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Audio Basics
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Jun 1, 2009,
By Howard Jonathan Fredrics
Picture yourself dining in a large cave. As you enjoy your meal in the spacious stone surroundings, a diner sitting at the opposite end of the cave drops a fork. Rather than simply hearing a single soft ping coming from the direction of the other person, you hear several distinct pings in rapid succession that echo from various directions....
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Jun 1, 2009,
By Scott Wilkinson
During the past 15 years, many fundamental music-technology concepts have been explained in “Square One” (originally titled “From the Top”). In 1997 EM technical editor Scott Wilkinson combined many of those columns into a comprehensive primer titled Anatomy of a Home Studio: How Everything Really Works, from Microphones to MIDI, >published by EMBooks, an imprint of Artistpro.com (www.artistpro.com)....
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Feb 1, 2009,
By Brian Smithers
EM Tutorial on Avoid or correct sonic problems like ground loops, clipping, clocking errors, jitter, and sample-rate conversion artifacts...
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Jan 1, 2009,
By Jim Aikin
How to interpret the waveform display in an audio editing program....
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Dec 1, 2008,
By Brian Smithers
Linear phase filters introduce phase shift in a signal, but the phase shift is proportional to the frequency....
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Aug 1, 2008,
By Brian Smithers
Is the saying goes, stuff happens. No matter how hard we try to avoid it, a steady chain of events works to degrade every recording we make (see Fig....
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Jun 1, 2008,
By Brian Smithers
What is it about dither that inspires so much trepidation among digital musicians? The mere mention of the word brings looks of disquietude normally reserved...
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Mar 1, 2008,
By Dave Simons
One of the secrets to recording success is to avoid doing the usual thing, and rethinking your approach to stereo placement is a great place to start....
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Dec 1, 2007,
By Brian Smithers
At the most basic level, a musician controls three elements: pitch, time, and timbre....
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Nov 1, 2007,
By Larry the O
It's been said that the human voice is the most important source for recording or amplification....
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Aug 1, 2007,
By Brian Smithers
Simply put, distortion is any change to a signal other than a simple gain change or delay. Given that definition, one could reasonably look at compression and equalization as forms of distortion, but it’s probably more useful to take them at face value and look for any unintended consequences as distortion. For example, many EQ circuits change the phase of filtered frequencies relative to unfiltered frequencies—linear phase equalizers are designed to avoid this phase distortion....
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Jul 1, 2007,
By Vijith Assar
If you've ever tried to conserve disk space by archiving old recording projects, you probably know that standard compression schemes like ZIP and RAR...
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Mar 1, 2007,
By Jim Aikin
The audio input/output (I/O) that's built into your computer is fine for playing games and maybe for watching movies. But once you begin to produce your...
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Jan 1, 2007,
By Jim Aikin
In the late 1980s, sample-based synthesis was the premier technology that keyboardists used to produce a wide range of realistic sounds. Today, the synthesist...
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Dec 1, 2006,
By Jim Aikin
Until the late 1970s, synthesizers were used primarily to create new and unusual types of sounds. But by 1980, keyboard players were clamoring for synths...
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Nov 1, 2006,
By Brian Smithers
As the term implies, an electronic musician depends on electrical devices to produce, capture, manipulate, and deliver musical ideas. At some point, the...
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Sep 1, 2006,
By Mark Ballora
One thing that desktop musicians often struggle with is the distinction between creative and technical terms. An example is the musical term pitch as...
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Apr 1, 2006,
By Brian Smithers
Few things can get a room full of engineers into a heated debate as quickly as the subject of monitors. Which are the best? Should they be extremely accurate...
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Mar 1, 2006,
By Mark Ballora
We've all heard it: If you want to do a job right, use the right tool for the job. If your job is to record something, your main tool is the microphone....
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Feb 1, 2006,
By Brian Smithers
One of the most-commonly misunderstood aspects of surround monitoring is the relationship between the low-frequency effects (LFE) channel and the subwoofer....
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Nov 1, 2005,
By Brian Smithers
There's no escaping surround sound these days. Music CDs are still being produced in stereo, but the same does not hold true for movies, DVDs, and games....
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Jun 1, 2005,
By Mark Ballora
Mastering has become a critical step in producing a CD or DVD almost as important as tracking and mixing. Much of this final step involves tweaking various...
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Mar 1, 2005,
By Brian Smithers
As every musician knows, pitch and time go hand in hand if you speed up the playback of a tape machine, the song's tempo will increase, and its pitch...
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Jan 1, 2005,
By Mark Ballora
Ever wonder what a guitar string and a microwave oven have in common? Both work with periodic, repeating waves. Tickle them with the right frequencies,...
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Nov 1, 2004,
By Mark Ballora
Portable music players are a wonder to behold. Each new compression format sounds better than the last, and the file sizes keep getting smaller. What's...
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Bouncing Off Walls
Decibels Demystified, Part 1
Square One: Audio Poltergeists
Square One: Catch a Wave
Square One: In Phase
Square One: Snap, Crackle, Pop
Square One: All in a Dither
Square One: Stereo Creativity
Square One: The Sculptor's Tool
Square One: Loud and Clear
Sonic Mayhem
Making the Least of It
Movin' On Up
All Together Now
Get Real
A Change Is Gonna Come
Pitch Vs. Frequency
Absolutely Sound
Vive la Différence
How Low Can You Go?
Covering All the Angles
Some Like It Hot
A Stitch in Time
Standing Tall
Can You Believe Your Ears?