Ron McMaster on Mastering for Vinyl

The video below is especially interesting to me as I've actually met Ron McMaster and got the chance to tour his studio while attending SAE in Los Angeles. 

I was standing in his room thinking about all of the creative musical works his hands had touched, and will touch for that matter.  This all of course ran through my head after I had the time to scoop my jaw up off the floor.  If you think about it, Ron McMaster has been influencing the sound of some of the greatest records ever released for the past 30 years.  That is something that few people can say, Ron represents a dying sonic art, big ups to Capitol for producing and sharing this excellent video.

In this video Ron takes you through his studio following the signal flow and gives us a nice little run down of the equipment and techniques he puts to work when cutting lacquer for it's eventual transformation to a vinyl record.  If you don't know what a vinyl record is please never read my blog again... ever.  Oh yeah, keep your ears open for the part where Ron talks about the direct to disk recording they used to do... Very cool.

I hope you all enjoy this little bit as much as I do.  Make sure you watch the video all the way through, at the end Ron gives you a bit of history behind his custom mastering console.



If you'd like to know more about Ron and his work at Capitol check out his Bio at the Capitol website. As always, thanks for reading and happy geeking!


All the best,

Nick

KRK RP10-3 Demos

West LA Music in Southern California has just announced that they have a pair of the brand new KRK RP10-3 Studio Monitors available for listening demos in their show room. These monitors aren't even for sale yet and already they've generated a lot of buzz amongst the pro-sumer audio market. It's not doubt West LA is taking full advantage of having the only pair in LA at the moment. The RP10-3's are the latest addition from KRK to their Rokit line of studio monitors. My personal opinion of most KRK Rokit speakers I've heard is that they are all quite bass heavy, especially if they're not on a properly isolated speaker stand. However, this works for some people and no one can argue with the popularity of the brand, they're just not for me. I don't write this blog for myself though, it's for all of you, the people that read it. It would be foolish of me to assume that a great deal of you wouldn't be interested in these.

If you'd like to put these bass beasts through their paces go check them out over at West LA Music this Sat. Sun. & Mon. (9/17-9/19) they're located at 11345 Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles. Consider the following a warning though, chances are you'll likely fall in love with some other piece of gear inside West LA and completely forget about the KRK's. That's ok though, you'll know when you've found the right tools to spend your hard earned money on. The bottom line... If you're looking for the RP10-3's or any piece of gear for that matter, head over to West LA Music, they're not Guitar Center. The selection coupled with the passionate and professional staff will make you quite aware of this fact almost instantaneously. As always, thanks for reading and happy geeking!

Best,

Nick

Ableton Shortcuts Hotkeys and Tips

Have you ever seen a seasoned producer or engineer rip apart a DAW without hardly touching the mouse?  If you haven't it's something to be enjoyed before you pass this part of the universe on.  However, instead of watching someone else, you could always just teach yourself.  With a bit of good old fashioned brain memory fueled by the right study material you too can be a hot key champion.  Below is a list of shortcuts pulled from a post over at the Ableton Forums authored by the user autogen.  I thought they would be useful to all of you as there is also quite a bit of other tips aside from just the hotkeys.  Check them out, I'm willing to bet they will make your workflow quite a bit more efficient once memorized.

Elysia's Niveau Free Filter

The German audio processing powerhouse Elysia has released a free filter plug-in for the world to go wild on. The Niveau Filter from Elysia comes from Elysia's Mpressor's EQ/filter section. Niveau is essentially dumb proof; providing two knobs for frequency selection, and tweaking to taste. 

It works like this...  First you select the frequency you'd like as your center point for the filters.  For frequencies over 2,200Hz use the "Freq x10" button to multiple the frequency selection knob's corresponding frequencies by a factor of 10.  Next, turn the EQ gain pot clockwise to increase low frequencies whilst simultaneously boosting the high end.  If you turn the EQ gain knob counter-clockwise the effect will be just the opposite.

As you can see from the above curves, Niveau's boosts and cuts are smooth and equal throughout the spectrum.  Just choose the center frequency and adjust the EQ gain knob for you preferred balance of low end and treble.  It really is that simple.  Elysia describes it as working like a balance scale, I find this to be a great way of putting what it does into the simplest of terms.  I can't really think of any easier way to say it as a matter of fact.  If you're still confused as to how it does what it does just download Niveau and put it to work!  When a traditional high and low pass aren't enough and a parametric EQ is too much just reach for the Niveau, you'll be surprised what this little thing can do. Oh yeah... IT'S FREE!!!

Niveau can be downloaded for free from Elysia's website.  Thanks for reading and happy geeking!

All the best,


Nick

DMG Audio Updates EQuality

DMG Audio has released a new updated version of their now well revered EQuality digital EQ plug-in. The first version was fantastic, a bit of a cpu hog depending on settings but none the less a fantastically transparent and well balanced EQ. When working with dance music which usually has every last bit of sonic life squeezed out of it an EQ that can make clear and precise gain adjustments is more than welcomed. I use EQuality on nearly every track I master and have no plans of getting rid of it anytime soon. DMG has also updated their compressor plug-in by the name of Compassion. I haven't put Compassion through its paces yet but if it's anything like EQuality I'm sure to be in for a treat. Below you'll find a rundown of the changes made to version 1.15 of EQuality and version 1.04 of Compassion. As always, thanks for reading and happy geeking!

Changes made to Ver. 1.15 of DMG Audio's EQuality:
-CPU Usage Improvements.
-Added ProTools metering support.
-Fix M/S / bypass latency for non-8k IR length.
-Added analyzer outlined/filled/both pref.

Changes made to ver. 1.04 of DMG Audio's Compassion:
-Fixed OSX 10.4 support.
-Fixed crash in wavelab.
-Fix AU resize.
-Fix bug whereby LP-split settings were not recalled correctly.
-Enable RTAS Automation.
-Dezipper control changes.
-Added menu to allow tabbing between advanced pages (click page-name).
-Fixed Opto-mod HPF frequency.
-Added ProTools metering support.

If you're not familiar with DMG or their plug-ins check them out at their website.

All the best,

Nick