52
votes
Accepted
Why do guitarists put tape on their amplifiers?
If you look closely at the picture, you'll notice that pieces of tape are placed in very specific positions: one in the middle of speaker cone and the second one on the edge of speaker cone. ...
41
votes
Accepted
Programming in early 80s synth music
'In general' is pretty hard to nail down.
There is so much to say about this era I could write a book - perhaps I should ;-)
Late edit - Let me add a quick TL:DR
Hardware sequencers were such a pain ...
- 27.9k
31
votes
Accepted
Is redundancy used when live recording important performances?
So, I work in live production, specifically in audio. With very, very few exceptions the mics themselves and the mic cables have no immediate redundancy other than someone being ready to deal with a ...
- 326
31
votes
Accepted
Is CD audio quality good enough for the final delivery of music?
Tentatively: Yes. As medium for final delivery, I've not yet seen any strong evidence that a well-designed 16-bit, 44,100 Hz system can be significantly improved on as a vehicle for listening to the ...
- 46.1k
25
votes
Accepted
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D: Why do some recordings seem to be in C sharp?
Tuning forks, invented in 1711, standardised tuning. (A student of mine used to call them pitchforks...) Trouble was, there was no standardised pitch for the note,that came much later. So various ...
- 196k
23
votes
Accepted
How to preserve audio from old tapes: baking tapes to transfer to digital?
Sticky-shed
The great 80s tape debacle - which I'm determined these days should be called ShedShed;) - affected a few tape types from the period. The first to be spotted & which spawned the ...
- 27.9k
22
votes
Is CD audio quality good enough for the final delivery of music?
The short answer: 16-bit 44.1 KHz PCM encoding, when properly sampled
and played back, is close enough to perfect reproduction for human
hearing in virtually all situations that it's unequivocally "...
- 325
18
votes
Accepted
How to make a sound appear to be more distant?
It depends on what kind of environment you want to reproduce, but there are two main factors that lead the brain to think a sound is coming from farther away:
As sound travels through the air, it ...
- 57.7k
17
votes
Accepted
What is the definition of Mid-side stereo as compared with X-Y stereo?
Both XY and Mid-Side recording use two mono signals to create a stereo image, but they do this is totally different ways.
XY is probably the more common method. It requires two matching microphones. ...
- 6,506
15
votes
Accepted
Why was Le Concert Spirituel playing out of tune at Proms 2012?
You are right, it is because they are using very old horns known as natural horns which had no valves or holes. They had known limitations and were quite difficult to play. You can see and hear a ...
- 839
14
votes
What is the difference between high impedance and low impedance microphones?
The simplest difference to grasp is 'intended use'.
In one sentence, professional vs consumer.
High impedance mics are cheap & cheerful, designed to plug straight into computer headset sockets. ...
- 27.9k
13
votes
Is CD audio quality good enough for the final delivery of music?
There are two separate issues here - resolution and frequency. And we also need to separate out recording and playback.
16-bit resolution is plenty good enough for playback. However when recording ...
- 4,802
13
votes
How fragile or durable are condenser microphones?
No piece of electronic equipment appreciates being dropped.
Stage-ready dynamics are tougher than most, studio condensers are not.
Treat a large diaphragm condenser like you'd treat a high-end DSLR ...
- 27.9k
12
votes
Is redundancy used when live recording important performances?
There are several youtube videos showing live setups for large bands, and you'll see that there is a LOT of redundancy in there. Thinking of Billy Joel's keyboard player David Rosenthal - he has two ...
- 1,920
12
votes
Can you record several individual string instruments and put them together to sound like a real orchestra?
This is a great idea and as long as you record to some type of reference like a click and make sure everyone records their individual tracks at the same sample and bit rate you can mix all the ...
- 28k
12
votes
How can I connect my condenser microphone to my PC using a Saffire PRO 24?
The Rode needs phantom.
The Saffire can supply phantom, on XLR.
Nothing is built to run phantom along a TS/TRS jack, because the chances of shorting the socket or accidentally sending it to something ...
- 27.9k
11
votes
How to play a piece right in one take?
I'm going to take a different tack on this one.
Yes, we all make mistakes, pretty much all the time, every time.
The trick is to not let it bother you.
Getting worse when the record button is ...
- 27.9k
11
votes
Accepted
Minor differences between two recorded guitars
It's hard to tell from the images what it actually sounds like, as there's no time-scale, but that's the criterion I'd use - what it sounds like.
Sometimes, a good groove is based on the average beat-...
- 27.9k
11
votes
Are studio monitors necessary for producing tracks?
You could produce tracks with some ordinary earbuds. It's just harder to know what exactly is going on in your mixes and whether it will translate well to other listening environments.
It's general ...
- 844
11
votes
Horse hooves sound in the song background
In the old days, someone woud have two halves of a coconut shell, and tap them on a hard surface. As pointed out by Tetsujin, this was back in the day - 1957, so I suspect here, it's produced in that ...
- 196k
11
votes
Accepted
Why are digital tracks louder than digitized vinyls?
There is absolutely different mastering for vinyl. Whether the original mix has a separate vinyl master or whether a digital master was further processed for vinyl, you can’t cut right into vinyl from ...
- 57.7k
11
votes
Should practice be shared with the general public for the sake of sharing
I did actually debate doing this very thing with my guitar teacher once. An online practice journal.
We came to the conclusion that it was going to be a lot of effort to create a series of the most ...
- 15k
11
votes
How dry does a rock/metal vocal have to be during recording?
In addition to what user90207 said, dry vocals play nicely with several common effects:
Pitch-correction software may have difficulty tracking pitch on very wet vocals, or more commonly the reverb ...
- 9,075
10
votes
Accepted
How to make a guitar backing track?
Some people do have access to MOG files which have all the tracks separated. These people usually work in studios and have access to such files, or pay money, or have the talent to actually create ...
- 688
10
votes
Accepted
What is the wall of sound on many early 60's pop records
Phil Spector has been quoted saying that the pinnacle of this technique is heard on his production of "River Deep Mountain High", by Tina Turner:
When you listen to ...
- 57.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible