SPATIAL AUDIO – week ten Spatial audio is another term for immersive, 360-degree sound around a listener, which take two forms. These are binaural, which is used in headphones and earbuds, and another form is object-based, used for television, radio and loudspeaker listening. Spatial audio builds upon placing “audio objects” within a 3D space, also […]
SATURATION EFFECTS – week nine Saturation is a combination of soft-knee compression and harmonic enhancement, being a form of subtle distortion. Historically, this effect was caused by mix engineers overloading physical components of analog equipment such as tape machines, tube amps and transistor-based preamps, which they discovered created “soft-clipping”. This “overloading” means that the signal […]
TYPES OF COMPRESSORS – week eight Compressors are used to reduce the dynamic range of a signal, thus reducing the difference in volume between the loudest and quietest parts of a track. There are 5 main types of audio compressors, which are VCA, FET, optical, tube and PWM. Most commonly used are voltage controlled amplifier […]
PARALLEL PROCESSING – week seven Parallel processing is a signal process in which an original track is duplicated and processors such as compressors or EQs can be applied. This allows the original track to be mixed together with the duplicated (parallel) track. This method can enhance tracks, while ‘maintaining the character of the original audio’. […]
THE HISTORY OF SURROUND SOUND – week six Music recording and reproduction started off as monophonic, which then evolved into multiple-channel systems to replicate a real live musical experience. Surround sound experiments started in the 1930s and by 1940, Walt Disney introduced the idea of an audio system that would ‘totally immerse the film-going audience […]
LOUDNESS WARS – week five Psychologically, when mixing, people tend to have a “louder is better” mentality, where when the volume is raised and we think that the mix is better, when this isn’t the case – this is referred to as The Loudness War or The Loudness Race. The Loudness War started when in […]
RESEARCH ABOUT THE HISTORY + DEVELOPMENT OF EQUALISATION – week four An equaliser, also known as an EQ is a tool in which gives us control over boosting or cutting a range of unwanted audio frequencies. There are different forms of EQs, which include graphic EQs that involves adjusting the gain at set frequencies, high […]
HISTORY OF STEREOPHONIC REPRODUCTION – week three Stereophonic sound is a method of sound reproduction through two or more audio channels that are sounded through two or more speakers in a way that creates the impression that there are sounds that are multidirectional, coming from different directions as natural hearing. This contrasts to monophonic sound […]
ANALYSIS + VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF A MIX – week two We relate to sounds in two different ways, one being where we feel and hear physical sound waves that come out of speakers or headphones, and second where we imagine the placement of the sounds between the speakers. ‘Imaging’ relates to the ‘apparent placement of […]
MIXING WITH A REFERENCE – week one When producing music, after finishing the recording process and having a rough mix, a reference song can be used to help finalise the track. The chosen reference would relate to the song in some kind of way, an example being that it would be the same genre and […]