Startupwiseguys, Saxo Bank, Carnegie Investment Bank, Handelsbanken, Nordea, Danske Bank and more.In this episode we talk about:Secondary deal mechanics in startupsThe global banking confidence crisisTreasury management for startupsFind other episodes on >  https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/ Watch select full-length episodes on our YouTube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP6ueaLnjS-CQfrMCm2EoTA Connect with us on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/ Questions/suggestions? Join our Telegram group > https://t.me/pursuitofscrappiness 

As an introduction, could you broadly tell us about your path to marketing and brand management?My path to marketing began in school, because that's the moment when you realize you're good at a lot of things, but you don't know which path to take. You realize that marketing is just a small chunk of something. You have languages, finances, geography, understanding of people. It began during school with the “not knowing” of where to go next. This state of not knowing led me to studying finances, which is quite an interesting direction. I got my Bachelor's degree at “BA School of Business and Finance”. Then the path led me to agencies. I started as a project manager. Initially it was an event agency, I organized various events for clients, had various experiences with marketing and sponsorships. From project managing I advanced to project directing. I was entrusted with managing an agency within the McCann Group. I managed the whole agency. It was an event, experience marketing agency. Shortly before the crisis I was approached by Tele2. I was quite excited at that moment, since I've found telecommunications to be really interesting. Innovations and technologies have always been close to my heart. I was one of those people who used an illegally unlocked iPhone, when they still weren't available in Latvia. I've always enjoyed trying new technologies. At Tele2, my path began as a value-added services manager. I was the head of sponsorship department who's responsible for all brands, business, Zelta Zivtiņa, Tele2, everything that's incoming, our sponsorship strategy, how we show up on television, Zelta Talanti, ZZ Čempionāts, event as a whole, sponsorship of Positivus, it was all my responsibility. If we look at brands of drinks sponsoring events, they could easily sell their drinks at these events and earn back their money. My job was to create content, which was quite challenging back when all our phones still had buttons. To create content which you then try to sell, like incoming call melodies or pictures, was challenging at the beginning. I grew out of this position quite organically. The market changed, there was a crisis, and sponsorships took a downward turn globally. When that happened, I took on other experience marketing activities not related to sponsorships, for example, opening of new Tele2 stores. Back then Tele2 was going through a global relaunch, therefore it had to be relaunched in Latvia as well. I had the joy and honour to be a part of the team implementing this and to work with global agencies, and experience the whole brand creation stage from the very beginning. Then I had an offer to take over the brand of Zelta Zivtiņa. At first it meant campaigns, we still worked with the concept of doing youth and friendship type of ads. Then the telecommunication market changed, the essence of the product changed. Until then services were based on minutes, but then everything went limitless. I had to launch a new Zelta Zivtiņa, but it wasn't just the visual identity. It was a commercial launch, which included a complete change of the product portfolio, from incoming call bonuses and tariffs based on minutes to fixed price and limitless use. I had the joy to create the first limitless tariff plan in the prepayment market, which was a first in Europe. Back then no prepayment plan offered limitless calls, and that was an interesting turn of events. Due to that, we realized we had to change the story, the creative concept, brand's idea, brand's narrative and brand's visual identity, and that was a significant process, since you're aware you're working with a brand that has the biggest client base in Latvia. It was very challenging. I vividly remember sitting in the call centre and calling people who were still using ancient, unfavourable tariffs and offering a new one, because it was essential to hear out the client in order to create something better. Time went on, the Tele2 period was quite long, about 10 years. Then I had an offer to join a start-up called Sonarworks. I joined them in two thousand and…, It's about five years ago. At Sonarworks, I'm responsible for the whole product and company brand family, for Sound ID and Sound ID Reference. These last two are the fruits of our latest relaunch.So you switched from a large, international company, which has a huge audience in Latvia, to a start-up that has a very niche audience?Yes, but it's about scope. I basically worked with the largest client base in Latvia, but I switched to a company that has an ambition to take over the whole world. It means there's a completely different story. I left a company that's very much guided by marketing and sales, but I joined a product-guided company. That's completely different story and something new and challenging for me. To be a part of the product creation process. Product marketing has quite the significance, which I previously wasn't that much involved with. It was all about the brand, the brand being beloved, having a client base. You offer them the best, you talk about tariffs, sales campaigns. Here it's the opposite. You talk through a different prism. That's what attracted me the most. Secondly, you have the opportunity to create something and do something meaningful, and make the name of Latvia be heard abroad, and be present when someone else is trying to achieve that, while providing support with your knowledge, experience both in an agency and on the client's side.What are the most significant changes you've experienced during these five years at Sonarworks, which is a niche company that works with sound engineers worldwide? It's a niche, but you're reaching it globally from here, in Riga. What are the things you do here, that you wouldn't be doing in a large, global company?Targeting is very important for us. When you're entering a global market, it's essential to know who you're approaching, what you want to achieve and what is your audience. Your strategy can't be to aim a cannon at sparrows. It doesn't work. Firstly, you don't have the money for it, you can't afford it. You pay a lot of attention to how you spend your money; you plan very carefully. If you do spend money on something, you want to show the best possible quality for it. When it comes to a large company, you can create a video, polish it to perfection, you have time to prepare for it. In our case, we create a launch video in two weeks. We just don't have the option to polish a packshot for six months. The whole cycle is different. The essence of a start-up is that if you're releasing something that's finished, then it's too late. You're better of releasing it gradually. You release a minimum viable product (MVP) version, and you test it, you improve something, you see whether the message does its job. You release two landing pages and see which one has a better traffic. It's about so many experiments, using growth hacking methods. You grow though many small details, since you don't know what works. At the same time, you have a huge ambition, and your goal is set quite high, so that you don't lose out on some opportunities along the way in case your goal was smaller. Your goal is as high as possible, so that you attempt everything at your power to achieve it. Those are the biggest differences. Also having a quick response. Another significant difference in a start-up that involves a heavy, difficult technology, like audio industry, which doesn't have the most comprehensive terminology, technology, white papers, basically it involves a lot of heavy information. The process and on-boarding itself is very hard. I still remember myself as I joined this team. You're excited, you want to do something, but you don't fully understand the product. It takes a while until you comprehend it yourself, since you as a brand marketing expert have to know what you're selling, you have to feel confident about it. I still visit our product developers at R&D and don't understand half of what they're saying. Our company is constantly in a phase where we research new concepts, new data. During this process, we patent them, since when they've ben researched and they make sense, they can be launched and evolved further. That makes any on-boarding extremely hard. The fact that we keep a lot of things in-house and we can't outsource them also makes a difference.For you as a marketing and branding person, how important is it to be on top of the whole product, so that you're able to tell about it to others?Extremely. When I first joined the team, it was very important to me. We have a great on-boarding procedure for new people joining the team. We try out the product ourselves, we have a studio demo. We have two business lines. One for creators of music – musicians, studio engineers, recording studio staff. Real creators of music and sound, because it's not only music, it's also movie soundtracks, games which have a huge audience and where sound is extremely important. The second part is the listeners. So we have these two blocks. When I joined, the company was already steadily recognized in the professional industry among creators of music, and we attempted to provide this same technology, which is an application that removes sound colouring from speakers and headphones. This technology removes such colouring as bass or other colouring arising from the specific room. It removes it and adapts it to the so called studio reference. And we then deliver this clean sound. Let's say an engineer working in Los Angeles wants to hand over his work to the second engineer working in New York, but the room, equipment, headphones and speakers over there are completely different, yet he can be sure the sound will the same, without any colouring created by the room or different headphones. We know that different devices create different sound. If use Beats headphones, they will have bass. It won't be a clean sound. When we realized that we have a unique technology, we decided that we can deliver this clean studio sound to the listener as well. We did it very successfully; people liked this idea and this product. Upon providing this consumer product to more and more people, we gained an important insight, namely, that every person has their own taste. There is no single approach to sound that's liked by everybody. Maybe I do like the bass, or my hearing is slightly impaired on the right side. There are these personal factors. The device you're using, the sound transmission, what streaming platform you're using, since they tend to compress their files and they're not always with high definition. It's your device, your hearing, your preferences. It's a multi-level optimization of sound, which actually is quite complex.  That's why the initial on-boarding is so important, so you understand it all. You have to hear and experience this product, in order to believe it. It's hard to explain. Oh, you have an hour? Let me tell you about our three-level sound optimization. If you only have five minutes, then have a listen of this. That's the difference. Back when I started working, there was this cool stage, when had these demos, we were invited to the studio to listen to the clean sound, and that really showed what the software is capable of, how it can fix the hardware, which isn't particularly flexible and easy to fix. When you have a listen and experience it, that's when you believe it.What is it like to sell to the world this clean sound? As you said, it's hard to explain and must be actually heard first. But you have to communicate it to the whole world from Riga. And you have to sell the clarity itself, instead of some effect.The studio people already know this, they know their graphs, they know how these curves work. What happens in studio? A song is recorded, these “golden ears” as they are called in the industry polish the song. The next step before they deliver it to any labels or Spotify is to listen to this sound on various devices, for example, Apple EarPods, Beats headphones, the most basic radio. You can't affect the middle stage, at least it wasn't possible until now. And our technology assists in this stage. If I as a listener pick up some headphones, I have no idea what their curve is and what they sound like. I know that our technology will, first, equalize the sound to the studio level and remove the manufacturer's colouring as we call it, and then apply my preference, the exact number of bass that I like, adjust the sound to my hearing according to the test done within few minutes, since I might hear better with the left ear and have trouble hearing high frequencies with my right ear. It will take the clear base, and add the unique personalization on top.You as a brand person have to know all the technical aspects to such extent that you're able to tell about them to someone else. You just can't do without it. While working with designers there as this feedback, where you felt confident in the design side of things and could provide valuable feedback in the process of working with designers. And you have to be on top of your direct task, which is branding and marketing, you have to have a good knowledge of the technical side and the terminology used by designers. We can draw parallels with what you said about being interested in and being good at several things at the same time.And not being able to choose.And this is the position, where you can draw from all of these areas. When I talked with colleagues, they said good things about the way you communicated within the design process. That you're knowledgeable in the specifics of design and are able to provide valuable feedback, without stepping on the designer's toes. What are the communication principles that you've learned during all these years working with the creatives that allows designers to feel good about this collaboration?As a brand manager, you've already been given free rein. For example, if you're creating a new brand identity, your task is to create something conceptual, a frame that still allows others to express their creativity. You can't define absolutely everything. If you define every single detail, you'll end up with a brand book on 400 slides. It's been done before, but I prefer providing a clear, high-quality toolbox that one can work with and then just trust the person. You have to give a clear briefing, it's very important. Over the years you learn to define your specific wants, your mood board and the direction. What helps me in the process is providing a debrief in the initial stage and a starting direction, namely, being present at the very beginning with the aim to talk things through, and the just letting the creative process take place without interfering, to just trust. I'm not a designer and I can't provide assistance. There's a point when you have to allow the designer to do his job. What you can do on your side is research, providing information about the audience, global trends and the product, provide a toolbox and give them free rein.You mentioned the term “brief”. Could you name some basic principles of a good brief? What should a good brief look like in order for it to work efficiently?I've created various briefs, starting from a one-pager to a 400-slide presentation with plenty of visual samples. I prefer briefs with a lot of aids, that's my practice. I give an assignment, provide background, tell about our biggest challenges within the specific assignment. There's always a timeline. Then there's an additional block of aids. I always have an urge to link something that's already done, like a brand strategy deck. Provide things that help the creative process to reach a deeper level of things. Provide it as additional information in the end instead of putting it into the brief. Then there's a debrief session, where we establish in few sentences whether we have understood each other. The next step is the direction and first concepts. It depends on the project. Whether it's a rebranding project, or material for a specific campaign, maybe it's packaging or a project of other sorts. It differs. It could also be a video. I enjoy the so-called checking-in. We make calls, we check whether we're on the same page and move forward, invest more time. I don't expect that the agency will come up with everything at once. As I said, the product is quite complex, it's also not a product that everyone needs. It's a “nice to have” product. You have to create the need yourself. It's not easy, therefore I try to help as much as I can, but I also know when to step back. There have been times when I've said “make my logo bigger”, but I try not to be like that.How do you see the tasks of a company's brand manager? What are your responsibilities? Where are you aiming to take the brand in the long-term? Of course, you manage all kinds of day-to-day activities, but if you look a few years in in the future, what are you trying to achieve as a brand manager? Brand is a tool that supports the product. At the moment, one thing that's very important for me and the brand is to maintain simplicity in everything we do, since our product is so heavy on technology. The creator's side, the terminology and the white papers I mentioned, it involves heavy technological information. Even the product itself is heavy. Even the technology for listeners involves a three-level sound optimization. In essence it's a smart equalizer. Audio lovers used to turn the knobs, but now you can do it with an app. You have an AB test, which helps you find your sound preference. Then you enter a silent room and test your hearing. My goal is to make it as simple as “click, click, boom”. Let's take that same studio engineer, he has to measure the room he's working in, so that he can calibrate his speakers. We're thinking that the measurements should be taken in the process, while you're just starting to use the software. It's important to show the measuring process as very simple. In the sense that you have a technologically heavy product, but you communicate it as something intuitive and easy, as something simple, even though it's really, really hard work. We have created 3D elements, you even helped us with that. We have created video instructions, showing everything step by step. Then we test it out in a group, get the first feedback. It's quite an iterative process. You just make corrections again and again. On the brand's side, I want everything to be clean and simple, even the app's interface. If there's a text, maybe we can do without it. We try to show some parts of the on-boarding and explain in the beginning what this app is about. We're aware that a lot of people skit that part, but we try to keep it short and sweet, so you have some understanding once you go through it. It's like training in a way. How simply can you describe everything on the website? You could publish the whole white paper on there, but is that necessary? It's not easy to just pull out the essence of it all. Simplicity is the most challenging part in this position. If we talk about long-term ambitions, as cheese as it might sound, it would be Apple and Macintosh products, because they are so complex, yet the user interface's design is so simple. So that's something to aim for.How do you find the balance between daily tasks, like social networks and newsletters, and the long-term goals of the brand, when you're responsible for both of these things? Do you have any annual goals or sprints?We use the OKR planning method, so we have quarterly plans, and then, based on these plans, we plan our tactical action. Based on the Agile principle, we have two-week sprints. You divide your quarterly goal accordingly in your Jira board and complete the tasks. At the end of every two-week period, we have a team retrospective, where we each share or progress. Then together we make a plan for the next sprint. During these Monday planning sessions, we get a global idea about what priorities should we focus on. Once you're in the market with your technology and you depend on your partner, it also brings a lot of uncertainties in regards to launches and other projects. Something gets delayed, something gets moved. We have weekly and bi-weekly team cross-alignments and planning sessions, where we figure out whether something is still urgent. Whether we launch this partnership announcement this time or we postpone it again, because there's a delay. There's a product, you make a new release. The new release has a bug in one of the operating systems, so you have to fix it again. Something gets pushed forward. You can't make a solid five-year plan and go for it. That's why we divide it by year and quarter. You have the option to adjust something within the quarterly period and then the two-week period. We look back at the sprint, plan the next one. When the quarter ends, we look back at the quarter. We check whether the next quarter's plans still align with the previous one. Then there's the year, the end of the year. Of course, there is a bigger five-year goal that we would like to achieve, but we still stick with these stages.What I find cool about SoundID is that you're a local company from Riga, but you work with sound engineers all over the world. How do you catch up with the global rhythm? How do you sense what your audience is feeling, thinking and doing right now all over the world, while you're here?We do a lot of monitoring of what is happening out there, the current trends. We also have a considerable client base that provides us with feedback.Does that mean questionnaires, newsletters?A bit of everything. We also have a review site. Consumer product mostly gets reviewed in the App Store or Google Play, but the pro product gets feedback on a special site where all reviews are gathered. You're able to respond quickly, if you see several people troubleshooting something. People post a lot on social media. We have a support centre in our website, where you can submit a ticket with your problem, which then gets solved. In that sense you can hear all these things. Our clients write us, they share information. We have a nice partnership with several influencers.Influencer marketing is still effective?It is. In our industry, word of mouth and PR is quite effective. These are things we can do. We can't afford to do a brand awareness campaign in America. That's extremely expensive. And do we even need that? In the professional world it's a very niche audience which you can find elsewhere, but we're not yet ready for the consumer audience. Our brand will flourish only once we have partners. We can't do it alone, because we require integrations in the partner's products. It can mean various verticals like headphone manufacturers, telephone ecosystems, cars or speakers. We can achieve that only once we're joined by Netflix, Apple TV or Bose headphone manufacturer or Apple, because we can't manage that alone. We're having negotiations, and I can't name any names to make this conversation more impressive, but I can say that we've been heard and the information known to us really warms our heart. We're happy the process is moving forward. And the process is long. Often enough, if you want to integrate your technology in a car, it can sometimes take even five years. From the moment you begin negotiations until the end of the production process. It involves numerous chains of logistics, like the chipset manufacturer, other parts. Consequently, it turns into a really, really long process. With an app, you can reach somebody quickly, but in this case, you need a partner.How can you make yourself be heard by the top brands you mentioned? You have to write to them, make them hear you and respond to you, then integrate your product.What are they all interested in? They're interested in data. We're a data and research company according to our DNA. We have a large amount of data, we've done extensive research. I'm talking about personalization. We've done about 3 million AB tests. On Google Play, we have more than half a million app downloads. During all this period, we've measured about 67 thousand speaker sets in studios. These are just some examples I'm mentioning. We've also tested 5000 different headphones. These numbers are large. First of all, we see that we can offer them data. Secondly, we have a push and pull marketing strategy as we call it. The idea is to build a relationship and learn from the end listeners, so you can provide this information to your business-to-business partner. What are they interested in? Whether someone even needs it. We build a relationship with the end listener, so we can show our partner that the listener wants the product and considers it to be something good. As I mentioned before, this isn't a must-have product. You have to create the interest, make it necessary. The client wants it to be “click, click, boom”. He won't buy our product in its current set-up, won't even use it for free, because the path to get there is too long. We have now polished the android app, which now allows you to hear a playback. To have a full experience that allows you to use your iPhone with any kind of headphones is not doable unless there is a small button on the Spotify or Apple TV interface. It's like a cat and mouse game. You have to interact with the end audience, you need app downloads. You have to learn to communicate, because does anybody understand what you're saying, when you call it a “personalized sound”? Or do you call it “improving your sound”? Maybe “your perfect sound”? We're learning about the messaging. We're learning how to improve the user experience in the app, because it itself will be integrated. That's what we do as our homework. At the same time, we're gathering an extensive amount of data and information about what people like or don't like, what are the most popular preferences. What curves are popular, maybe smiley faces. We have that information and that's what we can offer to them, because they need data and we have that. You're able to approach them in that sense. You juggle with several things. You create directly targeted campaigns for one person on LinkedIn, however LinkedIn doesn't yet allow targeting one person, but you can target location. If you know where the headquarters of a specific company are located, you buy that one column. We've come up with all sorts of ideas. The idea is to implement a very specific targeting. When we go to expositions, we can't afford to just set up a stand. If there's a month left before the exposition and you haven't booked ten important conversations, you just don't go and don't waste your time. You prepare for something else. It involves a lot of micro-managing. Sometimes it feels like you're make these class A visuals so that, when you do get that big partner, you're already for it. There's a pile of copy versions you can use, there are visual examples. It's something new even for them. It's a new segment for the music audio industry. Until now, one block was for sound enhancement companies that just improve the sound. There was no algorithm or level optimization, just some companies saying they have the best sound. Personalized sound is a completely new concept. We're attempting to create a revolution in the industry. When we started the rebranding process, we realized that this is the moment when various popular additional services are appearing on the market, like BankID, Apply Pay, Smart-ID. We realized that we too can offer something like that, but in the way of sound, regardless of where you're going and what you're listening to.Let's image you had to join a start-up or a brand at an earlier stage, where you had even more limited resources, time and budget. Internet allows you to reach any person all over the world, and there are various channels of communication, like TikTok, Instagram, your website etc. How to not get lost in all that? Where would you begin, how much and how often? What is the most efficient way to approach your audience at the beginning of the road?You have to understand what exactly is your audience? It's very important and something a lot of people forget. They don't know who their client is and what is this need of theirs that they're trying to resolve. There's always a need that gets resolved with a product. In the beginning, you basically just fumble about. I can share what I've been told about the early stages of Sonarworks. Back when Sonarworks didn't even have a product, the cofounders figured out that they should mostly focus on their English-speaking audience, since you don't have the money to simultaneously communicate with Asia and other places, where you have to consider other languages and cultural peculiarities, and you have to communicate obvious things in a completely different manner than you're used to. Instead, you focus on the narrowest client base. In their case, they went where the client is at. It's obvious that the epicentre of music recording industry is Los Angeles. It's not Riga, unfortunately. Even in the scale of Europe. They started looking for contacts and travelled around. You have to test out the concept and the technology to see if somebody even needs it, if it works. They went to the USA with a primitive demo set-up. Through Facebook friends they found their first leads from the music industry who listened to them. They talked among them, mentioned some other engineer they knew, who also should listen to it. From one apartment to a garage to a studio. In the beginning, you just listen to what your client has to say and what he actually needs, what's their struggle. You get the proof of concept that, yes, it indeed is a problem, instead of just imagining that it is a problem, when no one out there actually needs your product and it solves nothing. Many suffer a disappointment, because they didn't do their first homework. This could be the take-away from that.Let's talk a bit about rebranding. You have had various experiences with rebranding. What's the decisive moment when a company should consider rebranding, fine-tuning or upgrading? When you know you should make some changes and improvements, what questions should you ask yourself to understand what you actually need?Rebranding usually is the answer when you hit a dead end. You realize that this no longer works. Or the media world switches from television to digital environment. Those are the moments when you realize that your current identity has become outdated and that you have to change something. Or you might have a completely new product for a new audience, therefore you require a new, fresh face. The reasons vary. You just get the process going. In none of these stages have I expected that an agency would serve everything on a platter and ready to go. You're basically looking for a partner who will be by your side during this. You can't do it alone. Whether it's a corporation or a sales-oriented company or a product-driven company, it's a collaboration. It's not like you can write a brief, drop it off and forget about it. It involves very intense work. When we were going through the relaunch of Zelta Zivtiņa and I was responsible for everything from A to Z, I realized that the year was ex  tremely intense. You monitor the data, you see some readings going down. Why are they going down? You look for the problem and do a deep analysis. It's not about creative pictures and choosing what looks the prettiest and trendiest. It involves plenty of analytics and data. It's about strategy of whether to take the other path or no. It means an in-depth study of your competitors and territories. Discovering which areas are already taken. Checking whether an opportunity also represents a need. It's quite a long process. If talk about the launch of SoundID, the initial insight for why we even did that, when we had the True-Fi product for our listeners. Why should we create SoundID? We realized that the studio sound we offer to engineers and then also to listeners represents a miniscule niche part of the audience, since this sound is popular among geeky audiophiles, but not all of them. Part of them still want that “click, click, boom” feeling without the need to adjust their equalizer. We realized that, if we want to go global and set a new standard among the audience, we have to go further. We have to approach the listener of music, and that market is huge. And it goes past the listeners, there's also the gaming world, movies. The market is really huge. The first insight from our data was that one sound does not fit all. Then we realized that everyone has their own taste, everyone has both different devices and hearing ability. We possess a technology that's able to align all that. We checked out what's going on in the market. We saw that specific components are already taken. Some start-ups are already working on hearing correction. There are companies in the market working on sound enhancement. Then we realized that we don't actually fit in any of these categories, we're a completely new category. We combine sound levels, creating a unique sound profile. The industry is aiming to provide more effortless services to people. There also are these ecosystems of several devices that you like. You shouldn't have to make adjustments every time you get home, get in the car or put on your headphones. You should be able to do one test that establishes your personal sound, your curve, which then follows you everywhere. At that moment we realized that, if we want to reach this audience, which is a wide range of music listeners, we can't just show them curves. Who's able to read curves? That won't do. We knew we had to think outside the box a bit. We then sat down with the agency after doing our own homework. We had data and evidence from several studies, indicating that people do make different choices. We approached the research part really carefully, we studied the competitors, the market. We realized that we want to deliver this complex concept of three-level sound optimization, but do it lightly. A two-minute A/B test, which then gives you your profile. We decided to not show any curves, but to focus on personalization. During this process we came up with a unique pattern, which is unique to everybody. There are no two identical profiles. They are unique, based on the information that your profile provides about you, based on your hearing ability, your personal preferences and your device.What you are telling me is very interesting from the technical viewpoint, but why was it important at that moment to change and improve the brand's visual language?The most important aspect in that whole stage was that you realize you want to reach vast masses of people, but you can't do it alone. You will most likely have to team up with class A companies. That's when you realize that your current identity won't be able to follow that. We had to realize that we most likely could become “Powered by” or “SoundID technology”. We primarily decided that we won't apply white label strategy, because we want to take the most challenging route, which was one taken by Dolby, Intel and Gore-Tex, namely, technologies that don't live by themselves, but are integrated in another body like a computer or a Columbia jacket. You've chosen the strategy of ingredient marketing or ingredient product. You're incorporated as a technology, but, as I mentioned, it's really hard, because you have to juggle with both sides. You have to be recognizable in the consumer audience and also have to get some partners. We realized that the brand has to be universally scalable. Even when it comes to such detail as an icon, it has to be able to take up a 16-pixel spot in the corner of the desktop. It has to be simple, also descriptive, meaning, it describes what it is. You could've used “clang” or “squash”, just a symbol of sound. It also integrates beautifully with partners. The hardest part, when creating a brand, was to simultaneously consider how you will look like in an Android phone or on a poster, when an A-list celebrity's newest album is launched. How will you look next to something else? We're not in a place where we could launch a worldwide brand recognition campaign. If we do get there, it will hopefully be as the sound under some popular streaming service just like Dolby managed to do that. Meaning, sound provided by SoundID. If we're allowed and given the chance to create a SoundID poster, then it would say below that it's only available for Netflix clients. You realize you have to take two routes. We do a lot of the respective tasks and learn, and go to the partners with our homework already done. We play with visuals, so we're also able to show it to them. This is a completely new technology for them too, so it's important to demonstrate how to show it, how to talk about it, how to visualize it. Our goal was to create a brand that's not too aggressive on its own, like red and whatnot. To enable it to cohabitate with other brands worldwide. One task was the name, the second was the visual look. While doing our homework, we took Spotify's latest advert and inserted our logo to see how they look together. Or we wrote a press release that we in collaboration with Adele and Apple TV are releasing an album, by providing music that the artist has always wished you could hear, using your own preferences. You play around with visuals and possible names, since the product naming architecture is quite complex. You have to complete many small tasks. During the process, we went through several various versions. We had quite the exercise for about half a year before we came up with our final version.It's important to note, that rebranding isn't just about creating a pretty presentation or to change the logo on your homepage. The most important part is the implementation.For those who will attempt to take over the market of China and the USA, even such nuance as the name pays a big role. I still remember how hard it was. Not to mention domains and such. For example, if you want to provide your technology to some big Chinese company or device manufacturer, they focus a lot on the fact whether you have a trademark symbol. You have to register the brand and the symbol. We had created a wonderful logo, we all loved it and wanted to move forward with it. There are various tools that help you check whether the logo is not already in use in the territories you wish to enter. That symbol was used by some medicine in China. It was identical. It was a sharp S symbol, created from geometrical shapes. You know you'll never get a trademark over there because it's a “copy+paste” of something already available in their market. That really prolonged the process. One thing is to think of something, but then you realize it doesn't work in the specific market. From our partners in China, we know how important it is for them to have the “TM” next to a logo. For us it's not so popular, but in their market having a trademark is the way to go. It's all serious. That road wasn't easy. At that moment you realize you've already gotten attached to that logo, it's dear to your heart, you've visualized various versions, but that you have no choice but to look for something new. And you start everything from ground up. Today everyone wants their logo to be iconic, for it to be noticeable and memorable. Once you set the limit of 16 pixels, you know you don't have that many choices. Your options to create something unique that will be scalable to such small size are limited. It was extremely challenging. One might think, oh, it's just a name and a logo. In reality, we had an Excel file with 400 potential names. You like one name, but you can't get the domain, and then there's a problem with the logo. There are no experts in Latvia who could help you. My colleague helped with the legal part, by calling a Swiss company that helped verify whether this can actually be checked. The road of creating a global consumer product is not that easy. There are patents, technologies, trademark, you go by the book.There's also the creative aspect.Of course, there's the creative part too. We don't want Anttila catalogue type of models, we have people with personalities. We don't have the money to do fancy photo sessions, but then you look at stock photos and get the stock feeling, which you don't want either. I think we've done well visually with the given toolbox. It warms my heart to see it blossoming. And I call the visual creators about how excited I am about the photoshoot they did, and you can see that they like the way we work with them. From time to time in the design process you get the urge to push for something more stylish, but then again you have to maintain the boundary of what you have created. You have to give it the chance to live through its cycle, instead of trying to change it in the process and improvise from scratch. I'm a bit like a brand guardian. When you've lived through the creation of the brand and an agency or a freelancer, you're working with suggests changing something, you realize that, no, the basis is already there. You have many options, where to improvise. You've been given a sandbox, you can do whatever you want, but many do want to step out of the given boundaries.Maintain consistency really is a big task. You mentioned the brand identity toolbox that you receive once the rebranding is complete, and then you implement it in your daily life. What should a good brand identity toolbox contain that would allow it to be implemented successfully?There are the basic elements. Your logo or icon, basic things like colours, typography, logo, icon. I always look for the fifth element as I call it. Something that makes you unique. In our case it's the pattern, which communicates the curve in a different manner and provides character. But you have to respect the boundary. We created a pattern that everyone really liked, but then we started communicating it and things started to drift. The pattern, this unique element was being overused. It showed up on forms, on Excel sheets or next to every picture. That's when you realize it's too much. If it's the fifth element to your brand, it's face, then you should only use it for things it was designed for. If it's designed to represent sound personalization, then you should use it only when discussing it. The visual complements the copy and the other way around. If it gets worn out, it will start to feel as a wallpaper, a decoration. It's important to not overwork the identity.That's a very good point. To not overwork the identity.I'm very pleased that we've been noticed in the industry, our visual identity has been noticed. We've heard good words about our packaging, website and visual identity not only from representatives of the industry, but also from media, writing a release about our product and devoting a whole paragraph to our top-notch visual identity. That really warms my heart.It's a sound-driven, technical product, but the visual part is also significant.Of course, just like everywhere else.Great. Thank you.

У меня в гостях Арсений Асташкин - старший звукоинженер студийного комплекса Игоря Матвиенко, микс-инженер, педагог музыкальной звукорежиссуры. Работал с Мариной Кравец, Бастой, Мумий Троллем, Игорем Бутманом и др., а также является ассистентом записи у Владимира Николаевича Овчинникова.В этом выпуске мы обсудили:– консоль SSL 6000 E;– аналог прощает ошибки?;– почему музыку из чартов невозможно слушать?;– почему в России делают песню для «хайпа»?;– почему нужно выкинуть акустически кабины и поролон?;– Sonarworks, Realphones или где сводить, когда хочется?Арсений Асташкин: https://t.me/musicianwaveКурс Арсения в Musicheads: https://musicheads-pro.ru/consolmixПодписывайтесь на соцсети Pavlov Talks:Telegram: https://t.me/pavlovtalksBoosty: https://boosty.to/pavlovtalksДзен: https://dzen.ru/pavlovtalksVK: https://vk.com/pavlov.sound

In this week's first segment (3:20 to 24:00), hosts Brent Butterworth and Dennis Burger have a conversation about a proposed new headphone tuning standard from Sonarworks called SoundID SR. What does it do and why does it exist? And does it reveal any flaws in the Harman Curve? Next up (24:34 to 38:36) they react to the reporting on the announcement and release of Apple's new second-generation AirPods Pro earphones, specifically the claim that these things block “two times as much noise.” Or is it “two times more noise”? And what do either of those things even mean? (Hint: they don't mean the same thing.) In the third segment (39:11 to 49:30), they dig deep into Gordon Brockhouse's exciting new review of the JBL L75ms Integrated Music System for SoundStage! Simplifi. This all-in-one music player combines forward-thinking connectivity and crossover design with retro-yet-timeless styling, all wrapped in a gorgeous walnut cabinet, and Brent and Dennis are here for it. Sources: "SoundID SR for Headphones: A new Headphone Tuning Standard" by Helmuts Bems: https://www.sonarworks.com/blog/research/white-papeR “Apple's new AirPods Pro can cancel twice as much noise” by Chris Welch and Jay Peters: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23327631/apple-airpods-pro-new-second-gen-specs-price-release-date-features "Phiaton 900 Legacy Bluetooth Headphones" by Brent Butterworth: https://www.soundstagesolo.com/index.php/equipment/headphones/349-phiaton-900-legacy-bluetooth-headphones “JBL L75ms Integrated Music System” by Gordon Brockhouse: https://www.soundstagesimplifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews/211-jbl-l75ms-integrated-music-system

Adam Nolly Getgood is a producer and mixer and the co-founder of GetGoodDrums. On this episode: What the pandemic changed for Nolly How much tone experimentation should be done during a recording session How Dan Weller from Sikth transitioned into becoming a great producer How Nolly divides his time between production and GetGoodDrums Mixing in Dolby Atmos - is it the future? Nolly's incredible hunt to figure out exactly how to recreate Andy Sneap and Colin Richardson's signature rhythm tones What defines quality if everything is pretty good? How would Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody turn out if they produced it in Pro Tools? Why Nolly uses Kai monitors The groundbreaking game changing effect Sonarworks and Soothe had on audio production Why the term “practice makes perfect” is a lie Using ProQ3's dynamic EQ bands on Devin Townsend and Periphery mixes  The beauty of the right Mesa cab with the right Vintage 30s Check out GetGoodDrums. Follow Nolly on Instagram. Sponsored by: DistroKid Want to level up your audio game? Sign up for URM. When you sign up, you'll get access to: Insanely detailed audio production tutorials One-on-one feedback Multi-track sessions from some of the biggest names in rock and metal Be sure to follow URM on Instagram and Facebook. Follow Eyal Levi on Instagram. Like this show? Please leave us a 5-star review - even one sentence helps! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Matthew Ross-Spang a twice Grammy winning Memphis record producer and engineer, who started out at the  Legendary Sun Studio as a teenager working his way up from intern to the Chief Engineer. He has since moved on to restore back to its original glory the also legendary Sam Phillips Recording studio across town originally built in 1960 to accommodate the ever growing catalog of music under Sam's production and label.  The City of Memphis even nominated him one of its “30 under 30” Memphians and in 2016 awarded him a key to the city while proclaiming April 25,2016 as “Matt Ross-Spang Day” in Germantown,TN. Matt has worked with many great artists and producers including: Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Chris Isaak, The Rival Sons, Dave Cobb, and John Prine to name just a few. Matt has been an early guest on the podcast previously on episode RSR040 when I visited Memphis for the podcast so you can catch hi background story there. Today we are going to see what's new and hear about the beautiful restoration of Sam Phillips Recording.  Thanks again to Mark Rubel at Blackbird Academy for making our introduction. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7vsPHFW59uWbBMQ4H0clNM?si=c243592c11494922 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/356

My guest today is Chad Copelin an American producer, audio engineer, musician, and songwriter from Norman, Oklahoma. He's best known for his production work with Broncho, Sports, Wilderado, LANY, Ben Rector, Andrew Belle, Sufjan Stevens, Third Eye Blind and engineering for pop artists Christina Perri, Kelly Clarkson, Sasha Sloan and Avril Lavigne. Chad engineered Christina Perri's Top 40 song “A Thousand Years” which went 10x platinum. He also was nominated for a grammy for producing and engineering All Sons And Daughter's record “Poets & Saints.” He works out of his Norman, OK based studio, Blackwatch, as well as spending time in Nashville, LA, and Sonic Ranch outside of El Paso, TX. I play synth and have amassed quite a collection of vintage synths, have an obsession with short scale guitars, and play bass on a lot of records as well. I'm always trying to find a new creative process to breathe life into a recording. Which we will talk about Thanks to Ryan Hewitt for making our introduction. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6zmcGWbmRcUMoguqT7B7ua?si=8df21e33c75e4700 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/355

My guest today is Russell Cottier a producer, and engineer, who has worked with clients such as The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sony, and artists like Sly and Robbie, Don Carlos and Gold, The Roscoes and many more. He creates videos to teach recording and production as well on Youtube and through mixing courses. And he is even responsible for creating cool mixing hardware which we will hopefully talk about today on the podcast. Russel has been a guest on the podcast previously so you can catch his other episode on RSR107 to learn more about his background. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1GwvXsZ8bpKomFCZnld1xG?si=b85996fa5ad047c2 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/354

My guest today is Tyler Campbell CEO the founder of Alder Audio, an Ann Arbor, Michigan based company pushing the boundaries of ribbon mic design.  Alder Audio launched in February 2021 with the H44, a workhorse ribbon mic with a patented capsule and durable herringbone ribbon.   Before founding Alder, Tyler worked in product development as a chemist and engineer.  He specializes in developing products related to materials design and has worked on a diverse array of projects, from high power lithium batteries to automotive communication cable, to adhesives you can find on the shelf of your local hardware store.   Tyler is also a self-proclaimed gear addict and lifelong home recording enthusiast, who grew up with a front row seat to his family's small manufacturing business in Wisconsin.  The H44 design is a direct result of his scientific background combined with his passion for audio, recording, and small business. I have been trying out the H44 and H44S here at The Toy Box Stusio aka RSR HQ and I have to say these mics sound really fantastic! One of the big challenges for me is recording things like drums with bright cymbals and acoustic and electric guitars that can sometimes be too harsh or vocals that have too much edge. The H44 does a beautiful job of smoothing out those instruments and making them mixable and listenable. So I'm happy to have Tyler joining us on the show today to learn more about Alder Audio and his mission to design a great ribbon microphone at a great price Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbJhbD1bWQsyAyG1X6sabtofbfGiwY2zp If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/353

My guest today is Jon Blass a GRAMMY award-winning mix engineer based in Nashville. His work has also received 9 other GRAMMY nominations, 6 Dove Awards, a pair of Stellar awards, and frequently lands atop the Billboard Gospel charts (including 13 number 1 Gospel Albums).  Jon's mix credits include India.Arie, Tweet, Marvin Sapp, Donnie McClurkin, Anthony Brown, Jason Nelson, Donald Lawrence, and many others. He currently sits on the Nashville chapter Producers & Engineers Wing committee of the Recording Academy.  Jon is also a former executive committee member of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) in Nashville, and is an alum of the Society of Leaders in Development (SOLID).  Thanks to Anders and Adam Audio for making our introduction! Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/48cvNaZEZgy3eoFYysVM40?si=828e0ff9c80342b6 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/352

My guest today is Bill Mims, a graduate of Full Sail University in the Recording Engineering program. In 2001, he spent a year in Orlando doing live sound, as well as an internship at a post production facility before moving to LA in 2002 and getting hired by Sunset Sound where he worked his way up the ranks and was an assistant engineer by the end of 2004. He became proficient in Pro Tools, as well as analog tape machines. Between 2004 and 2010, Bill worked with some of the most famous artists in the world at Sunset Sound. Bill left Sunset and went freelance in 2011. Since then, he has done engineering and producing work for many artists. He has been lucky enough to have been a part of many Grammy winning projects, two of which Bill earned statues for (Jimmy Cliff-Best Reggae 2012 and Ben Harper/Charlie Musselwhite-Best Blues 2013). Bill has worked on several films, two of which have either won or been nominated for an Oscar (The Theory Of Everything-Best Original Music Score 2015, Sicario-Nominated for Best Original Music Score 2016). Bill has also worked on TV shows, including Transparent, which has won Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Some recent work includes Mrs. America, For Life, and When They See Us.  Recent albums would be the last few Morrissey albums, Death Cab, and I produced 2 albums for Megan Mullally. Thanks so much to Howard Willing for making our introduction. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2R9AlNZHsv3DvpUUIEgKCw?si=829f1fde3e584c34 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/351

My guest today is Eric Bazilian, an original member of The Hooters, producer, and musician writing and recording with other artists liken Cyndi Lauper, Joan Osborne, The Scorpions, Ricky Martin, Jonatha Brooke, Leanne Rymes, and William Wittman to name just a few. Eric has been a guest on the podcast on episode RSR122 to talk about his start in music and writing the song “One Of Us” for Joane Osborne on his kitchen table. So please go check out that episode too. Also, make sure to catch his video series Under The Hood where Eric breaks down all his music and writing methods. Email in 2021 “...Being stuck in Stockholm with limited resources (a 2012 MacBook Pro, Apollo Twin, one Gefell mic, a couple of electric guitars, a mandola, a keyboard controller, and a short scale Gretsch bass that my son bought when was twelve) afforded me the time and motivation to make my first solo album in almost twenty years. Drums were cut by my drummer in Philadelphia (challenging considering his total lack of engineering experience, but I made it work), and by my other drummer in Slovenia (recorded by a producer/engineer genius in an amazing studio). I mixed it myself on a pair of Yamaha HS5s, with a lot of input from some legendary mixers (including our pal John Fields), mastered by my guy in Slovenia. A real quarantine pandemic musical fairy tale.  Thanks again to John Fields for making our original introduction. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3YSa93YNTWb4gCh6W3BKsk?si=3d5072a54d4b4b21 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/350

My guest today is Bill Cheney co-owner with Jim Romney of Spectra1964. Bill designs mic pre amps, eqs, and compressor limiters for studios following in the footsteps of William Dilley who founded the original Spectra Sonics company in 1964.  Bill has been a guest on the podcast before to talk about the history of Spectra Sonics and Spectra 1964 on episodes RSR227 and 269. So you should check those episodes out too and today we are going to talk about what's new at Spectra1964, the importance of understanding Peaks, how they affect your recordings, mixes, productions and ultimately masters and how Spectra1964 handles peak content to make sure your records sound amazing (like the many great records recorded with the Spectra 101 amplifier circuit including Aerosmith, ZZ Top, KISS and John Lennon to name a few. Spotify playlist in show notes) Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2TzboLsCf0C4mlKX1dNqtT?si=7d7ed2e54bfc4ec7 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/349

My guest today is Matt Baxley, better known to the wider world as Moot Booxlé, a multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer, composer, synthesist, teacher, and funk connoisseur currently based in Fort Myers, Florida.  Moot rose to prominence in the early days of YouTube with his videos demonstrating his abilities on the modular synthesizer and the talkbox, gaining millions of views and many followers. He played his first professional gig at the age of 16, playing drums in a production of the musical “Grease” in his hometown of Morristown, TN. He has played thousands of gigs since then on multiple instruments. He currently plays and sings nightly in several bands in Southwest Florida, producing records, playing on studio sessions, demonstrating musical equipment both live and on the internet and writing books. I stumbled on Moots Youtube channel surfing synth videos when I was checking out the new line of Behringer synths like the Poly D, Odyssey, MS-101, Crave, and Pro-1 where he does a great job of demoing all these. Moot also live streams from his studio where you can see walls of super cool new and vintage synths played with lots of funky skill. Plus he is from TN so… come on! Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6S3k3p8gj3pChPT4dSvZpX?si=57a141b57b5a4976 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/348

My guest today is Trent Jones, a podcast producer, editor, and composer based in  Chattanooga, TN. He has produced over 1,000 podcast episodes in a wide variety of formats and topics, as well as a number of audiobooks. As a  composer, he has written bumpers and music beds for podcasts and midroll advertisements.  Trent is also a strength and conditioning coach, with a speciality in training men and women over 40 using barbells, resistance training, and high intensity interval training. After years of “working out” in public gyms and seeing little progress, Trent discovered the Starting Strength method in 2016 and began training under a Starting Strength Coach.  He gained 40lbs of muscular bodyweight over a year and greatly improved his strength, joint health, and mental health in the process. He began coaching others in 2018, and earned the Starting Strength Coach credential himself in 2020. His passion is teaching people to lift barbells to build stronger, more useful bodies, gain confidence, and improve their quality of life for the long-haul.  Trent currently coaches online and in-person out of his home gym. And He co-hosts two podcasts about health and fitness, Weights and Plates and 40fit Radio and also a music podcast called Music and Ideas, and regularly hosts workshops and training camps teaching the Starting Strength training method. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3CVWCtFHYwlrbGk7AUY1k2?si=b95d895b58fc4d7a If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/347

My guest today is David Gnozzi a platinum mixing/mastering engineer and producer, as well as the creator and host of the popular YouTube channel MixbusTV and a Pro Mix Academy Tutor. David is a former professional musician with 2 albums published (Universal Records and Danse Macabre Records), and he has been recording and mixing for almost 20 years, he fully dedicated himself to recording, mix and mastering after ending his career as musician in 2010. David initially started to gain recognition as a mixing engineer after successful remixes for Ladytron and Felix Da Housecat. His credits include: Raygun Romance, MC Solaar, Ryan Shuck (Orgy, Adema, Julien-K), Daniel Graves (Aesthetic Perfection), Mad Gallica, Danny Blue, Stonebreed, The Nest, and Italian pop superstar, Valeria Rossi to name a few. He mixed various projects for Universal Records, Nettwerk Records and Virgin Radio and video games such as Fallout 4 and Rock Band 3. In 2017, David worked with one of France's most famous and influential hip hop artists of all times, MC Solaar, mixing the multiplatinum album Geopoetique. The release also went on to win “album of the year” at the French Music Awards. In 2014 he started the now popular Youtube channel MixbusTv, which became one of the most trusted and respected online resources for audio mix and mastering. David does “how to” video tutorials for the studio. And with an ever expanding list of partners like AMS Neve, SSL, Empirical Labs, and many more, he's known for his detailed and very technical reviews of pro audio hardware and software. Now located in Los Angeles, California, David has his own private mix and mastering suite, equipped with some of the best gear available on the market he is available as a producer, mix & mastering engineer. David also discovered and developed the upcoming alternative popstar Bella Kelly, and the new singles “Throat” and “Heartbreak Motel” are both in the Youtube playlist. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3iZOusnhlqnWY9nck9SqZb?si=ca14b05377d24c78 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/346

My guest today is Linda Taylor a Guitarist and composer for over 20 years on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” with Drew Carey, and Aisha Tyler. She has Toured, recorded and/or performed with Art Garfunkel, Terri Lyne Carrington, Tracy Chapman, Sheila E., Christopher Cross, Sara Niemietz, Crystal Bowersox, Edwin McCain, Don Was, Jim Keltner, Thelma Houston, and many more. And her recent recordings include Terri Lyne Carrington's Grammy winning “Mosaic” and “Love And Soul”; Art Garfunkel's “The Singer”; Ed Roth's “Mad Beatnik”; Edwin McCain's “Mercy Bound”; and Maia Sharp's “The Dash Between The Dates”.   Currently Linda is collaborating with Sara Niemietz, co-writing, producing, mixing. Film and TV composer with placements including “This Is Us” and “Superstore”. Thanks to Bill Cheney at Spectra 1964 for making our introduction.  Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0gLMnDYzWnwgGZmpJKayus?si=8cfbc177207c4473 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/345

My guest today is Duane Lundy, a music producer, mixer, and studio owner in Lexington Kentucky. Duane has worked with hundreds of artists from Grammy-Award winners like Sturgill Simpson & Flor de Toloache, to critically acclaimed and eclectic Ben Sollee, Vandaveers, Jim James, and the Horse Feathers. Duane also works on projects that include legacy artists like Ringo Starr, Michael McDonald, Bela Fleck, Robert Randolph, Earl Slick, Duff McKagan, and touring artists like Joe Pug, JDawn Landes, Daniel Rodriguez, as well as emerging buzz acts such as The National Reserve, Ian Noe, Brain Owens, Miles Nielsen and The Rusted Hearts.  Recently he produced and engineered two tracks on the new Ringo Starr album, as well as produced and mixed Saving Country Musics 2016 song of the year “The Dogs” by Justin Wells. He also records his own music for television shows, feature films and advertising like Sons of Anarchy, Weeds, NCIS, and BMW Mini Cooper among many others. I met Duane in 2013 when he produced Americana band, The Breedings, here at The Toy Box Studio with me engineering, and we had a blast recording to analog tape through my MCI console. So I'm psyched to have him back! Thanks to Justin Perkins for reconnecting us for this interview. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DJS5h7awVWKO95FsrNUgk?si=16ba90920c9c44cf If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/344

My guest today is Brian Charles a producer, engineer, plugin designer for Rare Signals from Boston Massachusetts. Brian has been a fantastic guest on the podcast before on episode RSR174 to talk about working with indie rock bands. He's worked with thousands of artists over the years and has made albums in almost every genre imaginable.  Some of Brian's many credits include The Vatican Commandos featuring a young “Moby” as the lead singer, Dispatch, pop artist Marina and the Diamonds, Weakened Friends, and his longtime work as a producer and touring member of the band “The Sheila Divine”.  Brian is also an educator working with Berklee College of Music, Emerson College, The Walnut Hill School for The Arts, and The Recording Workshop. And he is the creator of the “Transatlantic Plate Reverb” at his plugin company Rare Signals where he digitally recreated the iconic plate reverbs of Zippah studio. Tragically in December 2021 His Home base studio, Zippah Recording (of 33 years), was destroyed in an 8-alarm fire. Incredibly the music community has come together to fundraise in support of Brian's studio and family recovery after the devastating loss of many decades of instruments, recording equipment, and musical history.  Thanks so much to Mark Rubel at Blackbird Academy for making our original introduction. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: http://MixMasterBundle.com THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% https://samplyaudio.com Use code RSR20 to get 20% off for the first 3 months https://www.Spectra1964.com http://MacSales.com/Rockstars http://iZotope.com/Rockstars use code ROCK10 for 10% off http://www.thetoyboxstudio.com https://www.sonarworks.com https://apiaudio.com http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com Hear guests discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1HPEubCvawOhqGMGNN3Mw4?si=427cce7f91464f67 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/343

Graham Waks, recording engineer, mixer, producer, and owner of Left Plus Right Studio in Nashville, TN. He also runs Music City Acoustics, designing and building acoustic panels for home studios.   He recorded and mixed projects in a wide range of genres with artists signed to major labels as well as indie artists paving their own way. Some of Graham's music credits include: Lindi Ortega, Parade of Lights, Hadley Kennary, Kevin Presbrey, and Lauren Strange to name a few.  IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT: How to learn about acoustics  Finding your ideal listening position How to learn your room so that you can mix accurately How to optimize your listening environment for free Monitoring levels: What is the ideal level to listen at How to measure room modes What type of acoustic treatment should you use? How to build your own treatment Why using Sonarworks isn't the ideal way to tune your room To learn more about Graham Waks, visit: https://www.musiccityacoustics.com/ For more information on Sonarworks, visit: http://links.masteryourmix.com/sonarworks To learn more tips on how to improve your mixes, visit https://masteryourmix.com/   Download your FREE copy of the Ultimate Mixing Blueprint: https://masteryourmix.com/blueprint/   Get your copy of the #1 Amazon bestselling book, The Mixing Mindset – The Step-By-Step Formula For Creating Professional Rock Mixes From Your Home Studio: https://masteryourmix.com/mixingmindsetbook/   Join the FREE MasterYourMix Facebook community: https://links.masteryourmix.com/community   To make sure that you don't miss an episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or on Android.   Have your questions answered on the show. Send them to questions@masteryourmix.com   Thanks for listening! Please leave a rating and review on iTunes!

Austiņu lietošana kļuvusi arvien biežāka, jo gandrīz katram no mums kabatā ir viedtālrunis, kurā ir pieejama mūzika, podkāsti, kā arī radio un televīzijas pārraides no visas pasaules. Kādas austiņas ir pieejamas un kā tās pareizi lietot? Kāpēc vienās austiņās visa skaņa saplūst lielā jūkli, bet citās katru mūzikas instrumentu varam sadzirdēt atsevišķi? Kādas ir austiņu attīstības tendences? Audiālu #DigitālāsBrokastis desertu uzbur Mārtiņš Popelis, audiotehnoloģiju uzņemuma "Sonarworks" līdzdibinātājs, un Marks Ronis, ārsts-otolaringologs. Plašāk par tehnoloģiju jaunumiem lasi portālā LSM.lv.  

Plus, why the prices of streaming audio should be increased, and the world's fastest cybernetic drummer. My guest this week is Martins Popelis, who's one of the founders of Sonarworks. The company was one of the first to provide room and headphone calibration software that's within the reach of the average home studio owner. During the interview we spoke about measurement mics why they're all different, the company's consumer offerings, how to get the best results with Sonarworks, the difference between Sonarworks and room modeling, and much more. I spoke with Martins from a studio in Los Angeles that he was visiting. var podscribeEmbedVars = { epId: 82669940, backgroundColor: 'white', font: undefined, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: '600px', showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true };

Mint Season 4 episode 10 welcomes Charlie Crown, the Miami-based, Colombian DJ & producer who has released tracks through Sony Music, Dim Mak, and PRMD; and garnered over 25+ million streams in the process. He's received nods from some of dance music's biggest names including The Chainsmokers, Steve Aoki, Martin Garrix, and Illenium; and shared stages with other incredible artists like Zomboy, Mija, and Le Youth; in addition to massive performances at Club Space Miami and Life in Color. His most recent single, “Sinking” with Bronze Whale reached the top 25 on Apple Music's Electronic charts in over 40 countries and peaked at No. 28 on the US Electronic chart. Charlie Crown is endorsed by McDSP, FabFilter, and Sonarworks audio plugins.He's also deep in the world of where music meets web3. I wanted to have him on because, (1) I backed his project, and (2) his crowdfund mechanics are quite different from what we're used to seeing.I hope you enjoy our conversation. Charlie Crown: https://twitter.com/itscharliecrownLearn more by visiting: https://adamlevy.io/mint---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim your FREE Listener Badge NFT proving you listened to this episodehttps://adamlevy.io/poap-season-4---------------------------------------------------------------------------Support Season 4's NFT sponsors1. Coinvise - https://coinvise.co/2. Polygon Studios - https://polygonstudios.com/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io

In this episode, we welcome back Gints Mednis, a very experienced partner channel manager with a track record of building Sonarworks' global partner channel from scratch. Not every company needs a partner channel, but a partner channel can be one of the best ways to scale their business for those who do. In this episode, we discuss: - How to evaluate if you need a partner channel at all? - How to select prospective partners? - How to structure partner offer: what to give and what to ask? - How the partner recruitment pipeline looks like? - And finally, what to do if a partner fails to meet the business goals

In this episode of the Mixing Music Podcast, Dee Kei and Lu talk about buying, calibrating, and using Sonarworks for their rooms and how it has changed their mixing.DOWNLOAD FREE STUFFGET FILEPASSGET IZOTOPEJoin the ‘Mixing Music Podcast' Discord!HIRE DEE KEIHIRE LUFind Dee Kei and Lu on Social Media:Instagram: @DeeKeiMixes @midsidesoundTwitter: @DeeKeiMixesCHECK OUT OUR OTHER RESOURCESJoin the ‘Mixing Music Podcast' Group:Discord & FacebookThe Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by Izotope, Antares (Auto Tune), Plugin Boutique, Lauten Audio, Spreaker, Filepass, & CanvaThe Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei and Lu are both professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Keyshia Cole, Trey Songz, Ray J, Smokepurrp, Benny the Butcher, Sueco the Child, Ari Lennox, G-Eazy, Phresher, Lucky Daye, DDG, Lil Xan, Masego, $SNOT, Kanye West, King Kanja, Dreamville, BET, Universal Music, Interscope Records, etc.This video podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed at IN THE MIX STUDIOS located in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at deekeimixes@gmail.com.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/mixing-music-music-production-audio-engineering-and-music/exclusive-content

Helmuts Bems is the co-founder and CEO of Sonarworks, a company making individually perfected sound for creators and listeners used by Grammy-award winning producers. Having recently raised a fresh investment round of $6 M led by Almaz Capital (and $13.8 M in total to date), Helmuts and his team are working tenaciously on getting their software into your headphones and changing the way you listen to music, podcasts, and any audio content foreverIn this episode we talk about the future of sound,  discuss the peculiarities of conquering China and other innovative Asian markets, building a B2B strategic partnerships business that is targeted at B2C as well as the nature of developing an R&D intensive productThe topics covered in this episode with Timestamps[03:15] - Introduction and sound techMaking any sound come out of any sound deviceHow do listeners know what sound they like?Bass&Treble knobs - in fact, a super complicated UISimplifying the sound taste discovery experience[20:40] - How Sonarworks products can improve your listening experienceSonarworks SDK is integrated into headphone manufacturersCustomize your sound taste via the Sound ID appMegatrend - hardware products as base products and software upselling as the main businessWhoever owns the user data, has the value in the supply chain[29:45] - Conquering China and global marketsChina is more innovative than the west, at least in consumer electronicsWho is better fit to produce the future car - Volkswagen or Apple?Europe is a global laggard in consumer electronicsHaving B2B product, but with a B2C engagementUser interfaces in China are generally different than in the west[39:10] - Specifics of selling a B2B product with B2C audiencesLeveraging professional niche market for consumer product credibilityBenefits of using partner marketing budgets for your promotionWorking with media and bringing media benefits for partnersWorking with influencersStructuring a long term integrated partnership[56:00] -  Building an R&D intensive productPlanning of R&D process with a sprint+iterations approachManaging pivots & building teams with strategists and executorsSoundtech cluster in Latvia and its originsHiring highly specialized engineering talentUsing Winamp to develop automotive sound productsFind out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/ Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/===See the video content exclusively on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/ Questions/suggestions? Join our Telegram group > https://t.me/pursuitofscrappiness The full interview with Helmuts is available NOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/ 

hello ya'll, my wrists hurt.   Email me: schizophreniapod@gmail.comCheck out my music: https://lnk.to/nowhyMy other show: https://lnk.to/transnationalTopics include; wrist pain, rsi, carpal tunnel, woodworking, music production, sonarworks, SoundID Reference, mastering, mixing, conversational, low energy, etc.

Donatas is one of the most well-known investors in the Baltic startup scene. Having hustled in different businesses and investments, he started VC investing 10 years ago and has been part of such success stories as TransferGo, Trafi, Ziticity, Sonarworks, and recent headline maker InteractioIn a super high-energy conversation, we go back in time to compare what the startup scene was like 10 years ago and how far we have come. Donatas also shares many interesting stories from investing and not investing into different companies and principles in VC-founder relationships. By listening to this episode you will learn:A brief recent history of the Baltic startup scene and key milestones along the roadThat often hugely successful companies don't look like it in early stagesThe societal and psychological benefits of having unicorn level success storiesHow in some verticals, the Baltics are setting global trends instead of followingThe role of local investors with the increasing presence of international investorsKey things investors like Donatas look for in foundersSome mistakes to avoid in VC-founder relationshipsThat it is critical to be open and honest about your company going out of businessThe role of VC in further investment roundsHow Vinted started and missing the opportunity to invest by 4 weeksThe amazing tenacity, grit, and timing of the Interactio team whom they rejected 2x before making the investmentFind out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/ Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/

In our second Sales and Marketing Fri. Talk, we discuss how to build a strong partner channel to grow sales globally. Our guest - Gints Mednis, Head of Business Development at Sonarworks, will be sharing his story of establishing a global partner channel and growing sales by 2000% in just 2 years. Sonarworks is an award-winning audio technology innovator whose patented technologies are now used in more than 70,000 studios globally.

It takes a lot to go Uphill in Chicago, but this week’s guest has it all figured out.This episode the Gearbuds welcome our newest buddy Kevin Tabisz to the squad, a Chicago-based musician, studio-owner at Uphill Recording Services, and all around good dude. We get into his history, becoming a true gear nerd, acquiring celebrity owned vintage Gibsons, growing up with The Fireside as your dad, hanging up on Steve Albini phonecalls, carrying a Neotek console into an attic, and even some positive lockdown takeaways.Also discussed: Phoebe Bridgers turning bad into good, Metro Chicago selling an NFT, updated Craigslist drama, Talkbox talk, getting to work with Sonarworks and Earthworks (thanks Stinger), Izzy Stradlin, and trolling for strange.Play the drums (not the cymbals) and **** open hi-hats.

With the growing demand for home studios, there's the problem of needing to make a less-then-ideally treated rooms sound good and translate well. This is one of the things that Sonarworks is aimed towards, which is a pioneer in speaker calibration software. Based on their recent announcement of the new SoundID Reference Software announcement, I wanted to talk about the whole concept of this "speaker calibration" or "room calibration" software, my thoughts, who and when it's worth getting and when it's not. Spoiler, I think it has it's place, but it's not for everyone.

We go behind the brand with Sonarworks co-founder Martins Popelis to discuss the company's beginnings, evolution, product range, and goals for the next 12 months.

Complete Show Notes: https://www.sounddesignlive.com/can-you-mix-better-on-speakers-with-flat-magnitude-and-phase/ In this episode of Sound Design Live, I talk with the Co-Founder and VP of Products at Sonarworks, Mārtiņš Popelis. We discuss the magic under the hood of Reference 4, why you can only please 17% of people, and the true test of mixing on a linear system. Start supporting Sound Design Live on Patreon today for as little as $1: https://www.patreon.com/sounddesignlive

Chris Creglia is a mixing and audio engineer based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada!You can find Chris on Social MediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/theg.is.silent/ReferencesConnor Salmoral: https://www.benwallick.com/podcast-episodes/2020/6/7/secret-sonics-049-connor-salmoralTriumph (band): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_(band)DNA recording: https://www.instagram.com/dnarecordingfacility/Sonarworks Reference: https://www.sonarworks.com/referenceAKG k240 Headphones: https://amzn.to/3gm8GwtA Year Ago Today by Cinde (the song we broke down): Waiting on the official linkMike Tompa: https://www.miketompa.com/Capital Chambers Reverb: https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/reverbs/capitol-chambers.htmlPro-Q 3: https://www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-q-3-equalizer-plug-inBrainworx  SSL 4000 E: https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_console_ssl_4000_e.htmlThanks for listening to this episode of Secret Sonics! I hope you enjoyed this episode :) Look out for new episodes weekly. Consider rating and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts and sharing this or any of your favorite episodes with a friend or two.Thank you to Zvi Rodan, Mendy Portnoy, and Yakir Hyman for contributing to the new podcast theme music!You can find out more about Secret Sonics and subscribe on your favorite podcast app by visiting www.secretsonics.co***If you want the show to continue to improve, feel free to fill out a listener survey here: https://forms.gle/BWKmS4YmESYid5rh8 ***Follow along via social media here:Facebook: www.facebook.com/SecretSonicsPodInstagram: www.instagram.com/secretsonics/Feel free to email me at secretsonics@gmail.com with any questions and feedback you might have. I'm open to learning about what topics you'd like to hear about and which people you'd like to hear from. In pursuit of making this podcast truly helpful to anybody looking to improve at music production, all suggestions are truly welcome! Have a great week, stay safe, and dig in!-Ben

The Nine Inch Nails guitarist and synth wizard joins us once again, this time to share his thoughts on three new IEMs from Campfire Audio. Preview video: https://youtu.be/jEWJvVU9irU Campfire Andromeda 2020: https://campfireaudio.com/shop/andromeda-2020/ Campfire Solaris 2020: https://campfireaudio.com/shop/solaris-2020/ Campfire Ara: https://campfireaudio.com/shop/ara/ PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/johndarko _____________________________________________________________________ Also mentioned in this podcast... Custom Art tips: https://thecustomart.com/ AudioQuest DragonFly Red: https://www.audioquest.com/dacs/dragonfly/dragonfly-red LG V40: https://www.lg.com/de/smartphones/lg-V40-ThinQ Sony WM-1A: https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1a Cayin N8: https://cayin.com/produkt/cayin-n8-hr-player/ Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ Grandaddy - Last Place: https://www.discogs.com/Grandaddy-Last-Place/master/1143797 Grandaddy - Just Like The Fambly Cat: https://www.discogs.com/Grandaddy-Just-Like-The-Fambly-Cat/master/117205 Alessandro Cortini bandcamp: https://cortini.bandcamp.com/ _____________________________________________________________________ Playlists… Alessandro Cortini: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2sJ6bCwiqIRtOI9t5IW0LL?si=dYrgy_OATy2WCt27uFJD2Q https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/be341d79-ced6-462b-9c81-34f2aa41352b https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/3410407 John Darko: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3pMthTuCjsUMsX4DabYKjb?si=FyFhqZrISIeYHb8LkED_nw https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/029202bb-dab2-436f-bd29-2170c5ed76d8 https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/3410482

Estoy seguro de que en algún momento te has puesto a mezclar y has dicho, "oye... esto no suena igual que cuando lo escucho en el móvil o en el coche". Y es normal, porque la sala en la que estamos repercute muchísimo en el resultado final de lo que escuchamos. Y si escuchamos incorrectamente, tomaremos malas decisiones. Por eso te propongo que utilices este programa increíble.

Estoy seguro de que en algún momento te has puesto a mezclar y has dicho, "oye... esto no suena igual que cuando lo escucho en el móvil o en el coche". Y es normal, porque la sala en la que estamos repercute muchísimo en el resultado final de lo que escuchamos. Y si escuchamos incorrectamente, tomaremos malas decisiones. Por eso te propongo que utilices este programa increíble.

本次录音分为上下两部分放出，#150为第一部分，主要讨论Sonarworks Reference 4 进行讨论。该软件旨在给使用普通价位音箱、耳机的用户一个快速修正频响曲线的「大按钮」。选择预设模式，打开开关，即可抹平不同音箱/耳机的频响差异，得到「千人一面」的线性声音。一方面，对于狭义的HiFi 发烧友（或曰器材发烧友）而言，EQ 是一个约等于音质劣化器的存在；另一方面，从业人员和混音爱好者有一万种不同的软硬件去对频响曲线动手动脚。那为什么这个功能单一到近乎简陋的插件，得到了双方群体中一部分人的认可？我们究竟可以用SR4 去做什么事情？#151会讨论Wave 插件Abbey Road Studio 3 和一些关于EQ 更加外延的话题，敬请期待。# 延伸阅读：Snoarworks Reference 4 与 Abbey Road Studio 3 体验：https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/56828060便携录音棚——Abbey Road Studio 3插件介绍，安装说明，及试用体验：https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/132333210[00:00:03] BGM#1. Benny Goodman - Wang Wang Blues (from the OST of The English Patient)[00:02:16] 北关和他的音频从业经历介绍；[00:11:00] Sonarworks Reference 4 功能介绍，几人的使用体验和槽点；[00:26:01] SR4 可能的使用场景；功能设计方向上的所谓「缺陷」；发烧友和专业人士眼中SR4 能做什么；频响补偿中存在的缺陷；[00:36:37] SR4「一键Linear」对于音频工作者的意义；发烧友如何将其活用；[00:44:23] BGM#2. The Strokes - Bad Decisions[00:47:36] 什么工具可以替代SR4；它对发烧友认知频响曲线的「特殊功能」；[00:53:48] 关于EQ；关于知乎麦文学老师的「EQ 万能论」；[01:00:20] BGM#3. The Strokes - 80`s Comedown Machine[01:05:03] 彩蛋# 主持：孟获、包雪龙# 嘉宾：北关

本次录音分为上下两部分放出，#150为第一部分，主要讨论Sonarworks Reference 4 进行讨论。该软件旨在给使用普通价位音箱、耳机的用户一个快速修正频响曲线的「大按钮」。选择预设模式，打开开关，即可抹平不同音箱/耳机的频响差异，得到「千人一面」的线性声音。一方面，对于狭义的HiFi 发烧友（或曰器材发烧友）而言，EQ 是一个约等于音质劣化器的存在；另一方面，从业人员和混音爱好者有一万种不同的软硬件去对频响曲线动手动脚。那为什么这个功能单一到近乎简陋的插件，得到了双方群体中一部分人的认可？我们究竟可以用SR4 去做什么事情？#151会讨论Wave 插件Abbey Road Studio 3 和一些关于EQ 更加外延的话题，敬请期待。# 延伸阅读：Snoarworks Reference 4 与 Abbey Road Studio 3 体验：https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/56828060便携录音棚——Abbey Road Studio 3插件介绍，安装说明，及试用体验：https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/132333210[00:00:03] BGM#1. Benny Goodman - Wang Wang Blues (from the OST of The English Patient)[00:02:16] 北关和他的音频从业经历介绍；[00:11:00] Sonarworks Reference 4 功能介绍，几人的使用体验和槽点；[00:26:01] SR4 可能的使用场景；功能设计方向上的所谓「缺陷」；发烧友和专业人士眼中SR4 能做什么；频响补偿中存在的缺陷；[00:36:37] SR4「一键Linear」对于音频工作者的意义；发烧友如何将其活用；[00:44:23] BGM#2. The Strokes - Bad Decisions[00:47:36] 什么工具可以替代SR4；它对发烧友认知频响曲线的「特殊功能」；[00:53:48] 关于EQ；关于知乎麦文学老师的「EQ 万能论」；[01:00:20] BGM#3. The Strokes - 80`s Comedown Machine[01:05:03] 彩蛋# 主持：孟获、包雪龙# 嘉宾：北关

My guest is Martins Popelis, Co-Founder of Sonarworks! Having achieved success with delivering reliable reference sound to over 30,000 music creators worldwide with Sonarworks Reference product, Martins is now a firm believer of delivering individually perfected sound to all music listeners, thus eliminating sound translation problem at its core. Note: I'm a proud user of Reference 4 and I also bought Sennheiser HD650 headphones from Sonarworks which included a customized calibration profile ;) Martins and I discussed: Sonarworks Reference 4 (How Reference 4 works, various ways it helps production, various use cases and equipment setups) Speakers, headphones and the room you're listening in effectively "EQ" the sound. Measurement microphones (37 measurement points) Re-measure after moving furniture, etc.? Yes. Headphone profiles - Sonarworks has calibrated hundreds of headphone makes and models to create profiles for each. Using Reference 4 Systemwide vs. within your DAW Systemwide: Virtual instrument, ~20 ms latency Sound ID - Research in consumer sound preferences. Machine learning asks user what sounds they like, then creates a profile for them. Audio perception Thanks for being a great guest, Martins! DID YOU KNOW........We exist for the purpose of helping you, so please comment below with any questions or remarks. We appreciate you listening. Want to Start a Business or Have a Career as a Podcast Producer/Engineer? Listen and Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, Android, RSS, Email  

Koen Heldens is a mixer for some of the most unconventional and cutting edge hip hop and R&B artists of today. Perhaps best known for his work with XXXTentaction, Koen has worked with the likes of Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Whiz Khalifa, Sizzla, Thutmose, Lil Wayne, Missy Elliot, Dreezy and so many more. Koen tells Justin Colletti about the philosophy he learned from working with Dr. Dre, which emphasizes making things "feel" right, rather than looking to achieve pristine sounds—something that took a lot of adjustment for this classically-trained musician and conventionally-schooled audio engineer. Thanks to Sonarworks, Soundtoys and Focusrite for sponsoring this episode.

Room and speaker correction have come a long way. Once hit-or-miss tool employed almost exclusively by larger studios, smart solutions for EQ treatment are now accessible to even the most humble of studios. The most successful of these new solutions is easily Sonarworks, which has become nearly ubiquitous in serious project studios. Justin Colletti talks to Sonarworks co-founder Martins Popelis about how these solutions work, what they can do for your studio—and what they can't. Justin has some uncommon questions for his quest. Such as: Now that the frequency response of your speakers can so easily be smoothed out by adaptive EQ correction, what are the remaining essential qualities to look for in a set of speakers? All that and a lot more inside.

Helmuts Bēms: "Mācība, ko esmu ļoti, ļoti grūtās situācijās piedzīvojis ir, pirmkārt saglabāt kaut kādu paškontroli. Lai arī cik augstu nesistu emocijas, turpini, vēl joprojām, sekot līdzi tam, ko Tu dari."   Šī man ir bijusi viena no jautrākajām sērijām līdz šim. Helmuta plašo interešu loku ir grūti aptvert pat garās formas podkāsta sarunā. Paralēli dažādiem dzīvesstila eksperimentiem un hobijiem, ko apspriežam podkāstā, viņš ir paspējis studiju laikā izveidot uzņēmumu, ko vēlāk pārdeva un tagad viņš vada, paša līdzdibinātu uzņēmumu Sonarworks, kas dzīvo pa vidu starp radošo un eksakto pasauli. Sonarworks veido skaņas kalibrēšanas rīku, kurš ļauj skaņai skanēt tā kā Tev patīk, visos kanālos.    2019. gadā Sonarworks piesaistīja investīcijas 5M EUR apmērā un starp Sonarworks klientiem ir 45 000 studijas, 40 Grammy balvu ieguvēji un Sonarworks tehnoloģija tika izmantota Rio olimpiskajās spēlēs.   Ja tagad podkāstam vari veltīt tikai piecas minūtes, dodies uz 1:21:01, kur Helmuts pastāsta par komunikāciju ar silvēkiem, kuriem ir agresīvs komunikācijas stils.   Šajā jautrajā sērijā apspriedām: Laulības līgumi. Neveselīgi veidi miega mazināšanai. Komunikācija un personību tipi. Cilvēku daba. Skaņa un mākslīgais intelekts. Investīciju piesaiste. Pētīšanas un izstrādes nodaļas pārvaldīšana. Prognožu jēga biznesā. Bizness Amerikā. Domstarpību vērtība. Un, kā vienmēr, vēl daudz vairāk.   Baudi un dalies! Sērijas saturs zemāk.   0:00:20 - Ievads par Helmutu. 0:01:20 - Negulēšanas triki uzsākot pirmo biznesu. 0:05:51 - Helmuta eksperimenti ar stingra režīma ievērošanu. 0:15:45 - Vai ir atšķirība starp dažādiem audio formātiem. 0:19:05 - Kā Helmuts uzvarēja auto skaņas sistēmas skaņas kvalitātes konkursā, izliekoties par tūristu.  0:22:15 - Ko dara skaņu inženieri. 0:29:10 - Par mūzikas veidošanu ar mākslīgo intelektu.  0:33:52 - Kā Helmutam izdodas saglabāt interesi par vienu tēmu un nelēkāt pa dažādām jomām. 0:35:19 - Kādas ir attiecības ar investoriem pēc investīciju saņemšanas. 0:40:31 - Laulības līgumi. 0:42:06 - Kā ieviest procedūras uzņēmumā, kura kultūrā darbinieki pieraduši pie neformālas vides. 0:47:48 - Kā strukturēt konsultāciju uzņēmumu, lai to varētu pārdot. 0:49:25 - Pētniecības departamenta vadīšana uzņēmumā. 0:54:02 - Helmuta attieksme pret prognozēm biznesā. 0:57:02 - Kā Sonarworks sasniedz savas industrijas milžus. 1:06:29 - Kā Helmuts apgūst jaunas lietas. 1:08:54 - Atskats uz patīkamo un traumatisko pamatskolas mācību laikā. 1:12:09 - Kā Helmuts definē panākumus. 1:12:58 - Par Helmuta personības tipu un cilvēku viedokļu izaicināšanu. 1:18:37 - Kas ir labākais padoms, ko Helmuts ir saņēmis. 1:21:01 - Par komunikāciju ar silvēkiem, kuriem ir agresīvs komunikācijas stils.   Sonarworks internetā: www.sonarworks.com   Podkāsta mājaslapa: www.SvarigasDetalas.lv Podkāsta Patreon lapa: http://patreon.com/svarigasdetalas Podkāsta Facebook lapa: www.facebook.com/SvarigasDetalas Podkāsts iekš Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/lv/podcast/id1455599870 Es twitterī: @JurisBaltacs

=== Andris K. Bērziņš: "Cilvēki var darīt daudz ko, lai nonāktu situācijā, kur veiksme viņiem smaida biežāk." ===   Andris ir uzaudzis Austrālijā, studējis City universitātē Londonā un Stenfordā, ASV. Sava darba mūža laikā, strādājot Eiropā un Amerikā, viņš ir paguvis no iekšpuses piedzīvot divus, vairāk kā 100M$ vērtus exitus. Šeit Latvijā viņš ir līdzdibinājis TechHub Riga un ir partneris jaunuzņēmumu investīcijas fondā Change Ventures, kas ar savu šī brīža 30M EUR portfeli atbalsta ambiciozus uzņēmējus Baltijā.  Viņš ir investors vai padomdevējs uzņēmumiem kā Giraffe 360, Nordigen, Sonarworks, Prezi, Edurio un citiem. Viņš ir arī politiski aktīvs, ir biedrs Jaunajā konservatīvajā partijā un darbojas, lai panāktu izmaiņas jaunuzņēmumu likumos, kas pavērtu arvien jaunas iespējas vietējiem darbiniekiem un jaunuzņēmējiem. Papildus tam visam, Andris ir arī iestājies Zemessardzē.   Šajā sērijā apspriežam: Zemessardze. Emociju vadība stresa apstākļos. Biznesa kouči. Akciju opcijas darbiniekiem. Caurspīdīguma plusi un mīnusi vadot komandu. Trimda. Investēšana. Latviskuma saglabāšana, uzaugot ārpus Latvijas. Baltijas uzņēmēju kultūra. Pārdošana Amerikā. Un, kā vienmēr, daudz vairāk.   Ja tagad podkāstam vari veltīt tikai piecas minūtes, dodies uz 1:02:00, kur ar Andri apspriežam atvieglojošo vienkāršību, kas rodas strādājot vidē, kura necieš muļķības.   Baudi un dalies! Sērijas saturs zemāk.   0:00:20 - Ievads par Andri. 0:01:20 - Kādēļ Andris uzauga Austrālijā. 0:02:44 - Dīpīšu, jeb deportēto latviešu nometnes. 0:06:05 - Kā Andris saglabāja latvietību, uzaugot ārpus Latvijas. 0:09:23 - 2x2 nometne. 0:10:05 - Akciju opcijas darbiniekiem - kā tās darbojas un kādēļ tās jāievieš arī Latvijā. 0:14:15 - Šķēršļi akciju opciju ieviešanai Latvijā. 0:18:44 - Kādā stadijā ir jaunuzņēmumi, kas nāk pie Change Ventures. 0:23:58 - Cik bieži bailes ir patiesais iemesls biznesa neveiksmei. 0:25:26 - Kas ir labs veids, kā atteikt investīciju. 0:27:04 - Kā Andris tiek galā ar dilemmu par to, vai projekts jāpārtrauc vai jāturpina. 0:28:30 - Caurspīdīguma plusi un mīnusi biznesa vadībā. 0:33:04 - Kā nodot sliktas ziņas saviem investoriem. 0:34:18 - Andra domas par biznesa koučiem. 0:36:46 - Ko Baltijas biznesa kultūra varētu aizgūt no pārējās pasaules. 0:38:41 - Kā pārdot ideju Amerikas investoriem. 0:39:50 - Kā Andris skatās cauri uzņēmēju pašpārliecinātībai, lai redzētu vai tai ir pamats. 0:45:04 - Kādēļ ir vērts klausīties investoros pat, ja pats neesi investors. 0:48:06 - Andra pieeja investēšanas lēmuma pieņemšanai. 0:51:22 - Kā Andris nolēma atgriezties Latvijā. 0:54:49 - Kā Andris nolēma iestāties Zemessardzē. 0:59:57 - Kas ir pirmā lieta, kas notiek iestājoties Zemessardzē. 1:02:00 - Par atvieglojošo vienkāršību, kas rodas strādājot vidē, kura necieš muļķības. 1:05:46 - Kur Andri un Change Ventures atrast internetā. 1:06:29 - Ko Andris izdarīja ar naudu, ko saņēma pēc pirmā exita. 1:07:13 - Andra skats uz veiksmes un strādāšanas lomu panākumu gūšanā. 1:09:44 - Kā Andris definē panākumus. 1:10:13 - Andris par savu iesaisti politikā. 1:12:44 - Kāda Andrim bijusi negatīva pieredze, uz kuru atskatoties, tā tagad šķiet vērtīga.    Change Ventures mājaslapa: www.changeventures.comAndris twitterī: @akberzinsPodkāsta mājaslapa: www.SvarigasDetalas.lv Podkāsta Patreon lapa: http://patreon.com/svarigasdetalas Podkāsta Facebook lapa: www.facebook.com/SvarigasDetalas Podkāsts iekš Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/lv/podcast/id1455599870 Es twitterī: @JurisBaltacs

Darrick Atwater is a music producer based out of Atlanta, Georgia, USA! You can find out more about Darrick at https://agentmethod.net/Darrick's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darrickatwater/Darrick's Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4zmcUP7LYol6WjwSYzTM5w?si=ErB3bq1PStm6VHKlzGijRgAgent Method Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/agentmethodAgent Method Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1wKHdMOhy9PI7gG8CxW22dGoofy videos and Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjhcyk_V6xcBmgVb00hZUpwSonarworks - https://www.sonarworks.com/Iveen - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqvT_Q9ZVAXof5r0l-h0BPQCoastal Landsharks - https://open.spotify.com/artist/0mgc0gF16AIOfZg7aEWJfi?si=Qs4j-lzNSSmehqqQ75OzoQDeadmau5 Masterclass - https://www.masterclass.com/classes/deadmau5-teaches-electronic-music-productionBlack Parade by My Chemical Romance came out in 2006, after Green Day's American Idiot in 2004Voyatra Synth - https://images.app.goo.gl/vhVUkPj6cjaYn6nQA Proust Novel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_TimeStrong Songs Podcast (personal recommendation) - http://strongsongspodcast.com/Thanks for listening to this episode of Secret Sonics! I hope you enjoyed this episode :) Look out for new episodes weekly.You can find out more about Secret Sonics and subscribe on your favorite podcast app by visiting www.secretsonics.coFollow along via social media here:Facebook: www.facebook.com/SecretSonicsPodInstagram: www.instagram.com/secretsonics/Feel free to email me at secretsonics@gmail.com with any questions and feedback you might have. I'm open to learning about what topics you'd like to hear about and which people you'd like to hear from. In pursuit of making this podcast truly helpful to anybody looking to improve at music production, all suggestions are truly welcome!Have a great week and dig in!-Ben

Kopš elektrības atklāšanas tehnoloģijas ir tās, kas mūzikas baudīšanas procesu ir darījušas klausītājam arvien pieejamāku un demokrātiskāku. No mūzikas koncertzālēs līdz ierakstiem radio stacijās, no personīgajiem atskaņotājiem līdz mūzikai mūsu kabatā. Šonedēļ raidījumā "Kāpēc dizains?" runājam par dizainu mūzikai. Par dizainu, kas ir klātesošs ikkatrā risinājumā, kas ļauj mums radīt, ierakstīt vai klausīties mūziku. Raidījumā piedalās uzņēmuma Gamechanger audio dizainers Fricis Kalvelis, uzņēmuma Sonarworks līdzdibinātājs Mārtiņš Popelis un audiovizuālās mākslas mākslinieks Rick Feds jeb Rihards Fedotovs.  

Richard and I go waaaay back. Yep, we were touring America together back in 2002 and that was the first time I met him.  tWas a warp records tour with Mark Bell (RIP), Nightmares on wax, Prefuse 73, Luke Vibert and other nutters!  He was the guy fixing everyone's laptops on the bus I recall. We were all busy getting wasted and he was onto something else. That pretty much explains the man. Super generous with his time and pioneering in his goals and accomplishments. Not a follower.  Indeed, not content with just making LPs, touring and all of that trad life, Richard's made his own path and now his work represents the high bar for sound design across the board.  Whether working for Google, Yamaha or Jaguar Richard is the guy to figure out converting the unknown into the possible. A no to yes convertor.  We talk about his toughest sonic challenge, the cutting edge of sound tech in 2019 and where he is heading in terms of his AI aspirations.   We chat about the world of sound that lives above 20kHz. Why analog ??? and a lot more.  He's a deep mind and this chat gets pretty specific in terms of tools used and so forth.  You're welcome!   Richard talks about a purely algorithmically generated set of music Here's a link:   https://williamfields.bandcamp.com/album/fieldsos   Really something unexpected.    Also That Sanken 100khz mic !   https://bit.ly/32T0j54 ____________________ In the nitty today I dive into controlled chaos. Dipping an ankle into the portal! It's a lot of eurorack talk. Tricky to explain but I give it a go :) CHAOS  CONTROL CHAOS ?? bit of both like … ____________________   Music for today's show comes from Fake Baby. Check it here! http://www.andyrivas.com ____________________   Here's the link to the competition giveaway thanks to Sonarworks! What you stand to win!!   Speaker measurement software – find out where your monitors need help DAW plugin – reference sound combined with zero latency for any musical endeavor Systemwide – apply calibration to all outgoing audio Measurement microphone for  Recording Studios – sniffs out any faults your setup might have Custom-tailored calibration file for your Sennheiser HD 650 studio headphones Sennheiser HD 650 studio headphones   Enter now!    https://gleam.io/lroFH/howa-podcast-x-sonarworks-giveaway

In this episode of the SonicScoop Podcast, Justin Colletti talks to Marc Urselli about doing audio work in the studio vs the stage. Marc is an engineer and mixer who is equally comfortable whether mixing FOH or tracking and producing in some of the world's best recording studios. He has worked with the likes of Nick Cave, Lou Reed, John Zorn, U2, Mike Patton, Les Paul, The Black Crowes, Joss Stone and many more. In this episode, Marc and Justin talk about the differences between mixing for the studio and the stage, how to get the most out of musicians, controlling stage volume, using compression and a whole lot more. Then, the talk turns to gear, with Marc giving us a virtual tour of Manhattan's East Side Sound, and showing off a handful of very unusual (and useful) microphones. Thanks to Sonarworks, Focusrite and Eventide for sponsoring this episode.

Mark Needham is an 11-time GRAMMY-nominated producer and mixer who has worked with The Killers, Imagine Dragons, P!ink, Fleetwood Mac, Bloc Party, Chris Isaac and many more. Today, he focuses on developing new artists from the ground up, helping them find what makes them unique refine their craft, and connect with big audiences and major labels. Find out more about Mark here: https://www.markneedham.com Special thanks to Sonarworks, Soundtoys and Gear Club for sponsoring this podcast.

This week, Justin Colletti is joined by Maor Appelbaum, a mastering engineer who as worked with Faith No More, Sepultura, Yes, Matisyahu, Lupe Fiasco, Meatloaf, William Shatner and many more. Maor is a creative mastering engineer who is obsessed with finding the right tools to apply the right kind of coloration to the project at hand. Hear about his approach to auditioning gear, choosing the right tones, interacting with clients and a whole lot more. Thanks to Focusrite, Gear Club and Sonarworks for sponsoring this podcast. Subscribe at https://sonicscoop.com Find more from Maor at https://www.maorappelbaum.com

So many companies, products, and services for music creation are embracing the technology of modeling analog sound in the digital space. It is, without a doubt, the democratization of accessibility to high-end gear for all musicians. And while we have come a long way with regard to modeling in the realm of input, much less seems to have been accomplished in the realm of playback. In this week's episode of Sounds Of The Future, I hypothesize as to why that might be, and I take things a step further into the realm of where I think this trend is going. As mentioned in the episode: Waves NX, Isone by Toneboosters, Reference 3 by Sonarworks. Connect with me on Twitter (@TomDuPreeIII) and let me know what you think of this episode!

Sampling rates. 44.1k. 48k. 88.2k 96k. 192k?? How do they impact your sound, and how can you make the best choice for your projects? Justin Colletti dives into the science behind sampling rates in a fun and informative talk that demystifies what they're really all about, and puts to bed much of the confusion surrounding this topic. Thanks to Soundtoys, Sonarworks and Eventide for sponsoring this podcast. Get more from Justin at masteringdemystified.com or mixingbreakthroughs.com For the articles mentioned in this post try: https://sonicscoop.com/2016/02/19/the-science-of-sample-rates-when-higher-is-better-and-when-it-isnt/ https://sonicscoop.com/2013/04/17/beyond-the-basics-harmonic-motion-and-the-root-of-all-music/

Ben H. Allen joins Justin Colletti to talk about ways of breaking the mold when producing music, and coming up with memorable, trailblazing sounds. Ben has worked recently with critically-acclaimed artists including Deerhunter, Animal Collective, Belle and Sebastian, Washed Out, and Gnarls Barkley, after an early career engineering for major hip hop all stars like Puff Daddy, Mase and and Notorious B.I.G. He shares strategies for avoiding the the cookie cutter approach, and getting the most out of artists—and yourself—in every production. Thanks to Soundtoys, Eventide and Sonarworks for sponsoring this podcast. Learn more about Ben at http://www.makerecordsnotbombs.com

In this episode Lee Chapman from Sonarworks (https://www.sonarworks.com/) and I talk about why Latvia is cool, how to achieve great translation of your masters across different systems & how Sonarworks Reference can help you achieve that. Enter the give away to win a Premium Bundle of the Sonarworks Reference 4 software & Calibrated Sennheiser HD650 headphones/calibrated Microphone: http://bit.ly/2HzbFTO.

Is audio school really worth it? Can you get a "job" out of music school? Is a degree actually going to help you break into a creative field? Justin Colletti dives deep into this topic for prospective students, career changers and those in the job market. Thanks to Soundtoys, Gear Club and Sonarworks for sponsoring this podcast. For more info on this topic, try: https://sonicscoop.com/2014/09/25/is-pro-tools-certification-worth-it-3-great-reasons-and-3-terrible-reasons-to-take-a-training-course/ https://sonicscoop.com/2018/06/07/industry-intel-2018-audio-engineer-salaries-jobs-report/  

In this week's podcast, Justin Colletti is joined by Dean Olivet, a musician and educator who has compiled data on the biggest songs in history to help discover what goes into making hit records that capture music fans' imaginations. Dean shares his research into the 40 biggest tracks of the past year—and the 500 most popular songs in history—to find common threads and new trends in the tastes of listeners. Thanks to Soundtoys, Eventide and Sonarworks for sponsoring this podcast. To read Dean's original analysis on Soundfly's "Flypaper" blog, see: https://flypaper.soundfly.com/produce/we-analyzed-every-dang-song-that-cracked-the-billboard-top-5-in-2018/ 

Aka "The Independent Musician’s Guide to Not Going Broke" In this episode of the SonicScoop podcast, Justin Colletti talks about mastering your money and finances in a creative field so that you can continue having the freedom you need to do your best work. Thanks to Soundtoys, Eventide and Sonarworks for sponsoring this podcast. Find the article that inspired this episode at https://sonicscoop.com/2013/09/26/the-independent-musicians-guide-to-not-going-broke/

In this week's podcast, veteran mixer Mike Major [At The Drive In, Coheed and Cambria, Tall as Lions] joins Justin Colletti to talk all about enhancing drum sounds in the mix. He breaks down his process and workflow in detail, offering a repeatable framework for getting the most out of real drum kits, whether you're looking to add size and ambience, or get tighter, cleaner sounds. Thanks to Soundtoys, Gear Club and Sonarworks for sponsoring this podcast. http://Sonarworks.com http://Soundtoys.com http://Gear-Club.net See more from Mike at https://Mike Major Mix.com https://MixingDrums.com Fine the article mentioned in the episode at: https://sonicscoop.com/2017/01/31/advanced-drum-mixing-time-aligning-drum-tracks-better-phase-coherence/ Find more of Mike's free articles at: https://sonicscoop.com/author/mike-major/

Prolific rock and metal producer Eyal Levi of Unstoppable Recording Machine joins Justin Colletti to talk all about advancing your career in audio or music by making networking work for you, and discusses strategies for landing new clients. These insights apply to any genre, whether it be rock or hip hop or jazz or classical. Thanks to Sonarworks, Soundtoys and Gear Club for sponsoring this podcast. Check them out at: http://Sonarworks.com http://Soundtoys.com http://Gear-Club.net See more from Eyal at http://urm.academy

Are you about to send your music in for mastering? Veteran GRAMMY-nominated mastering engineer Joe Lambert joins Justin Colletti on this week's podcast to answer some of the most common questions mastering engineers get, and to give some tips on avoiding the biggest mistakes artists and mixers make. Thanks to Sonarworks, Soundtoys and Eventide for sponsoring. Reach Joe at http://joelambertmastering.com Check out Justin's course at http://MasteringDemystified for more great tips or his "Mixing Tips from Your Mastering Engineer" series on the Joe Lambert Mastering blog: https://sonicscoop.com/2015/11/12/mix-tips-from-your-mastering-engineer/ See Joe's video masterclass with SonicScoop here: https://sonicscoop.com/2017/09/28/music-mastering-masterclass-joe-lambert/ Or, check out SonicScoop's best ever posts on mastering at: https://sonicscoop.com/2018/05/13/sonicscoops-top-10-best-posts-mastering/

Arvien biežāk valsts ekonomikas konkurētspēju mēra pēc tā, cik daudz jaunuzņēmumu, jeb, kā teicām agrāk, startapu tiek izveidoti un uzsāk sekmīgu darbību. Viens no svarīgiem jauna uzņēmuma attīstībās posmiem ir investīciju piesaiste. Jauns uzņēmums, jaunuzņēmums - vienā gadījuma rakstām atsevišķi, otrā kopā. Visa atšķirība? Patiesībā starp abiem terminiem atšķirība milzīga, kādas ir šīs atšķirības un kā kļūt par jaunuzņēmumu, kā arī par investīciju piesaisti raidījumā Kā labāk dzīvot skaidro Latvijas Privātā un riska kapitāla asociācijas valdes loceklis Rūdolfs Krese un Latvijas Biznesa eņģeļu tīkla valdes loceklis Juris Birznieks. Uzklausām arī pieredzes stāstus, pa tālruni sazināmies ar uzņēmuma “Sonarworks” līdzdibinātāju Helmutu Bēmu. Kā ar privāto investoru jeb biznesa eņģeļu veiktajām investīcijām un dažādām valsts atbalsta programmām tiek sekmēta uzņēmumu un jaunuzņēmumu attīstība Latvijā?  Vai informācija par atbalstu ir pieejama un saprotama? Cik plašs ir potencionālo atbalsta saņēmēju loks?

At ShowStoppers in Las Vegas, Janis Spogis, Partner and VP of Products for Sonarworks explains how their  technology adjusts your music in all your devices to sound the same. You get to adjust the sound to your liking from the same starting point, thanks to their analysis of hundreds of headphones and speakers. This edition of MacVoices is sponsored by Smile, the makers of PDFpen and PDFpenPro, PDFpen for iPad, PDFpen for iPhone, PDFpen Scan+, as well as TextExpander for Mac and TextExpander for iPhone and iPad, as well as the new TextExpander for Windows. Great software to help you get more done. Show Notes: Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices. You can catch up with what he's doing on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show: iTunes: - Audio in iTunes - Video in iTunes - HD Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: - Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss  - Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

Helmuts Bēms takes audio playback very seriously. His company Sonarworks has been delivering a unique “flat” reference playback product to recording studios for years, which allows recording engineers a more consistent monitor experience – regardless of the playback system. Now with the company’s True-Fi product, headphones are able to start with a truly flat response. Over the course of the development process Helmuts has acquired quite the data cache of measurements, calculated observations and an overall unique perspective on personal audio that few others can match.

At ShowStoppers in Las Vegas, Janis Spogis, Partner and VP of Products for Sonarworks explains how their  technology adjusts your music in all your devices to sound the same. You get to adjust the sound to your liking from the same starting point, thanks to their analysis of hundreds of headphones and speakers. This edition of MacVoices is sponsored by Smile, the makers of PDFpen and PDFpenPro, PDFpen for iPad, PDFpen for iPhone, PDFpen Scan+, as well as TextExpander for Mac and TextExpander for iPhone and iPad, as well as the new TextExpander for Windows. Great software to help you get more done. Show Notes: Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices. You can catch up with what he's doing on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the show: iTunes: - Audio in iTunes - Video in iTunes - HD Video in iTunes Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher: - Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss  - Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

My guest today is Brian Charles, a producer, engineer, and now plugin designer from Boston Massachusetts. Brian’s studio (Zippah) has become a renowned destination for indie rock bands from New England and around the world.   Brian’s credits span 30 years of record making, from the punk band  “The Vatican Commandos” (fronted by a young Moby) in the 80’s. To the indie guitar pop of the 90’s from bands like The Gigolo Aunts, Dirt Merchants and The Figgs to the present day with artists like Mike Slap and power trio “Weakened Friends”. Embracing the idea that to create a successful life in music these days, you have to do everything you know how to do...with a passion, Brian also created a plug-in company (Rare Signals) with a few of his musician friends, and they recently released their first plug-in, called the “Transatlantic Plate Reverb”, which really sounds fantastic. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/174

My guest today is Chris Graham, a multi genre Billboard chart breaking mastering engineer who has worked with thousands of artists. He's also the co-host of "The Six Figure Home Studio Podcast" with Brian Hood. Their podcast aims to help audio engineers make a full time living from the comforts of their home studio. Chris has a passion for seeing audio engineers make a solid living from their skills, and he thinks there's nothing cooler than when people "fire their boss" so they can go full time in music. Chris has been on the podcast a couple of times already which you can check out on episodes 72 and 118 if you want to learn more about his mastering business Chris Graham Mastering. But today we are going to focus on his newest passion and website HomeStudioLessons.com where you can book one on one lessons with a professional audio engineer, and gett face to face teaching right from the comfort of your own home studio where it really counts!  Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/173

My guest today is Tim Lauer, a Nashville based composer, producer, songwriter, and musician. He recently completed his second season as Executive Music Producer for the television show Nashville. He produced over 125 cast recordings for the Nashville show and was also EMP for Greenleaf Season 1 and wrote and produced the main title song performed by Mavis Staples. Tim is an Emmy-nominated writer whose songs have been featured in advertisements for BMW, Target, L'Oreal, Coke and Microsoft and well as tv shows One Tree Hill, Drop Dead Diva, Hung, The White Queen, Homeland, Teen Wolf, Pretty Little Liars and Cougar Town.   He has played on over 300 major label albums, recording with a wide variety of artists including Robert Plant, Taylor Swift, The Civil Wars, Chris Cornell, Keith Urban, Rodney Crowell, Dolly Parton, Sheryl Crow, Megadeth, and Joan Baez.   Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/172

The Season 1 finale is a followup on Episode 14 - Room Acoustics and Monitoring.

My guest today is Vance Powell, a six-time Grammy award winning producer, engineer and mixer, whose impressive list of credits includes Chris Stapleton, Elle King, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Wolfmother, Seasick Steve, Black Prairie, Tinariwen, and Jeff The Brotherhood, among many others. Powell recently won two Grammy awards in 2018 for mixing and engineering Chris Stapleton's From A Room: Volume 1 (Best Country Album), and mixing and engineering various songs on CeCe Winans' Let Them Fall In Love ('Best Gospel Album'). He was also nominated for mixing Robert Randolph & The Family Band's Got Soul ('Best Contemporary Blues Album'). Today we are going to dive right into the topic of producing, recording, and mixing. And I’ll ask some questions about recent productions for Vance over at his private studio Sputnik Sound which he shares with Mitch Dane. Download: Vance Powell's Free Pro Tools UAD Mixing Template Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/171

My guest today is Matt Beaudoin, a Boston-based engineer, producer, and educator.  While currently a freelance engineer, Matt has had a long association with Q Division Studios, where he was a chief engineer from 2003 to 2010.   While he has worked in a wide variety of genres, Matt particularly enjoys employing classic recording techniques while working on music made with a live, ensemble-based approach. In addition to his work in the studio, Matt is currently an assistant professor of Music Production and Engineering at Berklee College of Music. Today he is going to talk about his experience recording in Boston and teach us How to Get a Great Recording of a Band Live Together in a Room. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/170

My guest today is Eric Sarafin aka Mixerman, a gold and platinum award winning record producer and mixer. He has worked with many nationally known acts, including The Pharcyde, Tone Loc, Ben Harper, Lifehouse, Nine Days, Barenaked Ladies, Amy Grant, and Foreigner, just to name a few. After 25 years based out of Los Angeles, Eric is now living in Asheville NC, where he produces and mixes records out of several world class recording facilities located there. Eric is also a published author and has written several books under the pen name of Mixerman about recording, producing, and mixing. It all began with The Daily Adventures Of Mixerman chronicling his recording journey in the studio. He then went on to write Zen And The Art Of Recording, Producing, and Mixing as three separate books after that, which I highly recommend reading. And now he has come out with his most recent book presented as a field manual for the studio called: Musician’s Survival Guide To A Killer Record. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/169

My guest today is Marc Daniel Nelson, a Grammy nominated music producer, mixing engineer, and 4 time PMA nominated, and 1 time winner. He has been producing, mixing and managing creatives for over 18 years.  His music credits include Fleetwood Mac, Jason Mraz, Colbie Caillat, Eric Burdon, Robert Duvall, Mark Bussard, Ozomotli, Reik and more. As Protégé for both legendary producer / engineer Bill Schnee and Ken Caillat, Marc has carried the torch for impeccable quality sound and production.   His film credits include Solo, The Vietnam War, Blade Runner, Wild Horses, Point Break, No Manches Frida, Father Figures and more.   His creative management credits include executive producing the 13 episode PBS television series, creating and executive producing the national video campaign for Guitar Center and creative directing for Alcon Sleeping Giant and ArtistMax. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/168

My guest today is Nikolay Georgiev, a London based engineer, producer and plug-in developer. Nik is also an experienced lecturer in Sound Engineering and Music Production and a past chairman of the AES UK section. He is engaged closely with Acustica Audio, both as internal and external 3rd party plug-in developer. As such he took a major role in the creation of plug-ins such as Lime, Navy, Cream and some of the modules in Pink. Nik currently works on his own line of plug-ins based on Acustica’s tech. I discovered Nik one day browsing Facebook and seeing him post videos from exotic spaces with incredible reverbs from around the world. You might find him firing a gun in a long industrial tunnel under a mountain somewhere or popping a balloon in a beautiful church. I have always found this kind of thing fascinating. So I knew we would want to learn more about his adventures to capture and recreate reverbs from secret spaces around the world. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/167

My guest today is Paul Moak, a 5 time Grammy-nominated, ASCAP award winning, producer, engineer, mixer, songwriter, and musician based in Nashville, TN. Paul has amassed credits on more than 500 albums. Spanning a wide variety of genres, with artists like: Goodbye June, Joy Williams, Mat Kearney, The Weeks, John Paul White (of The Civil Wars), Marc Broussard, Caitlyn Smith,  Relient K, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Leagues, and House of Heroes to name a few. Paul’s work has appeared on numerous platinum and gold albums exceeding 10 million in sales and been featured on hit TV shows such as, Nashville, One Tree Hill, Private Practice, Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries and 666 Park Avenue as well as tv spots for College Game Day,  Bose, American Family Insurance, and Taco Bell. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/166

My guest today is Pete Lyman, a GRAMMY-Nominated mastering engineer based out of Nashville, TN and owner of Infrasonic mastering, an audio and vinyl mastering studio with locations in Echo Park, California and Nashville, TN. Pete has mastered Grammy-nominated projects for Panic! At the Disco, Weezer, and Grammy-award winning albums for Jason Isbell and Chris Stapleton. In 2016 he was recognized with a GRAMMY Nomination for Album of the Year for Chris Stapleton’s Traveller. In 2018, Pete opened his second studio facility, Infrasonic East, in Nashville, TN. Infrasonic East is now home to Pete Lyman’s custom mastering suite, and the Neumann cutting lathe, where he works with a diverse client roster - from John Prine and Dierks Bentley to Fall Out Boy and Halsey - on projects of all sizes. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/165

My guest today is Jim Stewart, a Cleveland based Engineer, Producer, and Mixer working with a wide variety of local, regional, and national artists. Some of Jim’s credits include Welshly Arms, The Lighthouse & the Whaler, Ray Flanagan and The Authorities, and Ryan Humbert. Jim began his career studying at the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio. Then went from intern to staff engineer at Metrosync studios and Ante Up Audio, after which he moved on to freelance engineering working out of many major studios in Northeast Ohio. Jim finally made his mark on Cleveland’s music scene and built his own studio in the heart of downtown Cleveland​. Jim produces, engineers, and mixes records comfortably in a variety of styles like Rock, Jazz, Soul, and Americana weaving from productions that feature groovy live bands to productions that involve building a track from the drums up. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/164

My guest today is Ryan Sutton, who originally thought he was going to be a professional golfer. Fortunately, his passion for music drove him to learn many instruments, including guitar, bass, keys, and drums, and then the studio. Ryan's uncle, Bob Gaudio brought him into the studio and gave him a “masterclass” in writing and producing based on his work for some of the biggest artists of all time like Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Neil Diamond, Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra, and Michael Jackson. Bob invited Ryan to engineer and mix projects for Frankie Valli and for the Jersey Boys film soundtrack and international stage productions. Ryan also worked under producer Tedd T (MuteMath, For King & Country). Ryan also got to play on For King & Country’s 2X Grammy-winning album Run Wild, Live Free, Love Strong, as well as projects for Phil Joel (Newsboys) and Big Daddy Weave. In addition, Ryan has had the pleasure of writing and recording custom music jingles, as well as doing post-production mixes for Coca Cola, Krystal Burgers, Nike, BBC, LP Building Products, Payless Shoes, Dollar General, Backyard Burgers, Hummingbird Productions, HCA Healthcare, First Tennessee Bank, and Tennessee Housing Development Agency. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/163

My guest today is Jonathan Haidle, trained in both piano performance and composition, with an minor in painting. Jonathan likes to bring a wide range of artistic influences to his music.  After getting a masters in Education, he founded Forte Music School - where 180+ students receive private lessons with focus on recording/arranging pieces they learn.   I’ve known Jonathan for a while and have also been aware that he loves using Ableton Live and the Push controller. But recently I saw some of his live performance videos on Youtube and thought it would be awesome to have him on the show to talk about using the push controller and Live as both a composition tool and performance DAW. Jonathan says he has also been drawing some of his inspiration for composition from watching TV lately, particularly Project Runway. So he is going to tell us how he is drawing inspiration from the fashion industry in creating music - and why Ableton is such a great platform for that. And also talk about composing for film and TV. Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/162

My guest today is Ian Shepherd, mastering engineer and owner of Mastering Media Ltd. Some of Ian’s credits include: Keane, Tricky, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Deep Purple, The Orb, Culture Club, New Order, and King Crimson amongst many others. Ian also has a blog called ProductionAdvice.co.uk where teaches you how to master your own music with plugins in your DAW. You may be aware that the loudness wars have caused music to get louder and louder since digital music was introduced in the 1980s, but you might not know that music streaming sites have finally taken us out of the loudness wars by automatically adjusting levels of all songs on playback to hit a matched listening level. This means that louder songs today can actually get turned down by sites like Spotify and Youtube. So really you want to get your levels just right so that they hit the sweet spot and sound right when streaming. Today we will talk about Ians newest free website tool called LoudnessPenalty.com that lets you check you actual loudness for each music streaming site to make sure that it will playback at the correct levels and keep you out of the LOUDNESS penalty box! Thanks to our sponsors! Sonarworks: https://www.sonarworks.com/ OWC - Other World Computing: https://www.OWC.com Hear more on Youtube If you love the podcast then please Leave a review on iTunes here Want to learn more about mixing? Get Free mix training with Lij at: http://MixMasterBundle.com CLICK HERE FOR SHOW NOTES AT: http://RSRockstars.com/161

On episode 138 of the BSP, I talk about a YouTuber being Arrested, Google Chrome v.69 tracking your browsing history, Instagram losing their CEO, Facebook using your 2 factor auth phone number to target ads, 50 million facebook accounts having access stolen, and much more.   Subscribe to the full audio podcast at http://www.bandrewsays.com   Twitter: @bandrewsays Ask Questions: AskBandrew@gmail.com Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/podcastage-store Discord: https://discord.gg/dXQUc7v   00:00 - Intro 00:53 - Conspiracy Theorist YouTuber Arrested 05:18 - Google Chrome Tracking Your Browsing History 08:00 - Instagram’s CEO’s Leave the Company 09:30 - Facebook Using your 2fa Phone Number to Target Ads at You!!! https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa-phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/ 14:29 - 50 Million Facebook Accounts Had Access Tokens Stolen 16:36 - Opinion: What Can You Do To Protect Your Privacy / Security? 20:05 - Sonarworks True-Fi Coming to Mobile Devices 22:26 - Sennheiser MKH-416 23:51 - Canon Cameras with Clean HDMI Out 24:36 - Why You Can’t Edit Tweets 25:35 - Adverts Should Only Be at the End of Videos!? 29:15 - Why did I Revert Back to an MP3 player? 33:43 - Ask Bandrew 34:28 - Email 1 35:00 - How Can I Fix High Microphone Self Noise?  38:11 - Email 2 39:30 - How To Connect an XLR Mic to an Xbox One Controller 42:10 - Email 3 43:47 - How Do You Setup NW800 & Pyle Pad 10MXU 46:59 - Outro 

I am interviewed by my guest host is Arik Levy - Law Enforcement Officer, Host of Firearms Nation Podcast, Creator of Shooter's Summit and the Firearms Nation YouTube channel. Arik really wanted to know all the details about my recent major revamp of my studio. We discussed my new setup, my previous setup, my podcast production background, software, hardware, workflow and more. Some of the elements of my new setup: RE20 microphone (same one I've been using for about 1-1/2 yrs.) Neve Portico II channel strip Sound Devices MixPre-6 iMac Pro Neumann KH 120 A near-field monitors Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack and Loopback iZotope RX 6 Advanced and Ozone 8 Sonarworks speaker and headphone calibration software TwistedWave audio editor Reaper Plugins: Sheps Omni Channel Strip, SSL G Channel strip, etc. VoIP Recording services: Squadcast, Zencastr, Ringr, etc. Thanks for hanging out with me again, Arik! DID YOU KNOW........We exist for the purpose of helping you, so please comment below with any questions or remarks. Thanks for listening! Want to Start a Business or Have a Career as a Podcast Producer/Engineer? Listen and Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, Android, RSS

I recap my experience at NAB last week, including our Mic Test Drive Booth and lots more including: BIG thanks to my booth brothers: Michael Helms, Josh Wade, and Landen Hardy! Our 10 mics, Mackie 1642VLZ4, MixPre-6 borrowed from Sound Devices, and a BP40 borrowed from Steve Savanyu at Audio-Technica. Sennheiser’s upcoming wireless clip on mic, and the Neumann U67 at their booth! My birthday gift - a Neewer mini microphone! Watch Bandrew Scott's video on this mic here. The Venue was HUGE - Las Vegas Convention Center. Booth traffic was OK. And I was interviewed twice - one audio and one video. I also mentioned my drive out there - TO Vegas via New Mexico and Arizona, FROM Vegas via Utah and Colorado. And it was great to hang out with: Rob Walch - Libsyn Todd Cochrane, Mike Dell, MacKenzie - Blubrry Jennifer Crawford and Vernon Ross - Podbean Rob Greenlee - Voxnest Eric Larsen - Tascam Sean and Ira - Samson Podfest guys - Chris Krimitsos, John Dennis Podcast Movement guys - Jared Easley, Dan Franks Allan Tepper Emma Victoria Austin Dillman - REV Angela Copeland Other stuff: Skype Has a Big Announcement for Content Creators: Skype was proud to announce the new Skype for Content Creators, which looks to be what podcasters have been asking for, for years. The new feature is available in preview form now (at NAB) and should be widely available in the summer for both Mac and Windows 10 users. Skype for Content Creators records calls directly through NDI-capable software like Wirecast, Xsplit, and Vmix. The feature provides "clean" copies of all call participants that you can quickly drop into audio and video production apps, so you can focus more on the content and publishing of your show, and less on double-checking everyone's recordings. I detail how I mixed an episode using the wrong Sonarworks profile, and then had to correct it. Because I had already done many edits, it wasn’t an option to go back to the mix and adjust the individual tracks. Lastly: Congrats to the current students enrolled in PES! Next semester starts June 26th and super-early-bird pricing still available. DID YOU KNOW........We exist for the purpose of helping you, so please comment below with any questions or remarks. Thanks for listening! Want to Start a Business or Have a Career as a Podcast Producer/Engineer? Listen and Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, Android, RSS

Die hohe Kunst der Raumkorrektur – im Sonarworks Reference 4 Test lernst Du das Paket aus Messmikrofon und Software kennen, mit dem sich Unzulänglichkeiten in deiner Raumakustik (weitgehend) ausgleichen lassen. Erfahre in kompakter Form, wie... Der Beitrag Sonarworks Reference 4 Test – DC004 erschien zuerst auf delamar.FM.

14. decembra radio Star FM rīta programmas Zoopasta tehnoloģiju rubrikas ieraksts. Šodien runājam par: * Sonarworks piesaista 500 000 eiro investīcijas no igauņu Karma Ventures. * Noskaidroti 2017. gada Latvijā populārākie meklējumi “Google” meklētājā. * Nākamgad būs iespēja dokumentus parakstīt arī viedtālrunī. * Lietuviešu pārvadātājs Girteka pirmais Eiropā iegādāsies Tesla Semi elektrisko kravas auto. * Francijā liegs bērniem līdz 15 gadu vecumam skolās izmantot viedtālruņus. * Nīderlandē policija tomēr neizmantos ērgļus dronu ķeršanai. * Apple nopircis mūzikas atpazīšanas servisu Shazam. * Policija apcietinājusi bandu, kas ar droniem cietumos ielidina aizliegtus priekšmetus. Paldies, rubrikas sponsoram interneta lielveikalam 1a.lv! Tiekamies pēc nedēļas!

9. novembra radio Star FM rīta programmas Zoopasta tehnoloģiju rubrikas ieraksts. Šodien ciemos Jānis Spoģis no Sonarworks. Viņi veido skaņu studiju kalibrācijas risinājumu, ko izmanto top studijas visā pasaulē. Paldies, rubrikas sponsoram interneta lielveikalam 1a.lv! Tiekamies pēc nedēļas!

My guest this week is professional audio engineer Ryan Monette. Ryan graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Production & Engineering. For the last 4.5 years he's been the Post-Production Audio Engineer on staff at Elevation Church, in Charlotte, NC, where he mixes their global TV show, and has many other responsibilities (boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, etc.). You may have heard some of his work, as he sound-designed and mixed the opener video for the Circles conference for the past two years. He even had his own podcast for a short while (TheQueuecast.com). I asked Ryan to come on the show to share his journey towards becoming a professional audio engineer (a job that I've always wanted), and to get him to share some tips for anyone interested in working in audio/video professionally. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Think long term and dream big. If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone. Take advantage of free online courses to learn more about audio engineering. Get started with whatever you have. Your mix may sound completely different in a different environment, so listen with different headphones/speakers in different locations. Master the basics and keep going back to them. If you're mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent. When mixing, always use a reference track. Show Notes Aaron: You graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in music production and engineering. For the last five years, you've been the post production audio engineer for Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. You have a lot of jobs there: boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, and you mix their global TV show. Do you mix that live? Ryan: Not necessarily. We can get into that later. There's a process for that. Aaron: Some of the creative people here might have heard of some of your work. You sound designed and mixed the opening videos for the past two years of Circles Conference, which I was at. Have you been there for the past two years? Ryan: I haven't been personally, no. I have wanted to go. I love it from afar, and I want to go in person. Aaron: I wanted you to come on this show because when I first got started, I had dreams of being a professional audio engineer. I thought, “How cool would it be to work in audio and get paid for it? That'd be awesome!” I fell backwards into it by doing podcast editing as a hobby first, then for money, then I met Sean McCabe and ended up working for him full time. I edit podcasts and help out with a ton of other stuff. I asked you to come on the show to share your advice for anyone who's interested in working in audio/video professionally, and to talk about how you got there yourself. So tell me a little bit about how you got into audio. When did you first realize that this was something you wanted to do? Ryan's Journey to Becoming a Professional Audio Engineer Ryan: I love listening to your podcast, Aaron, and what I love about it is I feel like you and I have a lot of similarities in our backgrounds. You're a musician, a drummer, and I'm also a musician. I play several things. My primary instrument is bass, but along with that, I started on piano. I picked up bass, and with the bass I picked up guitar. I took some drum lessons here and there as well. I sing as well. I dabbled in a little bit of everything. I'm kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm okay at a lot of things, but I'm not superb at one thing. Anyway, right around junior high or high school, I started playing the bass. I started playing in little bands here and there. When it came time for college, I had no clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I loved music. Aaron: Same here! Ryan: I was living in Las Vegas at the time, so I decided, well, everyone has to have that college experience, and I didn't want to go to college in the same city, so I decided that I needed that “being away from home” experience. I went to the University of Nevada, Reno. I took your basic, general classes, not knowing what I wanted to do. At this time, for my high school graduation, I had received a graduation present of a Macbook Pro. With that, of course, you get the wonderful iLife suite, including Garageband. As a musician, a whole new world was opened up to me. When I was in a band in high school, I was the gear head—I loved the PA and putting cables together. I was drawn to that. Once I had this Macbook Pro with Garageband and I had my bass and my guitar in my dorm, I was like, “I can create music!” I figured out how to work it and record myself. I bought a USB microphone, and that world was opened up. When I was there, I had a friend, and her brother went to this school where all they learned about was music. I was like, “Wait, you can do that? You can go to school for just music?” That's how I found out about Berklee School of Music. I applied, and you have to audition as well. I applied and auditioned, and the first time I tried, I actually didn't get into the music school I wanted to go to. Aaron: This sparks something in my mind. I feel like I might have read an article about Berklee or looked into it and thought, “No, they're really strict on who they accept, based on your performance.” That was intimidating to me at the time, because I never felt like I was that good of a drummer. Ryan: It was intimidating for me, too. Clearly, I wasn't up to par. Aaron: Yet you went for it. That's more than a lot of people would do. Ryan: Yeah. After I finished my first year at UNR, I moved back to Vegas and went to UNLV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I took all music classes, forgetting the general ed stuff you need to get a degree. I took all music classes—music theory, because I had never had actual music theory classes, so I thought I needed that. With that, there were some audio classes that I took as well. I was like, “Hey, I like this audio thing.” At the University of Nevada Las Vegas, I had my first exposure to a formal audio class, where I learned all the proper techniques. Later on that year, I applied and auditioned again for Berklee. I got accepted, and the next year, I moved to Boston and went to Berklee for about three and a half years. Then I graduated. When I went to Berklee, the only thing that drew me as a major was Music Production and Engineering. I naturally loved the gear side of things. I fell in love with recording. I was like, “This is what I want to do.” Aaron: You got to spend three and a half years there, studying and learning? Ryan: It is non-stop, 24/7, music, audio, and to be honest, I miss being in that environment so much. Aaron: That sounds fantastic. I always love setting aside time to take online classes, read books, and listen to interviews about audio. Think Long-Term Aaron: You were drawn to the audio engineering stuff, and then you graduated. Ryan: I can remember a specific time in my life, and I'm pretty sure it was my last semester at Berklee. They went by semesters instead of years. It was in one of my capstone classes. Our instructor asked us the typical, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question. Aaron: I love that question now. I hated it when I was 22. ** Think long term and dream big** Aaron: Plan out where you want to be, because if you can envision it, then you can figure out how to get there. But you have to start by saying, “I want to do this thing someday.” For me, it was, “I want to do work from a laptop. How do I get there?” Now I'm there. So you were 22 and someone asked you, “Ryan, where do you want to be? Where do you see yourself in five years?” Ryan: At that moment, I was trying to figure that out, naturally, as you do when you're approaching the end of college. While I was at Berklee, I loved music. I loved recording music, but my absolute favorite class—they only had one of them, but it was the class I yearned for, that I wanted to take and put in all these extra hours for—was audio for visual media, audio for video. By far, that was my favorite class. The whole class, we were working toward our final project. You choose a five to seven minute clip from a well known movie, and all the audio is completely stripped. You have to recreate everything. That's all the dialogue, all the foley, all the ambient background, all the hard effects, and so on. You have to connect with a film scoring student there at Berklee, and they have to provide the score. I absolutely loved every aspect of that project and the process. When it came time to decide what I wanted to do with my life, it was between audio engineering at a recording studio, working at Disney as an Imagineer, or doing audio at a church. I have always been involved with church, playing on worship teams and whatnot, so I also saw myself doing audio for a church. Long story short, I was really privileged to dip my feet in all of those things after college. After I graduated, I moved back to Las Vegas. Eventually, I found an incredible recording studio, probably one of the top two recording studios in Las Vegas, and I landed an internship. First Audio Engineering Jobs Ryan: I say “internship” loosely, because your typical studio internship is all the stereotypical grunt work—taking out the trash, doing the coffee, and whatnot. I showed up, and they were like, “You went to Berklee? Berklee guys are cool. Here, hop in this session and help us out.” It was open to me, thrown at me, and next thing I knew, I was assisting on sessions with huge clients, I won't name drop. Aaron: You can drop a couple of names if you want. Ryan: I had a pretty fun time helping out with a session with the famous engineer Eddie Kramer, who is engineering for Carlos Santana. Aaron: Dang, man! That's awesome. Ryan: That was pretty incredible. But while I was there, I had this gut feeling inside of me saying, “This isn't it.” Aaron: It's fine, but it's not quite right? Ryan: I could see myself staying there and working my way up, but it didn't feel right. A few months after I realized that I didn't want to stay at the studio, I applied and was offered a job at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I packed my bags, moved to Orlando, and I was working as a stage technician at the Epcot park. There, they found out that I was an audio guy, so they pushed me toward the live audio side of things. I was mixing shows and bands at Epcot and what was at the time Downtown Disney, now Disney Springs, area. Same thing. Almost as soon as I got there, the same gut feeling came in. I was like, “This isn't it. I'm more of a studio engineer. I definitely don't want to do live stuff.” Although I love Disney, it just wasn't sitting right. I was only there three months before the next great opportunity came up, which is where I am right now. One of my friends told me about a job opening for this church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Elevation Church. I had actually been following them because of their podcast. At the time, I was kind of like, “I've got a job, whatever.” For some reason, I ended up on their website, looking at the job. I was reading, and I was like, “Wait a minute, they're looking for someone to do audio for video. That's what I really want to do!” On a whim, I threw out my resume. Next thing you know, I've been here going on five years. Aaron: Did you mention that you were a podcast listener when you sent in your resume? Ryan: Yeah. Aaron: The connections you can make through podcasting is really incredible. Ryan: It is. And I've been working there for 5 years now. How to Get Into Audio Engineering Aaron: I want to jump into what you do at your job at Elevation, but let's pause and do a section on what advice you would tell someone who's wanting to get started. I wrote a couple of things down here. I think it's hilarious that you got a Macbook and your first microphone was a USB microphone. Ryan: Which was the Blue Snowball, by the way. Aaron: That's the worst microphone! Ryan: I had no idea how to use it, either. If I find some of the earliest recordings I did, there are times I'm clipping to the max, square waves. Aaron: Probably bad mic technique, too. But hey; it got you started! If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone. Any USB mics will work for getting started. I like the Blue Yeti, but it's like $100. The ATR-2100 is fine, too. You just have to get something that can record some audio and start playing with it. Start playing with Garageband. Start playing with the free programs. Learn how to enable recording on a track, how to set your input device to the microphone, how to set your output device to wherever your headphones are plugged into, whether that's your mic or your computer. It took me so long to figure that stuff out. I was like, “Why can't I hear the audio in my headphones? What is going on?” Ryan: Same here. Aaron: You have to set input and output, then you have to record enable or do the input monitoring, all that stuff. But start with the USB microphone. Take some basic classes. There are so many great online classes. If you don't have any money at all, if you're super broke like I was when I started, watch some free YouTube videos. Read a book. Ryan: If you go to Coursera.org, they're a website where you can pay to take online courses and get certifications and whatnot, but they also offer free online courses. They even offer free online courses from Berklee. I've seen a music production class there. I've taken a free online song writing class. Check out free online courses, because they can be a pool of incredible knowledge. I took a photography class on there. Coursera is a great place. They're great if you want to take free online courses. Aaron: There are places where you can learn all this stuff. You just have to invest some time. You really just have to start: Don't wait until you have $500 for an interface and $200 for some professional headphones and microphone. Whether you want to start a podcast, start recording audio for a video, or record and mix a demo for a band, start doing something. Stop spending all your time thinking about how you can't do anything because you don't have certain gear or you're not in the right place. You'll learn as you do, especially in audio. You're going to make a ton of mistakes. Ryan: That's how you learn, though! That's one of the most valuable things I've learned in life. You learn from your mistakes. Aaron: You don't really learn when everything goes well. Just Start Aaron: Any other advice you would give somebody, thinking back on how you got to where you are right now? Ryan: Honestly, you hit the nail on the head with “just start.” It's as simple and cliche as Nike, “Just do it.” There is always going to be the next latest craze, the gear, and we've all been susceptible to that. We say, “Oh, well, I could do this if I had X.” It starts with the drive and determination, wanting to do it. There's knowledge out there everywhere. You just have to dig for it. Chances are, you have at least something you can start with. Record something on your phone. Aaron: I have a friend who makes some awesome music on his iPhone. Ryan: Oh, totally. It's as simple as getting an adapter. You can plug your guitar or whatever into your phone. Aaron: Kids these days have it so easy! Ryan: You have Garageband on your phone. I remember when I was figuring this out in high school, and we actually had a four track tape recorder. That was my first start. Get started with whatever you have. Aaron: What kind of stuff do you do at the church? What's your day to day life like? Are you there every day, or is it just a couple of days a week? Ryan: Oh no, I'm definitely there every day. It has been a whirlwind for sure. In the past five years, I have probably played every audio role that there is to be played here. My main thing now is audio for broadcasts, pretty much anything that leaves the church. Our biggest output is the sermon, which goes to a lot of places. It also goes in the TV episode, which we talked about, which goes locally, nationally, and, I believe, globally as well. That's a lot of what I've done. We also create a lot of films, short films, for our worship experiences, anything you can imagine that's video and audio related. Audio post production, like we talk about. I'm constantly on video shoots using field recorders, the boom op, anything you can think of. Audio for video, I've done it. The Gear Ryan Uses Aaron: Let's talk about your gear a little bit. What kind of stuff are you using most in everyday life? I'll do a quick recap: I have the Shure Beta 87A Mic as my main podcasting microphone. It's attached to a Scarlett 18i20 USB Interface (update: I'm now using my Zoom H6 exclusively), which is plugged into a quadcore iMac that's a couple years old. Nothing super fancy, but I'm really happy with where I am. I remember wanting all this stuff back in 2011, thinking how awesome it would be to have it. I have a Zoom H6 portable recorder and a couple of SM58 microphones. I've been pairing down my gear collection because I'm planning on moving in the spring. What kind of stuff are you working with? I use Logic Pro X for editing, and then Izotope iZotope RX 5 for cleaning up background noise or fixing clipping. What about you? What's your day to day favorite gear? Ryan: We use a lot. There's a bunch of gear for field recording and then in my office, which is where I'm at right now. I'll start with my office. Right now, I'm talking into my personal mic, which is a Rode NT1A. It's very affordable. The Rode NT1A is a nice beginner mic which works and sounds great, and I use it for a lot of voiceover projects. Aaron: I like those mics. Ryan: I'm talking into that right now. We also use the Shure SM7B. We have a nice Neumann that we'll use for bigger projects. We like to use Universal Audio Interfaces, so I've got one of those. They're great. They're rock solid. You really can't beat them. At our main recording/editing audio work station, we use Pro Tools. That's very standard, and I've been using that for years and years. I use a lot of plugins. I use a lot of the Waves Plugins. I do use RX as well, and that's the bulk of it. I do a lot of processing, depending on the project. I have a really huge sound library for if I'm doing narrative pieces that involve sound design, sound effects. I have a great app called Audio Finder, which a lot of electronic musicians use to help them find sounds. I use it to help me find sounds. It's a nice way to catalogue sounds if you're a sound designer or anything like that. You can basically tag all these audio files with meta data, and you can search for sounds by their title. Or, if you type in a word in the search bar, it can pull up things based off the the metadata. If you have notes on something, it can find it. Audio Finder is a great way to find sounds. I have some other things in here. I have the Artist Mix Controller made by Avid. I use those if I'm automating stuff. I use those a lot, actually, when I'm mixing the sermons. I do a lot of automation for that. If I'm mixing a piece with a music bed or something, I like to automate the music by hand. It feels more natural, as opposed to clicking and making little dots. That's the bulk of it here in the office. All of our audio engineers have a nice pair of Focal monitors. I also have another set of monitors I built myself. When I mix TV episodes, I have an output routed to a TV here in my office so I can hear how it translates on TV speakers. Recording Audio for Video Ryan: On the front end of things, if we're doing shoots for videos, we use Sound Devices field recorders. We have three different models: the Sound Devices 788T 8 Channel Recorder, a 702 2 Channel Recorder, and then a 633 6 Channel Recorder. That last one is one of their newer models, which is great. Sound Devices are steep in price, but they are rock solid. One of the most trustworthy, well known field recorder brands on the market. That's what you'll see on pretty much every big budget shoot in some way. I do a lot of freelance on the side, which gives me the opportunity EPK shoots or BTS shoots for, recently, a show on HBO called Outcast. Aaron: Outcast? I've been seeing that (I watch Westworld). Ryan: I'm pretty sure it's the same writers or producers or something. I know it's the same writer as The Walking Dead. They shoot here in North Carolina, so with a local production company, we've done some interviews with some of the cast and crew. It's been really neat to be on set and see what they're using. It's cool to see how similar their world is to what we're doing day to day, just with more money and more resources. It's the same thing. Most of their audio guys have some sort of Sound Devices. A lot of them use the 788 as a backup recording rig, and they've got larger multitrack recorders as well, that are also made by Sound Devices. Sound Devices is a great brand. They're crazy expensive, but when you buy that, you know you've basically got it for life. Aaron: Yeah, I'm looking at the Sound Devices 788T SSD 8 Channel Portable Solid State Audio Recorder. It's almost $7,000. I love that! So fancy. Ryan: That SSD does have an internal hard drive. Ours has a hard drive as well, so it's great, because it has the internal hard drive, but you can also use CF cards. You can record on two different mediums. In case something runs out of space, you have it in two places. Aaron: This is super professional stuff. Ryan: Yeah. It is. It's top of the line. Aaron: Fantastic. For all the rest of you, just go with the Zoom H4N or the H6. Ryan: Hey, we do have a Zoom H4N, and we do use that every now and then. Before I came on staff, our first field recorder was the Zoom H4N. Aaron: If I could start over and go back to before I had any kind of interface at all, I think I would buy myself an H4N or an H6. Not only are they portable field recorders so you can walk around with them—they have little stereo condensor mics on them—but they work as audio interfaces, too. You can plug it into your computer with a USB cable and record straight to your computer if you do any kind of podcasting or stuff like that. It's good for the price. Otherwise, the little two channel interfaces are great. They're about $100 for a good one, but they aren't portable. You can't take them to a show or out to a video shoot the way you can an H4N or an H6 or something. Ryan: Speaking of Zoom, they've recently come into the more professional field recording market. About a year ago, they releases the F8, I believe, which is an 8 channel field recorder with 8 mic pres. It's $999 for something very comparable to a Sound Device. It's not quite as high-fidelity, but for anyone starting out, you're really not going to notice the difference. Mixing On Expensive Headphones or Monitors Aaron: I was going to ask you this earlier. You mentioned that you had Focal monitors. Did you listen to the episode I did a few episodes back where I talked about mixing on headphones (Episode 69: Do You Need Expensive Headphones to Mix a Podcast?)? Ryan: Yes, I did. Aaron: I mix on $10 Panasonics. What do you think about that? You can be totally honest with me. You can tell me that it's a stupid idea or that it's okay. Ryan: I agree to a certain extent. I agree that you should be listening to what you're making on whatever the majority of people are going to be listening to it on. For a lot of audio engineers mixing music, that's iPod earbuds, those standard earbuds you get. Something like that. When I mix TV, I have an output routed to a TV in my office, so I can hear it on TV speakers. I do also believe in mixing on something with some sort of higher fidelity type of monitoring environment, whether that's nicer speakers or nicer headphones. Naturally, you're going to hear things differently. The main thing to take away is how things translate. If you're listening to something on one source and you make it sound good there, that's great, but in a different environment, it may sound completely different. iPhone earbuds may not have the bass that a car stereo has. You want to hear how it translates from one thing to another. That's why it's good to at least listen to it on two different sources and not just narrow yourself down to one cruddy thing. That's good in theory, but again, the key takeaway is translation. Aaron: Maybe it's a little bit different for me and I can get away with it because of the consistency of the microphones and the recording environment set we use. Ryan: Yeah, totally. Aaron: I think if I was doing more stuff like you are, with videos and clients and all that kind of stuff, I would absolutely be using my higher fidelity headphones. Ryan: Very true. The bulk of your work is dialogue, podcasts. Aaron: Yeah, that's really it. Just dudes talking into a microphone. Ryan: Yeah. I have done a lot of work here where I'm working in a small studio, but a lot of my mixes have played in auditoriums and arenas. If you're working on projects like music or film that have different audio frequencies and spectrums, remember that sound will be perceived differently in different places. Aaron: How do you even test for that? Ryan: Here, I at least have a sense of how our auditorium sounds, so I've trained my ear to hear in advance and understand how it's going to translate. For something like when we did a live recording in the biggest arena here in Charlotte, we had a video opener piece. I was on point for mixing that, so basically, I had to work with tech and production to find a time after setup where I can bring my session, copy it onto a laptop, and play it through the PA. Then I can make any final mix tweaks there in the auditorium or the arena. I perfected it in my studio, and any small tweaks I was able to do in that actual environment. Granted, a lot of the times, we may not have that luxury. There are also great plugins you can buy that simulate different monitoring environments, like Sonarworks. If you have certain pairs of headphones, you can tell the program, “I have these headphones, now make my mix sound like it's coming through these headphones or these speakers,” so you can hear how it might translate. In that program, they have a final output like the Beats headphones. You can hear how it might sound on there, super bass heavy. Aaron: I hear they're getting better, but I still have never bought any Beats headphones. I probably should (just for testing purposes). Ryan: There are definitely programs out there to help you see how things translate to different monitors. On Location Gear Ryan: We were talking about the gear we use for on location recording. Sound Devices would be our main recorders. For our mics, we use Schoeps. It's a shotgun microphone, so it's a narrow polar pattern with good off axis rejection. Schoeps is a great brand. Again, you'll see this on professional movie sets. That's the mic we use. We have some Sennheiser shotguns as well, the ME66, we have a couple of those, which is more their entry shotgun mics. Recently, I rented some of the MKH416. Aaron: I would like one of those. The Sennheiser 416 is well known as the classic TV shotgun mic, right? Ryan: Exactly. I rented those out because I wanted to try it out for that reason. The Schoeps is very good and very well known on set as well, but so is the 416. I rented it to try it out. It's a trusted mic that a lot of people use for these professional things, and it doesn't really break the bank for what it is. Aaron: They're like $1,000, I think. Ryan: Yeah, and it sounded great. Aaron: The next mic I get is either going to be that or the Rode NTG 3. Ryan: I've heard a lot of great things about that. I haven't tried one myself. Aaron: That's the shotgun mics we shot my podcasting courses with. Ryan: Yeah, I know that Sean uses that for all of his videos. Aaron: I'm excited about getting to go work with those (I'm moving to San Antonio in March or April). Master the Basics Aaron: That's a pretty good run through of your gear. I'm sure you could keep going and discuss a lot more, but I don't think we need to go into that. It seems like you guys are at a super professional, high quality. You have made big investments in professional gear, which is fantastic. I encourage everyone to strive for that, to aim for that, but like we said earlier, use what you have right now. I don't have anything close to what you guys have, but I'm still doing my podcast. I'm doing the best I can with what I have. Ryan: It still sounds great. Aaron: Thanks! It's mostly just knowing how to set gain levels and not having a noisy room. It's crazy how far the basics will get you— everything else is just icing on the cake. I've been watching this video course called Zen and the Art of Work, which I really recommend to everybody. It's mindfulness training mixed with productivity training, which is such a great combination. In this course, he says, “So many of the masters continually revisit the basics.” Mastery is staying on a path. It's not reaching some final goal, it's more about being with the work and investing in getting better, but also revisiting the basics. He was talking about playing piano. He was like, “A lot of times, I just start by touching the keys, pressing the keys, and then doing basic scales over and over again.” It's true. When you get so good at the basics that you don't have to think about it, that's when you start to expand and get to that level where people say, “Wow, you're so good at that. How did you get so good?” You're like, “That was just doing the basics. It's not anything fancy.” It's so important to master the basics and keep going back to them. Learning More Aaron: What's next for you? How do you invest in yourself and improve? Or are you working so much that you always have more learning opportunities? Do you buy books or courses or follow any websites to learn more about this audio stuff? Ryan: Honestly? We had a shift at work to where my role has shifted to mainly just broadcasts. That has enabled me to have a little bit more flexibility and free time, so I've been doing a lot more freelance work. That's great, because it energizes me and keeps me engaged. It keeps me from routine. Routine is great. I love routine, that's very much my personality, but freelance work keeps things interesting. For me, it's all about where and how I can get inspired and constantly feeding that. It's about feeding my desire for creativity. We're all creatives. We like to create. We were designed to be creators, really. Everything I try to do is about how I can become a better creator and what I can create next. It's about finding things that inspire me, really. We touched lightly on a few of the resources that I like, things I've learned and places I've picked things up. If you're interested in audio for post production, there are a couple of great books by Ric Viers. I have two books by him that are really great. The first one is The Sound Effects Bible, and it's not just sound effects in there. He talks about everything from gear to microphones, basics, setting proper gains, compression, some mixing techniques, etc. He also has The Location Sound Bible. There are a lot of similarities, but there's also a lot of talk about gear, shotgun mics, lop mics, recorders, and then he also dives into some of the basics when it comes to mixing, proper gain staging, and so on. Those are a really great pool of knowledge in book form. There are a lot of other books out there, but I have found those two to be really helpful. Other than that, when it comes to audio for video, it's a very small, niche field. There isn't a crazy amount of stuff out there, like there might be for mixing music. For that, you've got tons. You've got Pensado's Place, all these people on YouTube putting out channels on mixing, mixing from home, mixing on a budget, etc. There's plenty of that. Aaron: Graham Cochrane and Joe Gilder are pretty awesome resources for anyone who wants to start a home studio. Ryan: YouTube can be a pool of knowledge for anything and everything, too. You have to dig a little bit and do some searching. On the inspiration side, for me, since I love audio for video, Sound Works Collection is a great place. They'll do mini videos interviewing the sound people that did sound for X movie. Whether it was the last Harry Potter or anything and everything, big budget films, they'll sit down with the recording people, the sound designers, the mixers… It's really cool, because they'll show footage of them doing stuff on location or the foley artists. It's cool to see their process. For me, that helps me stay inspired. It gives me ideas to do other things. They have a podcast as well, and that's great. The videos can be kind of short, maybe 10 minutes or so, but the podcast will go on at length, talking to the audio guys who have made sound for videos possible. It will also be music composers for movies as well. That's really great. I found that great not only as inspiration, but to know what and how audio professionals for big budget films get inside their minds, how they're thinking, and what their process looks like. It's neat to see stuff about sound engineers for big movies and realize that we're not so different. Dealing With a Broad Loudness Spectrum (Dynamics) Aaron: I have a nerdy question here. This is about normalizing and compression, I think. Aiya had asked, “I'm so torn about normalizing sound clips. If I'm working on a longer project in segments, would it be better to adjust my peaks manually for the sake of consistency? It's for a video project.” I'm hearing that there are differences in video volumes. How do you deal with that? Do you do compression? Do you do automation for the different parts? How do you deal with dynamics? Ryan: It depends on the project. I'll talk about how I would mix a sermon, because that's very dynamic. Our pastor will go from whispering, holding his handheld mic close to his stomach, to screaming, holding the microphone, cupping the capsule. Power and respect to him, because it creates a certain atmosphere, which has a powerful effect. That's what I'm dealing with on a weekly basis. That dynamic range is tremendous. Keep in mind, this is going to TV eventually. TV has very strict restrictions. It's not so much on level, but on perceived level. There's a difference between what you see meter and what you're hearing. I can talk at length about that, too. Aaron: Could you give us a super short version? I'm kind of aware of that, but since I just mix in Logic, I'm not sure how to measure it. Is there a way to measure it in Logic? Do you know? Is there a plugin you use? Ryan: I use a plugin from Waves. It's a loudness meter, and its just that. It has a lot of presets, so I'll use the TV standard preset. I'll use it for ATSE85, and I'll use it for a dialogue bus. They've also got one for a master bus. The standard right there is your average level around -24 dB LUFS, so that's full scale. If you have a classic meters, your peak would be zero, so that would average metering right around -10. At least for TV, I've got a hard limiter at -10 dB, to where nothing can go above that. The difference between levels on a meter vs. perceived loudness is the differences between what we hear and the actual energy. In our TV program, we'll have the sermon, but we'll also have a talking heads segments, which is dialogue and a music bed. We'll also go into segments where they'll go into worship from our live album, which had been mixed and mastered as an album. That thing is slammed. If you look at the wave form, it's a sausage. If I'm setting all that by the meters alone and they're all hitting -10, it may look right, but if I look at my loudness meter, that worship segment is going to be off the charts. There's so much more content in there. There's so much going on with all the different frequency ranges as opposed to a dialogue track, which is a narrow field in the frequency spectrum. That's the gist of it. When it comes to my technique for controlling dynamics, for something like mixing a sermon, if I'm going down my plugin chain, the first thing I naturally have is a high pass filter. I'm rolling off those unnecessary lows that are hogging energy. The next thing I'll do is use a compressor, and I'll set the attack to right in the middle, so not fast or slow, and I'll have the release time at fast. We don't want to hear it pumping, letting go. That's catching my peaks. It's not doing a crazy amount, but it kind of is. That's helping do a lot of the bulk compression. Before anything really hits the compressor, I will go through, and as I work my way through the mix, I will clip gain the wave form, so that, say, if he's whispering somewhere, I might keep that, depending on how I have my compressor set. Then, if we go up to a part where he's screaming and my wave form is huge, I will take that down and create those nodes, those dots in the wave form, and drag the actual clip volume down, that gain down. That way, it's not going into the compressor at this high gain level. It's hitting the compressor evenly as the rest of it would. That way, it's not driving the compressor crazy. Then I'll go through and do some EQ and DSing and whatnot. I might add some more compressors in there, just to grab some of those little things coming through. After that, it's subtle, just smoothing it out. Aaron: It is a little bit of both. If she has access to an audio editing program—I don't know what she's using for editing. If you can put a compressor on the track, do that. It's not exactly the same, but I did a YouTube video about how I process podcast vocals, and it's very similar. For podcast vocals, I start with a Logic noise removal plugin. Ryan: I actually have my noise suppressor, and I'll use that later on down in my signal chain. My way of thinking is that if I've got all this compression going on, the compression is narrowing that dynamic range, so it's bringing up that noise floor. I tend to do my noise suppression after the bulk of that compression, because the noise floor is higher and it's easier to work on a supressor. If that makes sense. Aaron: I've thought a lot about whether you should do the noise removal before or after you add a bunch of gain with a compressor or something, and I can't think of a good reason that it matters. You can take out the noise before you add a bunch of gain, or you can add a bunch of gain and take out the noise afterwards. Which is better? I don't know. Anyways, after the noise removal plugin, I put an EQ with a high pass filter, a peak compressor, an RMS or an average level compressor, and then a limiter. Ryan: Like I mentioned earlier, before I had my long-winded answer, it also depends on what it is you're mixing—whether it's music, or a podcast, or something for film. When it comes to dialogue for film, you want it to sound as natural as possible, but you also want to be able to hear if someone is whispering. When it comes to that, I'll still use a compressor, but it will be very, very light. If there's anything I need to do to meet loudness, that I will automate the volume on my dialogue bus. I'll bring that up. That way, it sounds a little bit more natural, instead of solely relying on a compressor to do all the work for you. Aaron: That makes sense. For podcasts, if I notice that there's a section where someone was talking much quieter, like if a guest backed away and talked like that for four or five minutes and then went back to the normal distance from the microphone, in Logic, I'll turn that into its own clip. I make a cut on either side of the quiet part, and then, in Logic, you can double click on it and change gain by hitting Control G. Then you can add 3, 4, or 5 dB to it. That works out pretty well. If it's every five seconds or I have to do it more than five or six times in an episode, I won't do the clip gain changes, I'll just use a compressor. Look at the overall audio file and see if there are long stretches where you can use automation to change the gain, or change the clip gain. Common Audio Mistakes Podcasters Make Ryan: You asked a question that I think would be good to talk about in regards to podcasting. You had asked, “What do you like about podcasts? What common mistakes do you hear people make?” Initially, I read this and thought, “I don't know,” but I spent some time thinking about it. This is great, because it piggybacks off the loudness thing. A lot of the mistakes that I hear when it comes to podcasts in regards to audio is the levels and loudness aspect. I'll listen to some podcasts that sound great, and I'll put on another podcast where the whole thing is super quiet. Then they start laughing, and it's really loud. There are some, like mine, where they have a music bed underneath the entire thing, and then sometimes the music bed is so quiet that you hardly know it's there. You're like, “What the heck is that noise in the background?” Sometimes, it's the opposite. Sometimes, the music bed is way too loud. That's a few of the things I've noticed. A lot of the fixes relate to what we just talked about. It helps to have knowledge of levels and perceived loudness. If you're mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent. One of the biggest things I can recommend for anyone mixing anything, whether it's music, movies, a podcast, is the importance of having a reference track. Aaron: Yeah, I don't talk about that enough. Ryan: That is huge. Professional audio engineers who mix platinum records still do this. They will pull in a track from a different song that is mixed well and is mixed how they want theirs to sound, and they'll have it muted in their session. When they want to have a reference to listen to or train their ear, they'll un-mute it, and they'll go, “Oh, okay.” I'm sure you've done the same thing as me, where you'll be so involved in a mix, you're in it, and you think it sounds great, and then maybe you go away. You go home, sleep, and maybe you come back, and you open it up and you go, “Woah! What was I thinking!” You can get so involved in it that the blinders go up. You get tunnel vision, and you're not aware to some things. It's good to have a reference track or get an outsider's opinion on a mix. The main takeaway here is the reference track. That would help with anything, whether it's the timbre, how you're EQing, or the loudness. You pull in their track and it's far louder than yours, and you automatically know that you need to do something about it. Aaron: That's a great idea. You can kind of do this before or after. You go through and you edit your whole podcast, get everything set up the way you want, create an extra track, and then find a podcast that sounds really good—This American Life or pretty much anything by NPR—download an episode, drop it into your editing program, and play it, mute it, and see what the difference is. Maybe you need to add some gain with an adaptive limiter or with a compressor, or maybe you can tell that your track sounds way sharper or harsher. Are there are too many high frequencies or too much bass compared to your reference track? You can adjust those things. I'm so glad you mentioned that. I've never thought of that before, and that's such a good idea. Ryan: It's one of those things you don't think of much, but once you do it, you're like, “Oh my gosh!” It's really eye opening and really helpful. You can find Ryan online at ryanmonette.com, and follow him on Twitter @RyanMonette.

My guest this week is professional audio engineer Ryan Monette. Ryan graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Production & Engineering. For the last 4.5 years he's been the Post-Production Audio Engineer on staff at Elevation Church, in Charlotte, NC, where he mixes their global TV show, and has many other responsibilities (boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, etc.). You may have heard some of his work, as he sound-designed and mixed the opener video for the Circles conference for the past two years. He even had his own podcast for a short while (TheQueuecast.com). I asked Ryan to come on the show to share his journey towards becoming a professional audio engineer (a job that I've always wanted), and to get him to share some tips for anyone interested in working in audio/video professionally.Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins:Think long term and dream big.If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone.Take advantage of free online courses to learn more about audio engineering.Get started with whatever you have.Your mix may sound completely different in a different environment, so listen with different headphones/speakers in different locations.Master the basics and keep going back to them.If you’re mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent.When mixing, always use a reference track.Show NotesAaron: You graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in music production and engineering. For the last five years, you’ve been the post production audio engineer for Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. You have a lot of jobs there: boom operator, field recorder, sound designer, audio editor, and you mix their global TV show. Do you mix that live?Ryan: Not necessarily. We can get into that later. There’s a process for that.Aaron: Some of the creative people here might have heard of some of your work. You sound designed and mixed the opening videos for the past two years of Circles Conference, which I was at. Have you been there for the past two years?Ryan: I haven’t been personally, no. I have wanted to go. I love it from afar, and I want to go in person.Aaron: I wanted you to come on this show because when I first got started, I had dreams of being a professional audio engineer. I thought, “How cool would it be to work in audio and get paid for it? That’d be awesome!”I fell backwards into it by doing podcast editing as a hobby first, then for money, then I met Sean McCabe and ended up working for him full time. I edit podcasts and help out with a ton of other stuff. I asked you to come on the show to share your advice for anyone who’s interested in working in audio/video professionally, and to talk about how you got there yourself. So tell me a little bit about how you got into audio. When did you first realize that this was something you wanted to do?Ryan’s Journey to Becoming a Professional Audio EngineerRyan: I love listening to your podcast, Aaron, and what I love about it is I feel like you and I have a lot of similarities in our backgrounds. You’re a musician, a drummer, and I’m also a musician. I play several things. My primary instrument is bass, but along with that, I started on piano. I picked up bass, and with the bass I picked up guitar. I took some drum lessons here and there as well.I sing as well. I dabbled in a little bit of everything. I’m kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. I’m okay at a lot of things, but I’m not superb at one thing. Anyway, right around junior high or high school, I started playing the bass. I started playing in little bands here and there. When it came time for college, I had no clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I loved music.Aaron: Same here!Ryan: I was living in Las Vegas at the time, so I decided, well, everyone has to have that college experience, and I didn’t want to go to college in the same city, so I decided that I needed that “being away from home” experience. I went to the University of Nevada, Reno. I took your basic, general classes, not knowing what I wanted to do. At this time, for my high school graduation, I had received a graduation present of a Macbook Pro.With that, of course, you get the wonderful iLife suite, including Garageband. As a musician, a whole new world was opened up to me. When I was in a band in high school, I was the gear head—I loved the PA and putting cables together.I was drawn to that. Once I had this Macbook Pro with Garageband and I had my bass and my guitar in my dorm, I was like, “I can create music!” I figured out how to work it and record myself. I bought a USB microphone, and that world was opened up. When I was there, I had a friend, and her brother went to this school where all they learned about was music. I was like, “Wait, you can do that? You can go to school for just music?”That’s how I found out about Berklee School of Music. I applied, and you have to audition as well. I applied and auditioned, and the first time I tried, I actually didn’t get into the music school I wanted to go to.Aaron: This sparks something in my mind. I feel like I might have read an article about Berklee or looked into it and thought, “No, they’re really strict on who they accept, based on your performance.” That was intimidating to me at the time, because I never felt like I was that good of a drummer.Ryan: It was intimidating for me, too. Clearly, I wasn’t up to par.Aaron: Yet you went for it. That’s more than a lot of people would do.Ryan: Yeah. After I finished my first year at UNR, I moved back to Vegas and went to UNLV, the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I took all music classes, forgetting the general ed stuff you need to get a degree. I took all music classes—music theory, because I had never had actual music theory classes, so I thought I needed that. With that, there were some audio classes that I took as well. I was like, “Hey, I like this audio thing.”At the University of Nevada Las Vegas, I had my first exposure to a formal audio class, where I learned all the proper techniques. Later on that year, I applied and auditioned again for Berklee. I got accepted, and the next year, I moved to Boston and went to Berklee for about three and a half years. Then I graduated. When I went to Berklee, the only thing that drew me as a major was Music Production and Engineering. I naturally loved the gear side of things. I fell in love with recording. I was like, “This is what I want to do.”Aaron: You got to spend three and a half years there, studying and learning?Ryan: It is non-stop, 24/7, music, audio, and to be honest, I miss being in that environment so much.Aaron: That sounds fantastic. I always love setting aside time to take online classes, read books, and listen to interviews about audio.Think Long-TermAaron: You were drawn to the audio engineering stuff, and then you graduated.Ryan: I can remember a specific time in my life, and I’m pretty sure it was my last semester at Berklee. They went by semesters instead of years. It was in one of my capstone classes. Our instructor asked us the typical, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” question.Aaron: I love that question now. I hated it when I was 22.** Think long term and dream big**Aaron: Plan out where you want to be, because if you can envision it, then you can figure out how to get there. But you have to start by saying, “I want to do this thing someday.” For me, it was, “I want to do work from a laptop. How do I get there?” Now I’m there. So you were 22 and someone asked you, “Ryan, where do you want to be? Where do you see yourself in five years?”Ryan: At that moment, I was trying to figure that out, naturally, as you do when you’re approaching the end of college. While I was at Berklee, I loved music. I loved recording music, but my absolute favorite class—they only had one of them, but it was the class I yearned for, that I wanted to take and put in all these extra hours for—was audio for visual media, audio for video.By far, that was my favorite class. The whole class, we were working toward our final project. You choose a five to seven minute clip from a well known movie, and all the audio is completely stripped. You have to recreate everything. That’s all the dialogue, all the foley, all the ambient background, all the hard effects, and so on. You have to connect with a film scoring student there at Berklee, and they have to provide the score. I absolutely loved every aspect of that project and the process. When it came time to decide what I wanted to do with my life, it was between audio engineering at a recording studio, working at Disney as an Imagineer, or doing audio at a church.I have always been involved with church, playing on worship teams and whatnot, so I also saw myself doing audio for a church. Long story short, I was really privileged to dip my feet in all of those things after college. After I graduated, I moved back to Las Vegas. Eventually, I found an incredible recording studio, probably one of the top two recording studios in Las Vegas, and I landed an internship.First Audio Engineering JobsRyan: I say “internship” loosely, because your typical studio internship is all the stereotypical grunt work—taking out the trash, doing the coffee, and whatnot. I showed up, and they were like, “You went to Berklee? Berklee guys are cool. Here, hop in this session and help us out.” It was open to me, thrown at me, and next thing I knew, I was assisting on sessions with huge clients, I won’t name drop.Aaron: You can drop a couple of names if you want.Ryan: I had a pretty fun time helping out with a session with the famous engineer Eddie Kramer, who is engineering for Carlos Santana.Aaron: Dang, man! That’s awesome.Ryan: That was pretty incredible. But while I was there, I had this gut feeling inside of me saying, “This isn’t it.”Aaron: It’s fine, but it’s not quite right?Ryan: I could see myself staying there and working my way up, but it didn’t feel right. A few months after I realized that I didn’t want to stay at the studio, I applied and was offered a job at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.I packed my bags, moved to Orlando, and I was working as a stage technician at the Epcot park. There, they found out that I was an audio guy, so they pushed me toward the live audio side of things. I was mixing shows and bands at Epcot and what was at the time Downtown Disney, now Disney Springs, area. Same thing. Almost as soon as I got there, the same gut feeling came in.I was like, “This isn’t it. I’m more of a studio engineer. I definitely don’t want to do live stuff.” Although I love Disney, it just wasn’t sitting right. I was only there three months before the next great opportunity came up, which is where I am right now. One of my friends told me about a job opening for this church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Elevation Church. I had actually been following them because of their podcast.At the time, I was kind of like, “I’ve got a job, whatever.” For some reason, I ended up on their website, looking at the job. I was reading, and I was like, “Wait a minute, they’re looking for someone to do audio for video. That’s what I really want to do!” On a whim, I threw out my resume. Next thing you know, I’ve been here going on five years.Aaron: Did you mention that you were a podcast listener when you sent in your resume?Ryan: Yeah.Aaron: The connections you can make through podcasting is really incredible.Ryan: It is. And I’ve been working there for 5 years now.How to Get Into Audio EngineeringAaron: I want to jump into what you do at your job at Elevation, but let’s pause and do a section on what advice you would tell someone who’s wanting to get started. I wrote a couple of things down here. I think it’s hilarious that you got a Macbook and your first microphone was a USB microphone.Ryan: Which was the Blue Snowball, by the way.Aaron: That’s the worst microphone!Ryan: I had no idea how to use it, either. If I find some of the earliest recordings I did, there are times I’m clipping to the max, square waves.Aaron: Probably bad mic technique, too. But hey; it got you started!If you want to do anything with audio, start by getting a cheap USB microphone.Any USB mics will work for getting started. I like the Blue Yeti, but it’s like $100. The ATR-2100 is fine, too. You just have to get something that can record some audio and start playing with it.Start playing with Garageband. Start playing with the free programs. Learn how to enable recording on a track, how to set your input device to the microphone, how to set your output device to wherever your headphones are plugged into, whether that’s your mic or your computer. It took me so long to figure that stuff out. I was like, “Why can’t I hear the audio in my headphones? What is going on?”Ryan: Same here.Aaron: You have to set input and output, then you have to record enable or do the input monitoring, all that stuff. But start with the USB microphone. Take some basic classes. There are so many great online classes. If you don’t have any money at all, if you’re super broke like I was when I started, watch some free YouTube videos. Read a book.Ryan: If you go to Coursera.org, they’re a website where you can pay to take online courses and get certifications and whatnot, but they also offer free online courses. They even offer free online courses from Berklee. I’ve seen a music production class there. I’ve taken a free online song writing class.Check out free online courses, because they can be a pool of incredible knowledge.I took a photography class on there. Coursera is a great place. They’re great if you want to take free online courses.Aaron: There are places where you can learn all this stuff. You just have to invest some time. You really just have to start: Don’t wait until you have $500 for an interface and $200 for some professional headphones and microphone. Whether you want to start a podcast, start recording audio for a video, or record and mix a demo for a band, start doing something.Stop spending all your time thinking about how you can’t do anything because you don’t have certain gear or you’re not in the right place. You’ll learn as you do, especially in audio. You’re going to make a ton of mistakes.Ryan: That’s how you learn, though! That’s one of the most valuable things I’ve learned in life. You learn from your mistakes.Aaron: You don’t really learn when everything goes well.Just StartAaron: Any other advice you would give somebody, thinking back on how you got to where you are right now?Ryan: Honestly, you hit the nail on the head with “just start.” It’s as simple and cliche as Nike, “Just do it.” There is always going to be the next latest craze, the gear, and we’ve all been susceptible to that. We say, “Oh, well, I could do this if I had X.” It starts with the drive and determination, wanting to do it. There’s knowledge out there everywhere. You just have to dig for it.Chances are, you have at least something you can start with. Record something on your phone.Aaron: I have a friend who makes some awesome music on his iPhone.Ryan: Oh, totally. It’s as simple as getting an adapter. You can plug your guitar or whatever into your phone.Aaron: Kids these days have it so easy!Ryan: You have Garageband on your phone. I remember when I was figuring this out in high school, and we actually had a four track tape recorder. That was my first start. Get started with whatever you have.Aaron: What kind of stuff do you do at the church? What’s your day to day life like? Are you there every day, or is it just a couple of days a week?Ryan: Oh no, I’m definitely there every day. It has been a whirlwind for sure. In the past five years, I have probably played every audio role that there is to be played here. My main thing now is audio for broadcasts, pretty much anything that leaves the church. Our biggest output is the sermon, which goes to a lot of places.It also goes in the TV episode, which we talked about, which goes locally, nationally, and, I believe, globally as well. That’s a lot of what I’ve done. We also create a lot of films, short films, for our worship experiences, anything you can imagine that’s video and audio related. Audio post production, like we talk about. I’m constantly on video shoots using field recorders, the boom op, anything you can think of. Audio for video, I’ve done it.The Gear Ryan UsesAaron: Let’s talk about your gear a little bit. What kind of stuff are you using most in everyday life? I’ll do a quick recap: I have the Shure Beta 87A Mic as my main podcasting microphone. It’s attached to a Scarlett 18i20 USB Interface (update: I’m now using my Zoom H6 exclusively), which is plugged into a quadcore iMac that’s a couple years old.Nothing super fancy, but I’m really happy with where I am. I remember wanting all this stuff back in 2011, thinking how awesome it would be to have it. I have a Zoom H6 portable recorder and a couple of SM58 microphones. I’ve been pairing down my gear collection because I’m planning on moving in the spring.What kind of stuff are you working with? I use Logic Pro X for editing, and then Izotope iZotope RX 5 for cleaning up background noise or fixing clipping. What about you? What’s your day to day favorite gear?Ryan: We use a lot. There’s a bunch of gear for field recording and then in my office, which is where I’m at right now. I’ll start with my office. Right now, I’m talking into my personal mic, which is a Rode NT1A. It’s very affordable.The Rode NT1A is a nice beginner mic which works and sounds great, and I use it for a lot of voiceover projects.Aaron: I like those mics.Ryan: I’m talking into that right now. We also use the Shure SM7B. We have a nice Neumann that we’ll use for bigger projects. We like to use Universal Audio Interfaces, so I’ve got one of those. They’re great. They’re rock solid. You really can’t beat them.At our main recording/editing audio work station, we use Pro Tools. That’s very standard, and I’ve been using that for years and years. I use a lot of plugins. I use a lot of the Waves Plugins. I do use RX as well, and that’s the bulk of it. I do a lot of processing, depending on the project.I have a really huge sound library for if I’m doing narrative pieces that involve sound design, sound effects. I have a great app called Audio Finder, which a lot of electronic musicians use to help them find sounds. I use it to help me find sounds. It’s a nice way to catalogue sounds if you’re a sound designer or anything like that.You can basically tag all these audio files with meta data, and you can search for sounds by their title. Or, if you type in a word in the search bar, it can pull up things based off the the metadata. If you have notes on something, it can find it. Audio Finder is a great way to find sounds.I have some other things in here. I have the Artist Mix Controller made by Avid. I use those if I’m automating stuff. I use those a lot, actually, when I’m mixing the sermons. I do a lot of automation for that. If I’m mixing a piece with a music bed or something, I like to automate the music by hand.It feels more natural, as opposed to clicking and making little dots. That’s the bulk of it here in the office. All of our audio engineers have a nice pair of Focal monitors. I also have another set of monitors I built myself. When I mix TV episodes, I have an output routed to a TV here in my office so I can hear how it translates on TV speakers.Recording Audio for VideoRyan: On the front end of things, if we’re doing shoots for videos, we use Sound Devices field recorders. We have three different models: the Sound Devices 788T 8 Channel Recorder, a 702 2 Channel Recorder, and then a 633 6 Channel Recorder. That last one is one of their newer models, which is great.Sound Devices are steep in price, but they are rock solid.One of the most trustworthy, well known field recorder brands on the market. That’s what you’ll see on pretty much every big budget shoot in some way. I do a lot of freelance on the side, which gives me the opportunity EPK shoots or BTS shoots for, recently, a show on HBO called Outcast.Aaron: Outcast? I’ve been seeing that (I watch Westworld).Ryan: I’m pretty sure it’s the same writers or producers or something. I know it’s the same writer as The Walking Dead. They shoot here in North Carolina, so with a local production company, we’ve done some interviews with some of the cast and crew. It’s been really neat to be on set and see what they’re using. It’s cool to see how similar their world is to what we’re doing day to day, just with more money and more resources.It’s the same thing. Most of their audio guys have some sort of Sound Devices. A lot of them use the 788 as a backup recording rig, and they’ve got larger multitrack recorders as well, that are also made by Sound Devices. Sound Devices is a great brand. They’re crazy expensive, but when you buy that, you know you’ve basically got it for life.Aaron: Yeah, I’m looking at the Sound Devices 788T SSD 8 Channel Portable Solid State Audio Recorder. It’s almost $7,000. I love that! So fancy.Ryan: That SSD does have an internal hard drive. Ours has a hard drive as well, so it’s great, because it has the internal hard drive, but you can also use CF cards. You can record on two different mediums. In case something runs out of space, you have it in two places.Aaron: This is super professional stuff.Ryan: Yeah. It is. It’s top of the line.Aaron: Fantastic. For all the rest of you, just go with the Zoom H4N or the H6.Ryan: Hey, we do have a Zoom H4N, and we do use that every now and then. Before I came on staff, our first field recorder was the Zoom H4N.Aaron: If I could start over and go back to before I had any kind of interface at all, I think I would buy myself an H4N or an H6. Not only are they portable field recorders so you can walk around with them—they have little stereo condensor mics on them—but they work as audio interfaces, too. You can plug it into your computer with a USB cable and record straight to your computer if you do any kind of podcasting or stuff like that.It’s good for the price. Otherwise, the little two channel interfaces are great. They’re about $100 for a good one, but they aren’t portable. You can’t take them to a show or out to a video shoot the way you can an H4N or an H6 or something.Ryan: Speaking of Zoom, they’ve recently come into the more professional field recording market. About a year ago, they releases the F8, I believe, which is an 8 channel field recorder with 8 mic pres. It’s $999 for something very comparable to a Sound Device. It’s not quite as high-fidelity, but for anyone starting out, you’re really not going to notice the difference.Mixing On Expensive Headphones or MonitorsAaron: I was going to ask you this earlier. You mentioned that you had Focal monitors. Did you listen to the episode I did a few episodes back where I talked about mixing on headphones (Episode 69: Do You Need Expensive Headphones to Mix a Podcast?)?Ryan: Yes, I did.Aaron: I mix on $10 Panasonics. What do you think about that? You can be totally honest with me. You can tell me that it’s a stupid idea or that it’s okay.Ryan: I agree to a certain extent. I agree that you should be listening to what you’re making on whatever the majority of people are going to be listening to it on. For a lot of audio engineers mixing music, that’s iPod earbuds, those standard earbuds you get. Something like that. When I mix TV, I have an output routed to a TV in my office, so I can hear it on TV speakers.I do also believe in mixing on something with some sort of higher fidelity type of monitoring environment, whether that’s nicer speakers or nicer headphones. Naturally, you’re going to hear things differently. The main thing to take away is how things translate.If you’re listening to something on one source and you make it sound good there, that’s great, but in a different environment, it may sound completely different.iPhone earbuds may not have the bass that a car stereo has. You want to hear how it translates from one thing to another. That’s why it’s good to at least listen to it on two different sources and not just narrow yourself down to one cruddy thing. That’s good in theory, but again, the key takeaway is translation.Aaron: Maybe it’s a little bit different for me and I can get away with it because of the consistency of the microphones and the recording environment set we use.Ryan: Yeah, totally.Aaron: I think if I was doing more stuff like you are, with videos and clients and all that kind of stuff, I would absolutely be using my higher fidelity headphones.Ryan: Very true. The bulk of your work is dialogue, podcasts.Aaron: Yeah, that’s really it. Just dudes talking into a microphone.Ryan: Yeah. I have done a lot of work here where I’m working in a small studio, but a lot of my mixes have played in auditoriums and arenas.If you’re working on projects like music or film that have different audio frequencies and spectrums, remember that sound will be perceived differently in different places.Aaron: How do you even test for that?Ryan: Here, I at least have a sense of how our auditorium sounds, so I’ve trained my ear to hear in advance and understand how it’s going to translate. For something like when we did a live recording in the biggest arena here in Charlotte, we had a video opener piece. I was on point for mixing that, so basically, I had to work with tech and production to find a time after setup where I can bring my session, copy it onto a laptop, and play it through the PA.Then I can make any final mix tweaks there in the auditorium or the arena. I perfected it in my studio, and any small tweaks I was able to do in that actual environment. Granted, a lot of the times, we may not have that luxury. There are also great plugins you can buy that simulate different monitoring environments, like Sonarworks.If you have certain pairs of headphones, you can tell the program, “I have these headphones, now make my mix sound like it’s coming through these headphones or these speakers,” so you can hear how it might translate. In that program, they have a final output like the Beats headphones. You can hear how it might sound on there, super bass heavy.Aaron: I hear they’re getting better, but I still have never bought any Beats headphones. I probably should (just for testing purposes).Ryan: There are definitely programs out there to help you see how things translate to different monitors.On Location GearRyan: We were talking about the gear we use for on location recording. Sound Devices would be our main recorders. For our mics, we use Schoeps. It’s a shotgun microphone, so it’s a narrow polar pattern with good off axis rejection. Schoeps is a great brand. Again, you’ll see this on professional movie sets.That’s the mic we use. We have some Sennheiser shotguns as well, the ME66, we have a couple of those, which is more their entry shotgun mics. Recently, I rented some of the MKH416.Aaron: I would like one of those. The Sennheiser 416 is well known as the classic TV shotgun mic, right?Ryan: Exactly. I rented those out because I wanted to try it out for that reason. The Schoeps is very good and very well known on set as well, but so is the 416. I rented it to try it out. It’s a trusted mic that a lot of people use for these professional things, and it doesn’t really break the bank for what it is.Aaron: They’re like $1,000, I think.Ryan: Yeah, and it sounded great.Aaron: The next mic I get is either going to be that or the Rode NTG 3.Ryan: I’ve heard a lot of great things about that. I haven’t tried one myself.Aaron: That’s the shotgun mics we shot my podcasting courses with.Ryan: Yeah, I know that Sean uses that for all of his videos.Aaron: I’m excited about getting to go work with those (I’m moving to San Antonio in March or April).Master the BasicsAaron: That’s a pretty good run through of your gear. I’m sure you could keep going and discuss a lot more, but I don’t think we need to go into that. It seems like you guys are at a super professional, high quality. You have made big investments in professional gear, which is fantastic. I encourage everyone to strive for that, to aim for that, but like we said earlier, use what you have right now. I don’t have anything close to what you guys have, but I’m still doing my podcast. I’m doing the best I can with what I have.Ryan: It still sounds great.Aaron: Thanks! It’s mostly just knowing how to set gain levels and not having a noisy room. It’s crazy how far the basics will get you— everything else is just icing on the cake.I’ve been watching this video course called Zen and the Art of Work, which I really recommend to everybody. It’s mindfulness training mixed with productivity training, which is such a great combination.In this course, he says, “So many of the masters continually revisit the basics.” Mastery is staying on a path. It’s not reaching some final goal, it’s more about being with the work and investing in getting better, but also revisiting the basics. He was talking about playing piano. He was like, “A lot of times, I just start by touching the keys, pressing the keys, and then doing basic scales over and over again.”It’s true. When you get so good at the basics that you don’t have to think about it, that’s when you start to expand and get to that level where people say, “Wow, you’re so good at that. How did you get so good?” You’re like, “That was just doing the basics. It’s not anything fancy.”It’s so important to master the basics and keep going back to them.Learning MoreAaron: What’s next for you? How do you invest in yourself and improve? Or are you working so much that you always have more learning opportunities? Do you buy books or courses or follow any websites to learn more about this audio stuff?Ryan: Honestly? We had a shift at work to where my role has shifted to mainly just broadcasts. That has enabled me to have a little bit more flexibility and free time, so I’ve been doing a lot more freelance work. That’s great, because it energizes me and keeps me engaged. It keeps me from routine. Routine is great.I love routine, that’s very much my personality, but freelance work keeps things interesting.For me, it’s all about where and how I can get inspired and constantly feeding that. It’s about feeding my desire for creativity. We’re all creatives. We like to create. We were designed to be creators, really. Everything I try to do is about how I can become a better creator and what I can create next. It’s about finding things that inspire me, really. We touched lightly on a few of the resources that I like, things I’ve learned and places I’ve picked things up.If you’re interested in audio for post production, there are a couple of great books by Ric Viers. I have two books by him that are really great. The first one is The Sound Effects Bible, and it’s not just sound effects in there. He talks about everything from gear to microphones, basics, setting proper gains, compression, some mixing techniques, etc. He also has The Location Sound Bible.There are a lot of similarities, but there’s also a lot of talk about gear, shotgun mics, lop mics, recorders, and then he also dives into some of the basics when it comes to mixing, proper gain staging, and so on. Those are a really great pool of knowledge in book form. There are a lot of other books out there, but I have found those two to be really helpful.Other than that, when it comes to audio for video, it’s a very small, niche field. There isn’t a crazy amount of stuff out there, like there might be for mixing music. For that, you’ve got tons. You’ve got Pensado’s Place, all these people on YouTube putting out channels on mixing, mixing from home, mixing on a budget, etc. There’s plenty of that.Aaron: Graham Cochrane and Joe Gilder are pretty awesome resources for anyone who wants to start a home studio.Ryan: YouTube can be a pool of knowledge for anything and everything, too. You have to dig a little bit and do some searching. On the inspiration side, for me, since I love audio for video, Sound Works Collection is a great place. They’ll do mini videos interviewing the sound people that did sound for X movie. Whether it was the last Harry Potter or anything and everything, big budget films, they’ll sit down with the recording people, the sound designers, the mixers…It’s really cool, because they’ll show footage of them doing stuff on location or the foley artists. It’s cool to see their process. For me, that helps me stay inspired. It gives me ideas to do other things. They have a podcast as well, and that’s great. The videos can be kind of short, maybe 10 minutes or so, but the podcast will go on at length, talking to the audio guys who have made sound for videos possible.It will also be music composers for movies as well. That’s really great. I found that great not only as inspiration, but to know what and how audio professionals for big budget films get inside their minds, how they’re thinking, and what their process looks like.It’s neat to see stuff about sound engineers for big movies and realize that we’re not so different.Dealing With a Broad Loudness Spectrum (Dynamics)Aaron: I have a nerdy question here. This is about normalizing and compression, I think. Aiya had asked, “I’m so torn about normalizing sound clips. If I’m working on a longer project in segments, would it be better to adjust my peaks manually for the sake of consistency? It’s for a video project.” I’m hearing that there are differences in video volumes. How do you deal with that? Do you do compression? Do you do automation for the different parts? How do you deal with dynamics?Ryan: It depends on the project. I’ll talk about how I would mix a sermon, because that’s very dynamic. Our pastor will go from whispering, holding his handheld mic close to his stomach, to screaming, holding the microphone, cupping the capsule. Power and respect to him, because it creates a certain atmosphere, which has a powerful effect. That’s what I’m dealing with on a weekly basis.That dynamic range is tremendous. Keep in mind, this is going to TV eventually. TV has very strict restrictions. It’s not so much on level, but on perceived level. There’s a difference between what you see meter and what you’re hearing. I can talk at length about that, too.Aaron: Could you give us a super short version? I’m kind of aware of that, but since I just mix in Logic, I’m not sure how to measure it. Is there a way to measure it in Logic? Do you know? Is there a plugin you use?Ryan: I use a plugin from Waves. It’s a loudness meter, and its just that. It has a lot of presets, so I’ll use the TV standard preset. I’ll use it for ATSE85, and I’ll use it for a dialogue bus. They’ve also got one for a master bus. The standard right there is your average level around -24 dB LUFS, so that’s full scale. If you have a classic meters, your peak would be zero, so that would average metering right around -10. At least for TV, I’ve got a hard limiter at -10 dB, to where nothing can go above that.The difference between levels on a meter vs. perceived loudness is the differences between what we hear and the actual energy.In our TV program, we’ll have the sermon, but we’ll also have a talking heads segments, which is dialogue and a music bed. We’ll also go into segments where they’ll go into worship from our live album, which had been mixed and mastered as an album. That thing is slammed. If you look at the wave form, it’s a sausage. If I’m setting all that by the meters alone and they’re all hitting -10, it may look right, but if I look at my loudness meter, that worship segment is going to be off the charts.There’s so much more content in there. There’s so much going on with all the different frequency ranges as opposed to a dialogue track, which is a narrow field in the frequency spectrum. That’s the gist of it. When it comes to my technique for controlling dynamics, for something like mixing a sermon, if I’m going down my plugin chain, the first thing I naturally have is a high pass filter. I’m rolling off those unnecessary lows that are hogging energy.The next thing I’ll do is use a compressor, and I’ll set the attack to right in the middle, so not fast or slow, and I’ll have the release time at fast. We don’t want to hear it pumping, letting go. That’s catching my peaks. It’s not doing a crazy amount, but it kind of is. That’s helping do a lot of the bulk compression. Before anything really hits the compressor, I will go through, and as I work my way through the mix, I will clip gain the wave form, so that, say, if he’s whispering somewhere, I might keep that, depending on how I have my compressor set.Then, if we go up to a part where he’s screaming and my wave form is huge, I will take that down and create those nodes, those dots in the wave form, and drag the actual clip volume down, that gain down. That way, it’s not going into the compressor at this high gain level. It’s hitting the compressor evenly as the rest of it would. That way, it’s not driving the compressor crazy. Then I’ll go through and do some EQ and DSing and whatnot. I might add some more compressors in there, just to grab some of those little things coming through. After that, it’s subtle, just smoothing it out.Aaron: It is a little bit of both. If she has access to an audio editing program—I don’t know what she’s using for editing. If you can put a compressor on the track, do that. It’s not exactly the same, but I did a YouTube video about how I process podcast vocals, and it’s very similar. For podcast vocals, I start with a Logic noise removal plugin.Ryan: I actually have my noise suppressor, and I’ll use that later on down in my signal chain. My way of thinking is that if I’ve got all this compression going on, the compression is narrowing that dynamic range, so it’s bringing up that noise floor. I tend to do my noise suppression after the bulk of that compression, because the noise floor is higher and it’s easier to work on a supressor. If that makes sense.Aaron: I’ve thought a lot about whether you should do the noise removal before or after you add a bunch of gain with a compressor or something, and I can’t think of a good reason that it matters. You can take out the noise before you add a bunch of gain, or you can add a bunch of gain and take out the noise afterwards. Which is better? I don’t know. Anyways, after the noise removal plugin, I put an EQ with a high pass filter, a peak compressor, an RMS or an average level compressor, and then a limiter.Ryan: Like I mentioned earlier, before I had my long-winded answer, it also depends on what it is you’re mixing—whether it’s music, or a podcast, or something for film.When it comes to dialogue for film, you want it to sound as natural as possible, but you also want to be able to hear if someone is whispering.When it comes to that, I’ll still use a compressor, but it will be very, very light. If there’s anything I need to do to meet loudness, that I will automate the volume on my dialogue bus. I’ll bring that up. That way, it sounds a little bit more natural, instead of solely relying on a compressor to do all the work for you.Aaron: That makes sense. For podcasts, if I notice that there’s a section where someone was talking much quieter, like if a guest backed away and talked like that for four or five minutes and then went back to the normal distance from the microphone, in Logic, I’ll turn that into its own clip. I make a cut on either side of the quiet part, and then, in Logic, you can double click on it and change gain by hitting Control G. Then you can add 3, 4, or 5 dB to it.That works out pretty well. If it’s every five seconds or I have to do it more than five or six times in an episode, I won’t do the clip gain changes, I’ll just use a compressor.Look at the overall audio file and see if there are long stretches where you can use automation to change the gain, or change the clip gain.Common Audio Mistakes Podcasters MakeRyan: You asked a question that I think would be good to talk about in regards to podcasting. You had asked, “What do you like about podcasts? What common mistakes do you hear people make?” Initially, I read this and thought, “I don’t know,” but I spent some time thinking about it. This is great, because it piggybacks off the loudness thing.A lot of the mistakes that I hear when it comes to podcasts in regards to audio is the levels and loudness aspect. I’ll listen to some podcasts that sound great, and I’ll put on another podcast where the whole thing is super quiet. Then they start laughing, and it’s really loud. There are some, like mine, where they have a music bed underneath the entire thing, and then sometimes the music bed is so quiet that you hardly know it’s there.You’re like, “What the heck is that noise in the background?” Sometimes, it’s the opposite. Sometimes, the music bed is way too loud. That’s a few of the things I’ve noticed. A lot of the fixes relate to what we just talked about. It helps to have knowledge of levels and perceived loudness.If you’re mixing a podcast, make sure your levels are consistent.One of the biggest things I can recommend for anyone mixing anything, whether it’s music, movies, a podcast, is the importance of having a reference track.Aaron: Yeah, I don’t talk about that enough.Ryan: That is huge. Professional audio engineers who mix platinum records still do this. They will pull in a track from a different song that is mixed well and is mixed how they want theirs to sound, and they’ll have it muted in their session. When they want to have a reference to listen to or train their ear, they’ll un-mute it, and they’ll go, “Oh, okay.”I’m sure you’ve done the same thing as me, where you’ll be so involved in a mix, you’re in it, and you think it sounds great, and then maybe you go away. You go home, sleep, and maybe you come back, and you open it up and you go, “Woah! What was I thinking!” You can get so involved in it that the blinders go up. You get tunnel vision, and you’re not aware to some things.It’s good to have a reference track or get an outsider’s opinion on a mix.The main takeaway here is the reference track. That would help with anything, whether it’s the timbre, how you’re EQing, or the loudness. You pull in their track and it’s far louder than yours, and you automatically know that you need to do something about it.Aaron: That’s a great idea. You can kind of do this before or after. You go through and you edit your whole podcast, get everything set up the way you want, create an extra track, and then find a podcast that sounds really good—This American Life or pretty much anything by NPR—download an episode, drop it into your editing program, and play it, mute it, and see what the difference is. Maybe you need to add some gain with an adaptive limiter or with a compressor, or maybe you can tell that your track sounds way sharper or harsher.Are there are too many high frequencies or too much bass compared to your reference track? You can adjust those things. I’m so glad you mentioned that. I’ve never thought of that before, and that’s such a good idea.Ryan: It’s one of those things you don’t think of much, but once you do it, you’re like, “Oh my gosh!” It’s really eye opening and really helpful.You can find Ryan online at ryanmonette.com, and follow him on Twitter @RyanMonette.