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- How would you categorise your musical output?
- Frequent with Beats, Random with Lyrics
- What are your favourite pieces of studio hardware?
- m-audio Axiom 25 and shure sm58
- Which Digital Audio Workstation application do you use?
- cubase sx3 acid pro 4.0 and soundforge
- What's your favourite digital instrument?
- m-audio axiom 25
- Who are your musical/production influences or heroes?
- Micall Parknsun, Lewis Parker, Jehst, Bob Marley, Wayne Lo-Tek, Carriage, Tom Waits, Roots Manuva, Nick Cave, and anything on Ninja Tunes, Lowlife or Big Dadda records.
- Please tick box to permit us to quote your contributions in Music Tech Magazine.
- Yes
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Comment Wall (26 comments)
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like the tunes. break it down in particular. i'm also a ninja tune fan, favourites include Amon Tobin and Daedelus. do you sample from vinyl?
Thanks for the add and the tunes are great.
JAss Kazzin groove makes me smile ;)
I am getting a few tracks together and will have to update you when I get them uploaded and get your thoughts.
Keep up the creativity!
Be in touch
r
There are 3 key characteristics I look for...
1) VERY flat frequency response. For mastering you want completely uncoloured monitoring, so you hear EXACTLY what you're getting.
2) Low slew rate - i.e. it takes very little time for the voltage received at the input to be turned into signal at the transducer (techie word for the part of a speaker cabinet that turns voltage into air pressure fluctuations). This gives you accuracy not just in the frequency domain but the time domain as well.
3) Transducer synchronization... if your monitor cabinets have multiple speakers (e.g. HF horn/LF driver) then you want - no... NEED the HF and LF components of your input signal to be coming out of the respective transducers at the same time. This can be achieved using a cross-over with delay capabilities, but if this is done on-board (one of the nice things about the RSM-90s) then it's generally less dicking around with stuff that distracts you from the task at hand - i.e. your mix.
There's other decision points you can consider, but if you can get these three right you're off to a good start.
For the record, I don't bother mixing in 5.1 - there's no guarantee that your intended audience has that capability. I'd rather go with plain old stereo - it's easier to tune up the positioning of your speakers (5.1 has very specific requirements with respect to speaker distances from your ears, and the forward and rear placement of sattelite speakers) .
Finally, it's worth having as many different monitors as you can afford, including computer speakers, a decent hi-fi with an AUX in, a couple of different types of headphones (e.g. full-back audiophile ones, cheap portables, etc) and perhaps even a PA system. All those different types of speakers add colour to the sound of your mix and will highlight different mixing problems that might not be 100% apparent on your fancy monitors (once you get them). One of the most common monitor speakers for a long time was the Yamaha NS-10. Apparently the reason they were so popular is that they were sufficiently cheap and nasty to show up specific problems in some areas of a mix that other speakers didn't, without being so horrible that the overall mix was completely (in pro-audio terms) unrecognizable. ;)
There are some software tools that provide the ability to "tune up" your monitors to your control room accoustics (it won't work miracles, but will help get that last 5% of accuracy that might be missing without such tools) - I'll probably look into buying one of those tools in a few months time, as well as a couple of Tapco Thump 15A self-powered PA speakers. If I win the lottery I'll probably also get a couple of Mackie monitors and look into a pair of high-end KRKs.
Unfortunately, I know the theory fairly well but not having made my first billion dollars yet, I still have limitations on what I can afford to buy for myself.
Hope that helps?
Cheers
Jez
I had a listen to some more of your tracks... They're not quite my kind of music (I'm more a happy dancey house and lounge kinda guy when it comes to electro) but they seem pretty good from a technical perspective. I'm curious though - what kind of monitors are you using? There seems to be a bit of a trend in your mixdowns that I can't quite put my finger on - the only reason for it that I can think of is perhaps some sort of non-linear response in whatever you're using to monitor your mixdown and masters. (That's not a criticism though - as I said, it's more a "common thread" than something actually wrong).
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