Sage Audio Articles

Home Recording Academy: Great Vocals in a Home Recording Studio (Part 1)

Tips for capturing great vocals in a home recording studio. Part 1 in a series of articles on improving your vocal tracks. In this part of the series there are six different tips that will help give you the best home studio vocal sound. We go over finding the best microphone, use of a good preamp, use of a pop filter, your recording environment, microphone placement, and recording numerous tracks.

Inside the Recording Studio: ‘The Hobbit’ and Dolby Atmos

‘The Hobbit’ is one of the first movies to be released with the new Dolby Atmos surround sound technology. The Dolby Atmos technology is supposed to deliver a more natural and realistic sound field to the audience, says Dolby. They also say it is the “most significant development in audio since the arrival of surround sound.”

Home Recording Academy: Great Vocals in a Home Recording Studio (Part 2)

Tips for capturing great vocals in a home recording studio. Part 2 in a series of articles on improving your vocal tracks. In this part we will be going over the best recording environment possible to record numerous takes. It will mention the best physical setup, and editing vocals from comping vocals to punching in vocals.

AC/DC Gives in to iTunes. Will Other Holdouts Follow?

AC/DC releases its music on iTunes for the first time. This Australian rock band was one of the last remaining superstars to hold out against the digital music service, iTunes. AC/DC’s album Live at River Plate is their first live album release in 20 years and it coincides with them releasing their music on Apple iTunes digital music service. There aren’t too many others holding out to the digital music service but to mention a few big names would be Tool, Garth Brooks, and Def Leppard.

Emerging Studio Technology: 133rd Annual AES Conference

New products this week come from the 2012 AES Conference and include software by SoundToys and hardware by Slate. Additionally, Ableton Live 9 and Ableton Push are announced. Ableton is known for having great recording software with a precise focus on recording loops. Another most talked about products was Slate Raven. Slate Raven is a 46” touchscreen that includes all of the controls of a standard mixing console.

Chromatik and Bruno Mars Attempt to Revolutionize Music Practice

Chromatik is a newly launched app that attempts to aid music practice and learning with mobile collaboration. Bruno Mars signed on as an investor and the band GroupLove partnered with the company. UCLA, L.A. School districts, K-12 and other higher education institutions have started to use the free app.

Home Recording Academy: How to Record an Acoustic Guitar

Tips for recording an acoustic guitar in a home recording studio. We will go over the best microphone to record acoustic guitars, finding the right microphone placement and also touch base with mixing as well. Many times in studios when using one mic it will be about 6”-12” away from the guitar. It will also be pointed slightly down directly at the spot that the neck of the guitar meets the body.

Emerging Studio Technology: Radial Tossover, MicroAC, Marshall Major 50 FX

Sage Audio’s ongoing new mastering studio technology series looks at three new products: Radial Tossover, MicroAC and Marshall Major 50 FX headphones. The Tossover allows you to process the lows and the highs of an audio signal separately. MicroAC is an app that is only available for Mac OS and it allows you to convert batch audio files quickly and easily. Marshall Major 50 FX headphones have punchy lows, clear mid-tones and higher highs.

Rolling Stones and WWE Team Up For Pay-Per-View Stream of Concert

What do the Rolling Stones have in common with professional wrestling? The Rolling Stones get into the online streaming business. The group's December 15 Newark 50th Anniversary show will be available on a pay-per-view basis. People who purchase an online stream will have the option to watch the show on their tablets and smartphones along with the ability to pause and rewind the performance as well.

Home Recording Academy: Glossary of Home Studio Terms N-Z

Glossary of home studio terminology from N-Z. Includes technical terms as well as engineering terms with less concrete definitions. In this Home Recording Academy we will touch base with noise, normalizing, overdubbing, producer, punch in, punchy, reverb, ribbon microphone, sharp, sibilance and signal to noise ratio, just to name a few.

Home Recording Academy: The Best Studio Monitors

How to choose the best studio monitors for home recording. You will have to find a solid guideline that will meet your budget without compromising the quality of the studio gear you choose. Studio monitors is one area you shouldn't cut corners trying to save money on your budget. Normally the best monitors have a flat frequency response, and they equally represent all of the frequencies the human ear can hear.

Mythbusters Test the Frequency of Fear

On the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters,” Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman test to see if there is truth to the urban legend of the “fear frequency.” During this test in the setup they used a group of nine Meyer Sound 11000-LFC low-frequency control element speakers that produce around 40,000 watts of power. The subjects were in a cabin spread out in groups amongst four other cabins and one of the cabins had the speakers behind it producing the alleged fear note.

Inside the Recording Studio: Deerhoof, Xylos, Meek is Murder

Go inside the recording studio in videos from Deerhoof, Xylos and Meek is Murder. Deerhoof did something unique in this video by taking this project outside of their usual producing and engineering team and going to Water Music Recording Studios. In Xylos’s video we found it very riveting to hear about their approach to audio recording in general. Meek is Murder is a metal band and they provided a YouTube video that has documentation of the recording.

Order Taylor Swift’s Album from Papa John's (and other Music Industry Marketing Strategies)

To promote her new album ‘Red,’ Taylor Swift’s record company, Big Machine, have employed a variety of different marketing strategies. To start off they teamed up with Papa John’s so that whenever you ordered a pizza, you could also order Red. So instead of going in a store or even purchasing it online you can buy a pizza from Papa’s John’s, order the cd and you can have a physical copy delivered to your doorstep that same day. Taylor Swift even has her very own limited edition Keds red shoes.

Home Recording Academy: Glossary of Home Studio Terms A-M

A glossary of home recording studio terms from A through M. This can be very helpful for even the novice home recording engineers to help give you some knowledge of the industry that we thought would be helpful. To list off a few of the terms mentioned we have airy, audio spectrum, compressor, condenser microphone, decibel, digital audio workstation, low-fi, and muddy.