DAWmageddon

Digital Audio Workstations Having grown up in the era of analogue audio and tape recorders, I have been learning about the ways of the studio in the current era. The biggest technological change has been the widespread adoption of Digital Audio Workstations, DAWs, as the centre of studios. They are undeniably powerful, versatile programs, creating

Two into One DOES go! Or How I built a Roland D-50 Synthesizer – Part 2

Building my D-50 My earlier post about the Roland D-50 synthesizer looked at the history and impact of this unique synthesizer. I had missed the one I owned and sold in 1994. Market prices for good condition D-50s are high so I had hit on a way to get one: buy two!!! I bought two

Two into one DOES go! Or How I built myself a Roland D-50 Synthesizer

Part 1: The Roland D-50 Certain instruments can be claimed to have defined an era in music. In the 1980s, the Japanese synthesizer manufacturer, Roland created a unique-sounding digital synthesizer that was destined to appear on countless hit records, soundtracks and genres. Musically and sonically, it became synonymous with its era. I’ll describe the impact

Back to the Studio, 27 Years Later…

I ran a recording studio in the 1980s. The studio was known for getting great performances and sounds from the musicians we recorded. I stepped away from it in 1994 to raise my children. Now, on my MSc Audio Production course, I stepped back into a recording environment to carry out our assignment as a

Five Albums that have stayed with me for Decades

I posted recently about Adele having taken a stand against the use of shuffling to protect the integrity and sequence of tracks on her albums so her listeners would hear her albums the way she intended. That caused me to think about the album as an art form, rather than just being a carrier bag

Conversations with a Dummy Head

A recent assignment for my MSc Audio Production course was to produce a podcast as part of a group, on an audio – related topic of our choice. I was fortunate to work with Des, Oliver and Khalid. We shared an interest in spatial audio, particularly in the form of binaural audio. Des had built

A quick link to my Immersive Audio Assignment

In my Immersive Audio assignment for my MSc Audio Production course at the University of Salford, I used DearVR Micro to create a binaural mix of an excerpt from a track I am working on: Noah’s Castle Rebuilt – Paul Grooveside – Binaural Headphones Mix for MSc. In the mix I placed a mixture of

360 Degree and Binaural Audio Technology

Binaural and immersive audio technology currently in use includes methods to record sound binaurally using microphones and ‘dummy head’ arrays designed for the purpose, and software plug-ins to enable audio mixing in binaural and 360 degree formats, such as DearVR and Facebook Audio Spatial Workstation. Replay of the formats is achieved using headphones for binaural

Adele – saviour of the album as an art form?

Artists and record producers invest a great deal of creativity, thought and work into the creation of their albums. The order of songs or instrumentals on an album is an important element of the flow and progression of the musical and narrative themes the artist is communicating. In many ways, an album tells a story

Revelations in Audio: Stereo Sound on Loudspeakers and in Headphones vs Binaural Audio

I’ve always preferred to listen to recorded music on speakers. I’ve had high quality hi-fi systems since I was 15, including a superb pair of loudspeakers I built myself from a Wilmslow Audio kit design. For me, music reproduced through a quality system via loudspeakers, positioned carefully in a dedicated listening room, sounds natural and