Reverb naturally occurs in rooms. It is the reflections of sounds off of the walls and its what gives a room its tone. Think of them as millions of echos that blend together and fade away quickly. Reverberation decays rather quickly and gives the feeling of space. Your ears and brain have spent their whole life listening to reverb, but most the time you don’t really give thought to it. We want to be engineering sound with reverb to help give a feeling of space. The right reverb gives a track a smoother sound and feeling. Newer audio engineers tend to put reverb on everything which is usually a mistake. To much reverb can be bad, and it can muddy up your overall track. You should only apply it to the tracks the feel too close and personal to give them some space. Read more »

A compressor is a really wonderful tool when engineering sound. What it comes down to, is its a tool that gives you more dynamic control over sound levels. For those of you who don’t know what a compressors is, I’ll give a quick explanation. A compressor does exactly what it sound like, it compresses the sound. How is compressed sound beneficial? Let’s consider the human voice. A talented vocalist is the most dynamic instrument on the planet. They can reach incredible high levels of dB and a second later be just a whisper. With such a wide range, it can be difficult to place the fader in a position that will accommodate both high and low dB levels. You would need to constantly be adjusting the fader so the vocals stay at the appropriate sound level. Read more »

I’ve talked a little about Master and what it is, and now I want to go further into the subject. Mastering Audio tracks is the final stage of the engineering sound precess. Mastering audio and music tracks can be long and difficult so I just want to give you a few tips and tricks of the trade. Earlier I talked mentioned that you should set all the levels from each song so they are the same. You don’t want one song to have low levels and the next one to be extremely high. Look at you meters of each song and make sure they are peaking at the same spot. If they are not, you will need to do some adjusting. Read more »

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Mastering is the final part of the recording process and involves transferring your music, or whatever else you might have recorded, to CD or mp3 player. Back in the day when vinyl records were king, it was a real art form to transfer the analog recording on to the vinyl record. Because of the skill it took, this was done by a Mastering Engineer. Now that it is much easier to transfer your recordings to whatever media you want, mastering can be done by producers, audio engineers, and inside the home studio. Read more »

What is the 3 to 1 rule in microphone placement? Before I answer that, let me say a few things about what you should be trying to achieve as a sound engineer.  When making an audio recording, you want to make it sound good on multiple devices. Keep in mind that your recording could be played in the car, on an iphone, in a home movie theater, on a clock radio, and more. All of these are going to have a wide range of fidelity. Phase cancellation can really destroy a recording and make the playback sound poor on certain devices. We want to fix the problem at the source, and to do this we need good microphone placement. Read more »

There are lots of different terms used to describe audio, sounds, and mixes. I want to explain the difference between a tight recording and a muddy recording. Extreme cases of both can be a bad thing. You generally want to have a tight recording with just a little bit of leakage to add character. When recording you are trying to create a certain mood or atmosphere that your audience can relate too, and you can use a little leakage to change that mood.

Tight Recordings

Most sound engineers are usually trying to get a tight sound. What is a tight sound? When you are engineering sound, the more isolated a sound is, the tighter it becomes. If you are recording a guitar in a closed, sound dampened room, the sound is going to be very tight. The guitar will be the only thing recorded onto the audio track. The more padding and sound proofing there is in the room, will cause the sound to become even tighter. You have now completely isolated the guitar recording and eliminated all outside sounds. This would be a very clean recording and give you lots of control over the guitar in a mix.

The down side to eliminating everything, is that it takes all the character out of the sound. Every room has a certain tone that is created by the size and shape of the room, which is called reverb. You want to keep this in your tracks because it helps the mix to sound more natural and pleasing. If all the room tone, outside noises, leakage, were taken out of every track in your mix; the result would be vary alien and unsettling.

Muddy Recordings

Muddy recordings are the opposite of being tight. Each track is not isolated very well and there is a lot of leakage from one microphone to another. Muddy recordings are hard to control and artifacts can be herd when adding effects onto a track.  Allowing a small amount of leakage into a recording is okay, especially if you a wanting to have more of a live, or garage band sound. just remember that more more leakage you allow, the less control you will have when using tools like EQ, compressions, reverb and more.

There is a true art when choosing where to place a microphone on an instrument. But a couple of standards that are used to help achieve the best sound possible. I’ll share a few tips and tricks on how to place a microphone, but it might not always work in every situation. The most important thing to remember, you have to listen. If possible, put your head down where the mic is going to be placed and see if it sounds good. If it sounds bad to your ear, then it will sound bad after the mic has recorded it. Read more »

I’m going to give you a couple of secrets that will help your mixing sound better. If you are having trouble producing a killer mix, try these simple steps and you’ll be amazed at the difference it will make. Mixing tracks is an art form, and it takes a lot of practice to get a good sound. I’m sharing these mixing secrets with you to try and help you get ahead of the curve and be the best audio engineer possible. Read more »

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What is sound engineering and where and how do you get training to become an audio engineer? A sound engineering is the science, art and process of recording, editing, and mixing sounds. An audio engineer can work in many fields which include, but not limited to, Film, Television, Music, Radio, and Video Games. These are all exciting fields to work in, and they are growing industries that will be creating new sound engineering jobs on a regular basis. So how do you get into engineering sound? Read more »

When engineering sound, there are standards and general rules of thumb that should be followed. But at the same time, audio engineering is an art form blended with science. So there is a time to brake rules when trying to create something unique and memorable. One thing a sound engineer usually avoids is clipping and distortion in the signal. Read more »

Noise Gates are a very useful to when engineering sound. They can be used in a variety of situations to help control the signal and only allow the desired music or sound to be heard. What is a Noise Gate? A Noise Gate is an expansion device that allows signals through the channel only if it is above the set threshold. For example: a closed noise gate will reject the quiet sounds, but as the signal level increases, the gate will open and allow the signal to pass through the channel. Once the signal level falls back below the desired level, the gate will close again and no longer allow the signal down the line. Here are some great situations where you can use a noise gate. Read more »

Equalization can be a great tool when engineering sound and used correctly. But it can also be a very dangerous tool and can quickly destroy a mix. It is important to know when you should use EQ and when you should not because it can save you a lot of hassle down the road. Read more »

There is so much about Engineering sound that starts before you even push the record button. I’m going to go over a check list of things you should do before you start recording to make sure that you get the best sound possible. Not every thing on the list will be in your direct control, but you can do a lot to put the odds of getting a killer recording in your favor.

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When engineering sound, you need to be aware of what your microphones are capable of doing. You are not just going to slap any mic in front of a vocal singer or on a kick drum. Each microphone has its own frequency response which will change the sound as its being picked up by the mic. Every sound engineer will have a wide variety of mics in their collection and its important to know how each one will effect the sound that you are trying to record. Read more »

So you’re getting ready to record your friends in his basement playing his guitar. You’re getting ready to set up and you pull out a couple of microphones. Which Mic do I use? There really isn’t a simple answer. Ask yourself a question, what do I want it to sounds like. There are hundreds of microphones out on the market, some are cheap, and some are way out of price for most home hobbyists. No matter what mics you do have, you need to know what they are capable of because mics can change the characteristics of sound. Read more »

As we move into the next characteristics of sounds, we will be talking about what happens to sounds to make them unique and interesting.  When we keep all of these topics in mind, it will help us be better sound engineers. The last two elements of sound are Harmonics and Envelope. So far everything that we have discussed about sound, has been using a sine wave. Sine waves are pure tones of a single frequency. When you are engineering sound, you are almost never working with just one tone or frequency. Especially if you are in the music industry. Read more »

Earlier this week we stared into a few of the basics of engineering sound by learning some fundamental principles of sounds. We have already covered amplitude, wavelength, and velocity. I’ll now pick up where we left off by going over the next 2 points of sound characteristics. Remember that the characters of sound are: Read more »

Before we can even star to manipulate sounds, we first need to understand what it is. Sound is energy that travels trough the air, or other substances such as water or even solids, in the form of waves. These waves of energy are called sound-pressure waves and are created by something pushing the air together. The best way to to imagine this is to picture an inch worm crawling. As it moves along, its back legs move forward to its fronts legs and its back is pushed up into the air. Then it moves its front legs forward till its flat and then does it again to continue to crawl along. Now picture air doing the same thing but its invisible and does it much faster. Read more »

Welcome to EngineeringSound.net. This is the first post of many and I hope to teach you how to engineer sound and everything you need to know about the world of digital recording. The posts on this site will be designed to empower, and train you, in the techniques of a sound engineer. If you are hoping this information will land you a job in the professional fields, it will not. This site can in no way replace the skills you would learn by going to an audio engineering school. But if you love sound, and digital recording is a hobby, then you will find this site a great value. Also, if you are all ready working as an engineer, you might find this site teaching you new tricks. Read more »