Blog
Rippers in the Stream
After years of declining revenues, the music industry had its second straight year of growth in 2016, as revenues climbed to $15.7 billion worldwide—largely...
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Building Dangerland, Part 4: Studio Construction—Almost There
Still lacking lighting, furniture, etc., I configured a temporary setup with gear stacked on folding tables and old cases and, while it looks a...
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Advances in Archiving
Recently, I ran across a family photo that was taken in 1890, affixed to a cardboard backing—and was as good as the day...
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Book Review: CarAlity…A Tribute in New Orleans
Authors are advised to write about what they know and, lucky for us, J. Daniel Jones knows plenty. In his first novel, CarAlity…A Tribute...
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$1.1 Billion for Bad Sound?
The 73,000-capacity U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, MN has been a hit with fans of the Minnesota Vikings football team, but it hasn’t fared...
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VIDEO: Berklee Talks Avatar Studios Acquisition
One of Manhattan's last major recording facilities, Avatar Studios, was acquired by Boston-based Berklee College of Music so that it can establish BerkleeNYC, a...
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Retro PSN: Steely Dan’s Mood Swings On The Move
Steely Dan may be best-known in pro-audio circles for its impeccably recorded albums, but recent years saw the duo make its presence known...
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The Summer of Love—and Decades of Results
It’s always a fascinating thing to break bread with people; somehow adding food to the mix makes any conversation expand and grow in insight....
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Digital Audio Formats: What’s Next?
Two recent events underscore changes in the world of digital audio. The first is the end of licensing for MP3 data compression (or more...
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Exploring Analog Recording with Adam Savage
Former Mythbuster Adam Savage heads to Detroit to learn all about analog studio gear, ribbon microphones, Blumlein-style miking, the vinyl-pressing process and more from...
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Retro PSN: Glen Campbell—Meet A Legend
With the death of Glen Campbell in early August, 2017, the music world lost someone who wasn’t merely a great performer, but also...
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Is the Pen Mightier than the Mouse?
Last month’s column covered the Windows Creators update, and although there was a fair amount of detail on the Surface Dial, I mentioned Pen...
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Movie Review: Score—A Film Music Documentary
Currently to be seen at a number of showcase screenings around the county, Score: A Film Music Documentary from writer/director Matt Schrader follows the...
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Music Production Activists Win, Lose
Music has always been part of activism, but in recent times, there’s been a surge of activism for music—specifically music production, as various...
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Building Dangerland, Part 3: Digging In—Floating My Control Room
Based on a long list of factors—with cost being at the top of the list, but also including building code restrictions, spouse-imposed limitations (“We’re...
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European Art Installations Unsettle with Audio
During a recent trip to Berlin for the AES Convention, and then to London for the V&A Exhibition, guest blogger Mel Lambert encountered a...
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Windows Creators Update Meets Pro Audio
Although concerns about Apple’s commitment to pro-level creators are likely overblown—Apple probably has a few tricks up its sleeve for 2018—Microsoft is doing a...
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PSN Premiere: Styx on Recording The Mission
Pro Sound News exclusively premieres Styx guitarist/singer Tommy Shaw, producer Will Evankovich and studio owner John McBride discussing how they recorded the band’s latest...
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Inside the V&A’s Pink Floyd Exhibition
To mark the 50th anniversary of the band’s first single, “Arnold Layne,” the Victoria and Albert Museum in Central London is hosting an impressive...
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Miking Traditional Jazz Combos Live, Pt. 2: The Rhythm Section
New York-based traditionalist jazz/big-band leader Glenn Crytzer continues his in-depth discussion of how, in his experience, traditional 1920/30s-style jazz combos should be miked in...
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Five Career Tips from The Weeknd’s FOH Man
Nobody starts at the top; just ask Derek Brener. Years of working his way up the ladder in the L.A. music scene led to...
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Rich Tozzoli’s 4th Annual St. John Recording Retreat
You know that you’ve been away on an island when the pilot for the return flight home says, “We’re first in line for takeoff,...
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Giles Martin Dissects The Sgt. Pepper 50th Anniversary Remix
At a playback event at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, producer Giles Martin talked at length about remixing the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club...
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Book Review: The Vinyl Detective—The Run-Out Groove
A few months ago, we reviewed The Vinyl Detective: Written In Dead Wax, the first in a series of humorous, music-oriented mystery novels following...
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Cracks in the Mac?
Since its introduction, the Mac’s share of the pro audio market has been hugely disproportionate to its general market share. It upended the Amiga—at...
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AES at NAMM: A Smart Collaboration
The National Association of Music Merchants and The Audio Engineering Society will team up to create "AES at NAMM," a new slate of educational...
Studio Sense
Recording Guitars With Neil Dorfsman: On Mics & Phase Alignment
Multi-Grammy Award-winning producer, engineer and mixer Neil Dorfsman has worked with the best of the best—Sting, Paul McCartney, Tears For Fears, Bob Dylan, Bruce...
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Touching and MIDI and Clouds—Oh My!
Although Apple wasn’t at NAMM, it chose that time slot to introduce Logic Pro X 10.3. And in typical Apple fashion, it embodied three...
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Seen on the Scene: Pro Light+Sound 2017
The 2017 editions of the Pro Light+Sound and Musikmesse conventions, held simultaneously in Frankfurt, Germany, offered visitors a direct line on the latest...
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Will New Capacity Kill the Vinyl Revival?
In recent years, the much-heralded Vinyl Revival has seen vinyl records take off with consumers once again. In fact, it's been arguably too successful,...
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Artificial Intelligence: Your New Best Friend?
When the team at Sony’s Flow Machines project fed 15,000 sheets of music into a computer, and heard the speakers come alive with the...
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VIDEO: Ariana Grande’s Accidental Mic Drop
Lots of stars love that big, dramatic Mic Drop—except when it's an accident, as happened recently to popstar Ariana Grande when her...
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An Inspirational Rejection
Producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Beck) recently tweeted a rejection letter he got from Abbey Road Studios in 1990 when he...
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Interfacing with Interfaces at NAMM 2017
NAMM has been making an effort to get pro audio more involved in the show, and the 2017 NAMM convention had more bait than...
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Building Dangerland, Part 2: Mixing In A Jail Cell
If someone had told me that I would agree to spending the next six months of my studio life working out of an 8'...
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VIDEO: Building the Modern Turntable
It’s no secret that vinyl records have been on the rebound for the last 10 years, and sales of the format are now...
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Live from Hanover, Germany: Sennheiser’s Digital 6000 Launch
Sennheiser recently hosted a few hundred individuals from around the world, comprised of audio engineers, technicians, distributors, journalists, writers and more in Hanover,...
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TV’s Tiny Studio for Lil Jon
There’s a lot of Reality TV shows focused on building small living spaces, and a few have made episodes out of constructing petite recording...
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EQ: The Next Generation
When plugins first appeared, the goal was often to provide virtual equivalents of hardware devices—similarly to how CGI originally reproduced reality less expensively. But...
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A New Year’s High-Resolution
Now safely ensconced in 2017, I’ve been looking back at last year and although there’s no avoiding the fact that a lot of 2016...
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Sound Designers Sound Off at BroadwayCon
The annual BroadwayCon, held recently at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, is a celebration of all things Broadway, from the shows...