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JBL 305P MkII Review | Entry-Level Monitors
Entry-level monitors like the JBL 305P MkII combine affordability and sound quality. 5″ speakers like these are the most popular size for home studios—they have more than enough volume and plenty of low-end extension. We’ll run down the specs in…
Scale Degrees: What Are They and Why Do They Matter in the Studio
Engineers and producers can always benefit from understanding the basics of music theory. Knowing enough of the “language of music” to get by is helpful for communicating effectively with session musicians, for example. Having the ear is most important, but…
5 Quick Saturation Mixing Tricks
The 5 Best Shotgun Microphones for Your Home Studio
The shotgun mic is a film/TV industry staple for capturing extremely directional audio with little ambient noise. We’ll cover a few of the top shotgun microphones around if you’re looking to pick one up for your personal collection. What Is…
Arturia Pigments 3 Review: Is It Worth It?
For over two decades, Arturia has been at the forefront of virtual instruments. Best known for their software recreations of classic hardware synthesizers, Pigments is Arturia’s first original soft synth. It debuted as recently as 2018, and has seen two…
What Is a DSP and What Does It Do for Music?
DSP is a concept that gets thrown around a lot in audio, so it’s important to understand just how integral it is to the modern music production process. What Is a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Firstly, DSP can stand for…
Fletcher-Munson Curve Explained: Using Equal-Loudness Contour to Mix
Human hearing is a weird and wonderful thing. The branch of psychophysics concerned with sound perception is psychoacoustics, and it explains a lot about why we hear the way we do. As mix engineers we need to become familiar with…
Top 10 Recording Tips
How to Write a Catchy Chorus | Essential Ingredients
There’s a lot of pressure on songwriters when it comes to creating the grand hook. Understanding how to write a chorus that listeners can sing along and identify with is a huge undertaking. The chorus is the most important part…
Exploring The Brooklyn Recording Paradise Studio: Studio Tour
Ableton Push 2 Review: An All-in-One MIDI Controller
Ableton launched the Push controller in collaboration with AKAI back in 2013. Designed to function inside Ableton Live software, it was an innovative device meant to be treated like an instrument rather than an average MIDI controller. The company soon…
Recording to Mixing – ‘Come Together’ by The Beatles
Plugin Boutique Scaler 2 Review
Scaler 2 is one of many compositional aids and chord generating plugins currently available. It makes sense; software helps with everything else related to recording music—why not give us a push at the actual songwriting stage? We’ll see how Plugin…
Overloud Voice Review: The Ultimate One-Stop Vocal Production Plugin?
Ever wondered how the world’s top engineers craft award-winning vocals? Everyone has their own approach and techniques, but many of the same kinds of effects go into vocal chains on each and every mix, across genres and from mixer to…
Strymon Iridium Review | Portable Tone On the Go
Strymon has been making top-quality pedals in California since 2009. Many guitarists know them by their acclaimed reverb and delay units—the Big Sky and Time Line, respectively—which effectively raised the bar for time-based effect pedals. Last year, Strymon entered the…