So you've got this Multiband Compressor ?!? 05/15/2012
 I’m fairly certain that over the years I’ve read that Multi Band Compression is both “a miraculous savour of” and “an evil plague upon”, audio. Less dramatic commentators often suggest that it is something along the lines of “a useful and powerful tool that can nevertheless cause great damage ....” and various fora state unequivocally that “all mastering engineers” use them, and that “no serious ME would ever allow one in the studio” This is all very well and good, but you’ve probably got one anyway so what can you do with it?
Add Comment Headphones: the sound inside your head 04/16/2012
 Like many people who work with audio I use a variety of monitors for mixing and mastering. Most frequently I’ll work on monitors, but check edits and details using the ‘phones and also do a sanity check on a more restricted monitor (a mono Avantone Mixcube or a pair of £20 Aletec Lansing computer speakers in my case).
My trusty Sennheiser HD250 Linears have been quite adequate for my needs for a long time, but recently I’ve been getting a little stale on my monitors and decided to buy myself a pair of better headphones. Now I reckon that “which headphones should I buy?” must rank alongside “recommend me a microphone” and “what preamp do I need?” in terms of persistence. And it’s pretty well unanswerable, so here’s the answer. Ahem! Fighting the urge to "do it right" 03/28/2012
 Joe Meek famously said "if it sounds good it IS good" and I can't see why anyone would be so foolish as to try to argue with that - except....
 March 16th 2012 is Dynamic Range Day. Woo-hoo, and so what?
Here's what - there is a phenomenon which has been called "The Loudness Wars", apparently brought about by the fear that if your tracks are not as "loud" as the hottest commercial release of the moment then no-one will listen to them, therefore no-one will play them, and you will be doomed to poverty, obscurity, loneliness and misery. Let's be clear, this is nothing new and it's not even completely irrelevant; back in the days when juke boxes played 45s it was important that your disk was as loud as the one played before and after, and when your CD is stuck in a multi-changer at a party then it matters there too! That's about it though - radio levels loudness, my MP3 player can level loudness, my PC media player can do it, my car stereo can do it - so being "loud" REALLY DOESN'T MATTER (mostly). So does IK Multimedia's T-RackS 3 dither? 02/24/2012
 I've been playing with IK's T-RackS 3 Deluxe (which is on a great price-offer at the moment). I had T-RackS many years ago and loved it but never actually used it on any finished piece of work. I tried Izotope's Ozone with the exact same result and eventually got-rid of both as part of the Great Plugin Purge described elsewhere.
 So here's the funny thing. I bought my Heil PR-30 a couple of years ago, retired my old faithful Shure SM-57, played around with amp sims and condensor mics, dug-out the SM-57 and decided that I preferred it to the Heil, then decided I might need a ribbon mic. So far so good.
 I have a friend; let's call him "Dave". Dave has been engaged on a project to record and mix an album's worth of mostly vocal and acoustic-guitar songs for a client. The arrangements are very sparse and his client has been adamant that he doesn't want any additional parts added. A couple or so weeks ago Dave dropped by and left 2 CDs with me, one is the collection of songs which he has recorded, mixed and pre-mastered using Izotope's Ozone; the other disc has a copy of one song recorded and mixed only. .
Slate Digital Virtual Console Collection 11/24/2011
 My iLok 2 arrived today so I took the opportunity to download the Slate VCC demo. I made a copy of my Nemesis Project discussed elsewhere in this blog and put an incidence of the VCC Virtual Channel on each of the tracks in the current mix along with the Virtual Mixbuss on the master 2 bus. I muted all the groups and brought them in one at a time, drums, bass, vocals then guitar. For the sake of simplicity I left the aux sends alone figuring that I'll give them a critical listen over the weekend. First impression?....
IK Multimedia Amplitube Custom Shop 11/22/2011
 Amplitube Custom Shop I have had a full version of Amplitube 2 for some years now, and yesterday I took the plunge and installed the free version of Amplitube 3.7.
Stacking on multiple tracks 11/16/2011
So I was thinking about the question of how the sound of preamps stack when they are used on multiple tracks within a mix. This is something that's quoted all over the forums (fora?) but I'm not so sure that it really happens.
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