From the category archives:

Broadcast Engineering

Gear Head

by Justin Kaiser - Broadcast Mastery

I’m a self-proclaimed gearhead. So after talking about a brand new piece of equipment in the studio I got the following e- from someone in our bank…

Just out of curiosity, why are so many people so wrapped up in pre-amps and processors? If you have a clean room with well-thought-out acoustic dampening, why not just record clean, unprocessed audio and apply the effects after the fact with an on-board digital plug-in?

(I realize on-board, digital plug in may be redundant sentence structure, but you get my point)

Once you process the audio, you can’t undo it. So if you are sending audio to a producer, wouldn’t you think said producer would prefer clean, unprocessed audio so he/she can process they way he/she wants?

I know I prefer clean, unprocessed audio.

Now, that said, SOME of you have amazing processing talent. I have audio arrive that I know is processed, but it sounds amazing. And I’ve received audio from others that I’ve had to either trash or ask them to send it back to me unprocessed. (I would hope you would do the same if I sent something that wasn’t top quality.)

Anyway, all the money spent on processors. I spent money on acoustic tiles. And I purchased the Soundtoys plug-in package for ProTools. I have Behringer B1 mics and very clean rooms. The only processing I do is applying a vocal levitator plug in to the audio track if the levels are recorded a little low – to offset ambient room noise.

I have one other setting – that is to make the voice sound a little more “street” when I’m going “everyday character” parts. So it doesn’t sound like I’m in a studio. More of an open room, office or kitchen type of sound.

Just thoughts. Anyone else bypassing the expense and hassle of pre’s and processors?

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Windows Vista Optimization Guide for Audio

December 16, 2007

If you’ve moved into the Windows Vista world I thought I’d pass along an article I found at http://www.AudioForums.com that was written by the guys over at Sweetwater. I love these guys and trust them implicitly… Here are some great tips for Optimizing your Windows Vista PC for use as a DAW…
Introduction: Getting [...]

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FCC Inspections

October 18, 2007

Del Dayton is our AM RF engineer and comes to IL from Eau Claire, WI.  He offered some tips from recent FCC inspections…
If you’ve had a state broadcast voluntary inspection and passed in the last 2-3 years, you probably will only have to show the FCC the certificate, and they will be on their way [...]

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Audio Buzz – Not The Good Kind

January 14, 2007

OK, so the past few weeks I have been fighting a ground loop. Nothing that was noticeable when recording, but when you turned the computer pot up for playback it was there, and if you amplified the nothing that was recorded, it was a pure 60 cycle waveform� Yep, I counted it 60 full [...]

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