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Special effects. When certain sounds in a mix need to made less static, one uses modulation effects to suggest movement. Here amplitude modulation is called tremolo, equivalent pitch modulation vibrato. Manipulating delay times creates comb-filter effects like chorus and flanger. Chorus is particularly interesting since it stretches the signal to get more diffuse and swimmy. By contrast to very wiry hyper-present signal, that can be very welcome. The effect’s name derives from its initial aim of suggesting an entire ensemble from a solitary source. Regardless of how professional, massed strings always exhibit offsets in intonation and attack synchronization. This creates width and multiplicity. Isolated effects like flanger, bit crusher or ring modulator and chains of effects are popular to attract special attention.


Here we can appreciate how fluid the borders become between basic sound technician and advanced artist. The pool of freaky and very subtle effects which one can tap is large. Here many engineers have noticed how they miss certain sonic effects which came from analog tape decks and vintage consoles. Hence there’s a real market for plug-ins which digitally regenerate them like a basic tube modulator does for a guitar pedal.
 

Work place and tasks. Big expensive productions still occur in front of enormous mixing consoles. But a fully fitted recording studio well exceeds the €1’000’000 marker. Hence much work has shifted to DAWs which is where the signal ends up after recording and editing anyhow. But for certain special tasks like vocal compression, even smaller studios often still prefer vintage hardware over software. Even for the actual mixdown many prefer analogue summing because they detect certain advantages over their digital equivalents. What’s more, many sound technicians eventually despise staring all day at a computer monitor whilst adjusting this or that virtual slider by mouse. This can quickly degenerate into feeling like an accountant working Excel spread sheets in a faceless mega office. Since many mixers—rightfully so—view themselves as artists whose command over the tools of their trade mirrors the playing of actual instruments, it’s obvious that workplace ergonomics would play an important role. Aside from ongoing hardware with discrete user interfaces, there are any number of remotes whose faders, rotary knobs, switches and keys merely send data to software. Many find working with such physical remotes both faster and more creative.

The assessment of a recording and subsequent mixdown occurs in the same monitor area to duplicate the demand for minimal distortion and colouration in favour of top speed, analytical transparency and broad bandwidth by way of playback gear which the mixer is ideally intimately familiar with. Here opinions on the most suitable tools diverge. Yamaha’s old NS10 and Aurotone monitors still make for popular low-end systems. Most common however are multiple speaker pairs to avoid mixdown corrections which are peculiar only to a given playback chain. Hence most reputable studios own multiple nearfield monitors which minimize room effects. Such monitors can intentionally limit max SPL and bass reach. Then there are main speakers which some might view as merely reward for finished work or to impress their clients with. Regardless, with work days often spanning 10 hours, high SPLs are seriously counterproductive and exhausting particularly over the long term. Finally, it’s quite common to compare a final mix to popular commercial recordings to assess its competitiveness.


Over the past few years and decades, music production has seen many changes. The sound technician today is often tasked with a lot more than merely working his gear. He’s expected to make decisions which traditionally were the purview of the producer. He’ll determine whether the wind section should accompany the first refrain or last. He has to psychologically baby sit a singer whose delivery needs a lot of help. And as stated earlier, there’s also the one-man band of multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, producer and sound tech whose existence isn’t merely due to the availability of quality affordable recording kit but also to the rise of a non-linear work flow where composition, recording, editing and downmixing no longer are strictly sequenced and partitioned but often occur simultaneously, with one inspiring the other.

Mastering. Signing off on the final mixdown still isn’t the end of it. We still need a final step to prep our audio production for physical duplication or digital distribution. PQ editing includes fixing the start and end points, track pauses and such for CD formatting as well as the down-conversion of higher sample rates and data densities to 16/44.1 Redbook use. But a mastering engineer’s work actually begins with a comprehensive critique of the delivered mixdown. Every production has its faults even if they’re minuscule. Perhaps the monitoring room led to certain errors like unwanted asymmetries of the stereo image. Perhaps certain sections now sound too dry whilst others are slightly overshadowed by their surroundings. Perhaps the highs lack sparkle or the bass is a bit wooly and unsorted.


The main trump card of the mastering engineer particularly if endowed with the requisite experience is the independent assessment of the production without any prior exposure or emotional involvement, i.e. purely on its own merit and auditioned over a truly first-rate stereo system. Many mistakes can get fixed but usually the final mix still gets compressed to achieve greater density. The goal of most mastering engineers and their clients is to not have the consumer feel they must constantly adjust their playback volume to compensate for louder and quieter passages. This leveling is far from an easy task when a cut’s intro sports the wispy clouds of fragile synthesizer shards only to open the doors to hell two minutes later when electric guitars in deep overdrive kick in accompanied by brutal drums. To find the right balance here is a real art, particularly if it’s not just one song to be mastered but an entire album which despite widely varying cuts is supposed to telegraph as a seamless whole. This relies on serious manipulation. Here the mastering process polishes a lot of it to its final gleam.

The tool kit of a proper mastering facility includes high-quality equalizers and dynamic compressors with perfect channel balance. Once you consider how a top-quality analog mastering EQ contains high triple-digit to low-four-digit electronic parts, it’s obvious how costly such gear can get. Particularly for dynamic edits mastering studios rely on specialty gear which normal production houses tend to not own. Popular here are multi-band compressors as a type of filter bank which cuts the entire signal into variable frequency bands (often three) to apply individual compression to each. The resultant density can get very high but irresponsible edits can also destroy a lot of signal.


A related audiophile anathema is the pursuit of maximal loudness based on research that unless one dislikes the music per se, it’ll sound better if it’s louder than competing music. This particular goal has obviously backfired badly with the so-called loudness wars. But we’ve seen a partial return to sanity over the past few years where certain contemporary Pop production begin to again exhibit depth and space rather than sound flat as a pancake. Even so the psychoacoustic limiter based on the Robinson-Dadson loudness curves is nearly invariably used. Perhaps more devilish still from an audiophile perspective are the broadcast limiters of most radio and television stations which manage to destroy the recorded dynamic range of even classical recordings.
Once a mastering engineer reaches shoulder-deep into his box of tricks, surprising things can surface. With the so-called MS technique it’s possible for example to work exclusively on a production’s virtual center image. Special cases are restoration assignments where one doesn’t merely eliminate the worst crackles like basic vinyl capture software does but makes vintage recordings which are stored on defective worn-out carriers listenable and sellable again

In conclusion, our three-part primer on recording basics should have given you a good grasp and perhaps here and there surprised or shocked you. Remember though that certain current productions still make do with only marginal edits to follow the audiophile mantra that the shortest purest signal path is best. This could mean a single microphone pair where the only manipulation is the relative position of it to the performers and room. In rare and happy instances nothing else is really required. And there are even those occasions where high technology and musical virtuosity become irrelevant. One example I like to cite is Radiohead’s B-side "How I made my Millions". Thom York on piano merely meant to commit an idea to his tape recorder. His piano is slightly out of tune, thin and whiny. His voice suffers poor intonation, nasality and scratchiness. To top it off, Yorke’s girlfriend in the kitchen very obviously cuts vegetables. In toto, it’s quite the disaster. Yet this song grips my short hairs like few others do…
redaktion @ fairaudio.de