r/audioengineering

I’m considering a new kick drum/bass mic, and the sE electronics V-Kick is on the list. I know that microphone EQ switches that cut low frequencies can increase headroom, but I’m wondering if EQ switches for changing tonal characteristics generally, like on the V-Kick, impart any distinct tonal difference on the captured sound compared to EQing it afterward in a DAW. Is it entirely a matter of convenience dialing in a sound, or is having the EQ done by circuitry within the mic itself, closer to the raw capturing of the sound, somehow advantageous to doing the exact same EQ adjustments during post-processing?

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Keen to know what we think regarding bouncing a track straight after a session & sending it to the artist? Personally I prefer not to, I find an artist can stew on a song for too long if they have a desk bounce + think it’s more productive for them to wait for the 1st mix.

What do we reckon??

I’m trying to compile examples of songs after auto-tune and pitch correction became widely accessible and popular that do not use any sort of pitch correction and this is confirmed. If you know any examples it would be super helpful, thank you!

EDIT: to be clear I don’t mean just autotune I mean any sort of pitch correction.

I can't seem to find any decent denoiser that separates voice from background sound I tried bertom and it makes tracks super muddy, any suggestions pls

Hey guys! Been recently getting back into CDs and I wanted to ask the collectors in here about what players to buy from an engineer’s perspective. I absolutely won’t go near any audiophile’s advice being an engineer myself so I was curious as to what is good today in the market without any snake oil.

Also in termes of specs, what should I be paying attention to? There’s a lot of fancy wording like “24 bit dac” and “768 kHz Clock Input” that it’s impossible to decipher whether it’s beneficial stuff or pure marketing.

Thanks!

Been listening to some of the pop country side of things as of late, not entirely sure why or how it started, but here we are, and I'm real curious about the editing and mixing processes down there. I know the vocals are completely tuned to hell, I can hear the artifacts in Morgan Wallens voice, to give one example. Its well established lots of those guys can't sing for shit, but what of the drums? I know lots of it is triggers, but do they even bother recording the drums at all anymore? I remember the story of Chris Stapletons cover of Tennessee whiskey, where the drum booth door was opened and it wasn't meant to be recorded etc etc, but was good so they kept it, but even those drums don't sound real. I can hear a bit of room in the snare, but not really in anything else. Less than I'd expect had I never heard the song just heard that story. And guitars, do they quantize the shit out of those too? Drums sure, bass yeah, sometimes they do. But some of these guitar strumming patterns are so locked in, are we seriously doing that? Morgan Wallens "I'm the problem" as one example, the intro is fucked. Or Dylan Scott "I hate whiskey". I'm aware of surgically comping guitar chords together to make a progression sound better, (i don't do it but a professor at berklee was adamant we should) but quantizing a fucking finger pick pattern? Not really sure how I ended up writing such a novel. I only really wanted to come here and ask if anybody here ever worked on a country record in nashville as of late, or where ever that stuff ends up being mixed if not there, and could tell me whats going on. Guitarists all use amp modelers, are the drums all programmed now too in superior or something?

Music with distorted guitars and live drums seems to have a pretty different overall frequency distribution than most other popular genres of music. The amount of upper mids and top end I hear in loud rock/metal/shoegaze productions would definitely be considered harsh in any other genre.

For music that’s supposed to be aggressive like this, it seems like you almost need a certain degree of harshness to make sure the song doesn’t sound lifeless, but it’s a fine line. The rock mixes I consider the best always have some harsh cymbals/guitar, but they fit well into the song and don’t catch my ear enough to be fatiguing.

What strategies do you guys use to achieve this? How do you know when your upper mids/top end are right? No wrong answers, except for telling me to use soothe. That plugin is good but can kill a rock mix very quickly.

What’s the best spot where I can learn mixing/mastering from start to finish. I struggle with a song that is a basic rock band (bass guitar, two guitars, drums, and vocals) and am absolutely sick of trying to fix a problem for 2+ hours. I will pay money. Than you ahead of time guys.

For example, in a movie or TV show there can be a scene where a character is yelling but it doesn't sound as loud as somebody else just talking normally so you think the threshold for the yelling would be lower/quieter thresholdwise. So you throw the sound track into a DAW like Reaper but then you see that the threshold is the same between the 2 or can be even lower for the person talking normally. But how does does that make sense? How come the person yelling sound quieter but have the same or lower threshold?

(Highpass at 15hz, sorry forgit to add that)

I assume some weird phase nonsense happens below the fundamental of the kick? Like the kick is sitting at -1 db, sounding distorted as shit. Flick on the eq, push to 0 db, completely fine.

The weirdest part is these are toolroom samples I'm using... from their percussive tech house pack. Weird

I'm trying to find out what computer storage solutions would be best for a home studio that is running out of SSD space. I have 6.5Tb (multiple SSD's) but my dedicated sample library SSD is already over flowing and I'm having to install new libraries on different drives.

I was thinking about a NAS drive type solution, but is there anything I need to consider audio-wise?

Thanks

*This post keeps getting deleted because autobot mod thinks I'm asking for purchasing advice. I'm not asking for a specific product, just general advice.

I work with my schools sports media department as a sportscaster, and noticed how other schools in our conference, despite being on the same media deal and thus using the same production software (vMix), get much better commentary quality. I plan on meeting with my boss sometime next week to pore through vMix and see what audio settings we can tweak to match that quality on our end, and I was wondering if anyone here had some reccomendations for audio plugins I could use. Pretty certain vMix supports VST, so if you have a VST to recc let me know!

Our current setup (if I remember correct) is 1-2 Audio-Technica BPHS1 headsets for commentary run through a Behringer Q802USB mixer. We tune the EQ settings on the mixer and pipe that into vMix with no additional "alterations" to the sound besides changing levels. From what I have googled so far, the first thing it seems I should go after is a compressor, but I'm not sure what else we could use. Not looking for any specific plugin, just the type of plugins I should go for

Thinking about setting up a 5U 10" rack to stack four half rack pre-amps and power. I admit this is kind of goofy, but I was curious if anyone had put something like this together. If any of you have, I'd like to hear how it went. I think most folks just use 500 series or get the shelves to put two half rack units into a 19" space.

I'm trying to understand exactly how sends work in FL Studio.

For example, let's say I have a vocal on Insert 1 with an EQ, compressor, saturation, etc. Then I route/send that vocal to Insert 2, where I put a reverb for parallel processing.

My question is: what exactly is being sent to Insert 2?

Does the send receive the vocal after all the effects on Insert 1, meaning the reverb is processing the already EQ'd/compressed/saturated vocal?

Or does it receive the original signal before the effects on Insert 1?

And if the send is taken from a specific point in the signal chain, is there a way to change that point? For example, can I choose whether the send receives the signal before or after the plugins on the original channel? Is there a way in FL Studio to make a send pre-effects or post-effects?

Basically, I'm trying to understand exactly where in the signal flow the send is taken from in FL Studio, and whether I have any control over this.

I know this might be obvious, but I want to understand the signal flow properly rather than just blindly using sends.

I've been interested in becoming an audio engineer and have been trying to learn pro tools for the past few weeks. I'm not sure what the issue is but I just cannot retain the information the tutorials I am watching gives me. It feels like what I'm doing isn't correct, nothing works the way I want it to, and some things just go through one ear and out the other. I've never used a DAW in my life so that could be a problem or maybe I'm just not good enough or have aptitude to use something like pro tools. I feel lost, a bit insecure, and feel like just giving up. Just wanted to vent and also ask how others learned it in the hopes maybe something can finally click with me.

I'm on a free trial of pro tools intro, ver 2026.4.1 if it helps

I’m using an Apollo 8 as the front end for my studio, with its outputs and inputs connected to a patchbay so I can route signals through external analog gear like an LA-2A, Pultec, JHS Colour Box and pedals.

For vocals, one possible path is:
Mic → Apollo pre/48V → D/A out → analog hardware → Apollo A/D return → DAW

Compared with recording straight into the Apollo, does that extra D/A → hardware → A/D loop make the recorded track land slightly late on the timeline? Is there any other important reason not to do this?

Mainly wondering:
- Is the delay usually negligible for a single vocal track?
- Can this be compensated automatically, or do people just measure the offset and nudge the return?

I’m also deciding whether my synths should hit the patchbay before the Apollo for the same reason.

Relevant setup:
- Apollo 8
- Behringer PX3000 patchbay
- LA-2A, Pultec-style EQ
- JHS Colour Box + a few pedals
- Logic Pro X / UAD Console