Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: A Concert in Your Living Room?
The coronavirus COVID-19 has essentially shut down the 2020 summer touring season—and cost Steve La Cerra his usual weekend gig. So are stay-at-home, "intimate"...
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Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Time on Your Hands? Record!
Now that he has plenty of enforced time at home, Mike Levine is coping by heading into his studio more often, taking care of...
Editor's Note
‘When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro’
In his Editor's Note for the April issue, Mix Editor Tom Kenny looks around the coronavirus landscape and wonders who is going to help...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: Coronavirus Fallout
“All New York City Public Schools are closed.” When I hear those words, it usually means there’s a significant snowfall in the area and...
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Write It Down!
There's a simple feature in every DAW that just might the most useful one in the whole set... as long as you take the...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: What’s With the Tape on the C#?
Frustration with a show’s backline provider led to a couple trips back to the warehouse, an angry phone call and, ultimately, resolution. A normal...
Editor's Note
Where Tradition Meets the Modern
About halfway through writing this month’s cover story on the revamp of the Newman Scoring Stage at Fox Studios, it dawned on me that...
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Green Stories From the Music Biz
Small bits of eco-friendly practices are popping up all over the audio industry, from solar panels at studios to recycled plastic for acoustic treatment...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: Rack Toms for Everyone
When a Rack Tom channel on a rented digital console started showing up across multiple scribble strips during soundcheck, Steve La Cerra did everything...
Editor's Note
A Different Time, a Different Place
With no traffic, Montauk is only a little more than a two-hour drive from New York City, two-forty-five if you take the Long Island...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: TLC for an XK-1c
Steve La Cerra knows that after years on the road, gear can take a beating. So when possible, he likes to take out some...
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Home Sweet Home
The Billie Eilish-Finneas sweep at the Grammys put the spotlight back on home-based, bedroom studios, proving that a good song is a good song,...
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Mix Blog Live: Lessons From The Professor
Steve La Cerra mourns the loss of one of his real heroes, the drummer Neil Peart, who lived life with passion and grace, not...
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Shake, Rattle and Roll
Mike Levine went to see an Oscar-nominated film in a Dolby Cinema and loved the experience... except for the trailers, which felt more like...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: Resurrecting an Audio Dinosaur, The Final Chapter
The Ampex 351 was working, but relatively noisy, so Steve La Cerra started replacing tubes; he found that not all tubes are created equal.
Editor's Note
Hearing the Music in ‘Found Sounds’
My introduction to writing about sound for film and television, and most of the emphasis over the years, has been through post-production.
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Together or Separately?
With two simultaneous recording projects in the works, Mike Levine finds himself working in two very different manners, both of which work just fine...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: Music for the Holiday Mood
Having a tough time staying in the holiday spirit? Here’s some music to lighten your mood, in no particular order… The Christmas Song, The...
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Murphy’s Law, Home Studio Edition
Mike Levine has had more than a few niggling, frustrating things happen in his home studio lately, which led him to find out more...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: The Zombie Zone
What do you do when you show up to a gig and the mix position is, uh, less than desirable, and a bunch of...
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: What’s With Avid Updates?
Updating a DAW's software, and hardware, is a big deal, and Mike Levine is not a fan of the perceived push to move users...
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: A Legal Mess
The recent kerfuffle surrounding Taylor Swift singing her songs at the AMAs goes beyond a simple one-night performance, and the rights aren't as simple...
Recording
Mix Blog Studio: Finding Beauty in the Dirt
Thoughts on parallel compression got Mike Levine thinking about applying parallel saturation to dirty up his guitar tracks in a mix.
Live Sound
Mix Blog Live: Why Does An Advance Have to Be So Difficult?
Voice on the phone: Is this Steve? Me: Yes. Hey I’m Curly Joe (not his real name). I’m doing sound for you on (date...
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Mix Blog Live: Resurrecting an Audio Dinosaur, Episode 4
Has it really been three months since we last visited the Ampex 351 Audio Dinosaur? I estimate that I’ve logged 200,000 miles since the...
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Mix Blog Studio: The Benefits of Actually Being There
It wasn’t that long ago, maybe 10 years or so, when there was talk bout trade shows being on their way out. People speculated...
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Mix Blog Live: Newberry Opera House
Eighteen eighty-one, United States. President James Garfield is assassinated. Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company. Billy the Kid escapes...
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Mix Blog Studio: When Bad Sounds Good, and Vice Versa
There’s a certain irony to the fact that we put so much time and energy into getting the best fidelity possible in our recordings,...
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Mix Blog Live: Back to the Future
Most audio engineers are familiar with the term snapshot memory, a method by which all (or at least most) of the settings of a...
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Mix Blog Studio: Before You Press That Upgrade Button…
In October, Apple will release Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina, and when it does, my Mac will start bugging me to upgrade—and it can...
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Mix Blog Live: Is It Live, Or Is It???
A few nights ago, some of my coworkers were discussing the song “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish, the video for which has collected more...
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Mix Blog Studio: Get Smart
Over the weekend, I read a fascinating op-ed in the New York Times called “How to Build Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust.” Its basic...
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Mix Blog Live: Best Show Ever
I’m lucky to have a close-knit family and we often find excuses to get together, whether it be for a holiday, a birthday or...
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Mix Blog Studio: Of Moods and Mixing
Here’s a thought exercise. Imagine you had to mix the same song twice, in different studios with different monitors (I know that sounds like...
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Mix Blog Live: The Expensive Seats Aren’t Always the Best
One of the issues that I deal with on a constant basis is making a P.A. sound good for the front rows of a...
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Mix Blog Studio: Something Is Rotten in Copyright Land
A couple of weeks ago, Katy Perry and some members of her production team were hit with a $2.8 million copyright-infringement verdict, which stated...
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Mix Blog Live: No Excuses
I almost never have the luxury of touring with production, so on any given show there are a ton of variables in the P.A....
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Mix Blog Studio: Separation Anxiety
I have a modular music system in my house that has speakers in three different rooms. It’s super-convenient, allowing me to listen to the...
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Mix Blog Live: Resurrecting an Audio Dinosaur, Part 3
When last we left my Ampex 351 Audio Dinosaur, I had installed a newly rebuilt power supply, ensuring that all sections of the 351...
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Mix Blog Studio: Master of Some
Back in the analog era, it was easier to fully master the gear in your studio because, unless you were working in a large...