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...
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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.
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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...
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Mix Blog Live: Formation, Transformation and Deformation
On April 17, 2019, one of my classes had the opportunity to participate in a very special event. Held in the Rotunda, Mercy Hall...
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Mix Blog Studio: Son of a Glitch
I was at lunch recently with a bunch of veteran musician/composer/producer colleagues, and I posed this question to them: What is the thing that...