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...
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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.
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...
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The Spirit of Independence
I’ve only met Linda Perry once, and it was for no more than two or three minutes last January at NAMM.
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Mix Blog Live: The Power of Chicken Nuggets
July 5, 2019, 11:30 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time I return to my hotel room after a gig at the Rialto Theatre in Tucson, Ariz....
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Mix Blog Studio: Chatty Plug-ins
Do your plug-ins have a good working relationship with your DAW? Sounds like a silly question, right? After all, plug-ins by their nature are...
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Mix Blog Live: Resurrecting an Audio Dinosaur, Part 2
At the close of the first episode of “Resurrecting an Audio Dinosaur,” my lovely Ampex 351 tape machine channel was alive and working—though I...
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Mix Blog Studio: Audio—A Second-Class Citizen
This week, I’m going to deviate from the usual studio-related subject matter to talk about a more general issue. Have you noticed how in...
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Mix Blog Live: Resurrecting an Audio Dinosaur
You’re looking at the electronics for a single channel of an Ampex 351 tape machine that was built in the early 1950s. Ampex manufactured...
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Mix Blog Studio: Rent-to-Own Gathers Steam
More than ever, you have options for acquiring music software. You can buy it, subscribe to it and, in a more recent development, rent-to-own...
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Mix Blog Live: Victor Jay Solotoff, 1945 – 2019
Brooklyn, N.Y., 1979 My friend John is a year ahead of me in the same school: John Dewey High School in Brooklyn. At the...
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Mix Blog Studio: Learning By Doing
Did you know that daisy-chaining AC power strips is considered to be dangerous? Neither did I, but when doing some research for my recent...
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Dreaming of a Standard Digital Mixer File
Many engineers who enjoy console du jour know how much fun it is to carry a wallet full of USB drives
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Monitoring Copyright Laws in the EU
The EU parliament passed The European Union Directive on Copyright, a new law that includes a number of provisions to protect content creators
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Mix Blog Live: O Ware, O Where
The wheels of progress never stop grinding, especially when it comes to digital audio, so it’s no surprise when manufacturers of digital gear introduce...
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The Scientist and the Bard
I still can’t believe that 40 years after first being mesmerized by Apocalypse Now as a 16-year-old, Mix is featuring the legendary director Francis...
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Mix Blog Studio: Tear It Down and Start Over
I’ve had my home studio in its current location for about six years, and what started out as a relatively organized setup, has gotten...