Plenty of successful records are technically poor and nobody minds, which is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. What survives a bad recording and what does not. What listeners forgive Noise, hiss and room…
Recording guitar and vocals through an interface. When I monitor through the recording software there is a delay between playing and hearing it. It is small and it is enough to make me play badly: I start dragging and…
A multi track project I have been working on for weeks will not open. The editor either reports the file is corrupt or opens an empty session. There was a crash during the last session. I do not have a backup, which I…
Consistent pattern now over maybe fifteen songs. I finish something late, it sounds full and exciting, and the next morning the same file sounds muddy with harsh vocals. Nothing has changed in the setup. Is this a…
Five song EP, tracked at home and the recordings are decent. My mixes are fine in the sense that nothing is broken, and they never sound finished. I have enough money for exactly one of: paying a mixer, paying a…
Large diaphragm condenser, treated with two foam panels behind the mic, singer about 20cm away. Every take has a honky midrange thing around what sounds like 300 500Hz that I end up carving out with a big EQ cut, and…
Nine songs, four piece rock band, drummer is genuinely good but our practice room is about three metres square with a low ceiling and I have eight inputs at home. Everything else we can track ourselves and we have time…
Every mix I finish sounds balanced on my monitors and then in the car the bass disappears almost entirely and the cymbals are painfully bright. On phone speakers it's tolerable. I've been compensating by boosting bass…
Acoustic guitar and one voice, spare bedroom with a carpet and a wardrobe, and I want to release the songs rather than make demos I apologise for. I already own the laptop and a pair of closed back headphones I like. I…
Dynamic broadcast mic into a budget 2 in interface, gain at about 3 o'clock to get peaks around 6dBFS on spoken word. The take is fine but there's a constant hiss under everything that becomes obvious once I compress.…
Spare room about 3.5 by 4.5 metres, monitors on a desk against the short wall, currently nothing on the walls. I have around 200 and can build or buy. Everything I read says corners first, but the reflections off the…