​INNOVATIVE   AUDIO

               I would first have to point out that while there are some truly superb commercial

audio plugins their are far more mundane, boring and just plain awful ones.There are  

also very many excellent free plugins

            It has long been the aim of digital audio processing to capture the lost magic of analog tape,valves,transformers and analog outboard in general.While for many years

it seemed that this wasn't likely to be truly achievable,quietly and slowly the quality of

signal processing has in my opinion managed to capture all the positive aspects while

( using thirty two bit floating point arithmatic ) maintaining clarity and low noise,even

after extensive processing.We truly have the tools to hand that,in the days of analog

would have been unimaginable.With so much quality cheap and free software available

and computers so affordable,a superb quality recording facility can be assembled for less

than the price of a single high quality analog processor.Now the last stumbling block to

mixing I.T.B.has fallen.

           There is a need for some of the old school tricks and experience to be made more available for the inexperienced to make sure they aren't missing anything.As far as I am able, I shall try to make some of this available here.

         First and foremost has to be the question of monitoring.While many software plugins

claim to make mixing on headphones a feasible alternative to nearfield monitor speakers,

in reality the differences in headphone design mean that,no matter how clever the algorythm,headphones are only really usefull in their traditional role of,monitoring while

recording,in order to; minimise the backing track bleeding onto the microphone being  recorded.Nearfield monitors should ( unless designed for the purpose ) not be placed flush to a wall and should be angled toward the listener in a position closer to the listener than echoes from walls.Often home studios lack sufficient isolation to hear the signal being recorded

without being drowned out by the signals source.Here is where a delay can be used while

setting up to isolate the signal in time instead of space.once happy with the sound reaching the recorder the delay can be disposed of.

          When it comes to recording vocals a factor often not taken into account sufficiently

is the importance of achieving the optimum level in the headphones.Too loud and the singer will strain their voice to compete with the percieved level.,this  will tend to make them pitch their voice too high.Conversely if the level is too low the performance is likely to be flat,believe it or not a good recording engineer will literally ( to some extent ) tune

the singer in to the backing track using the headphone level.That and usually a nice big ​ reverb in the headphones ,but not to 'tape', and you should be good to go.Another trick

( of which I'm not a great fan ) is sometimes handy for inexperienced vocalists who seem to be trying to eat the microphone.If the vocalist refuses to leave a reasonable gap it has been known to give them a dummy mic' to eat while setting up the actual mic' being recorded under the pretext of 'capturing the ambience'. That said an experienced vocalist

can vary their distance from the microphone in such a way as to both help maintain an even level and help capture the nuances of their voice to best effect,basically coming in close for a more intimate sound and backing off for the louder parts..

           Mono instruments guitars in particular can often be made to sound ' bigger 'by

copying the recording delaying slightly and panning each to different positions,a simpler

way to do this ( and if required ) add some wow and flutter which can enhance the effect is with the adt plugin mentioned over on the LINKS page.

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