3 Studio MYTHS vs TRUTHS 

Thank goodness I am not as obsessed as some of you guys. I set my suff up and really have not changed much in 15 years but what I am obsessed with is practicing, projects and recording, that's it.

I like that story of how an engineer was reprimanded by Brian Eno when he walked in and caught the engineer meticulously EQing and treating to outboard every single soloed channel one at a time to make sure that each sound was the best it could possibly be and he was told good sounds in isolation often don’t make good sounds together and instead advised the engineer to do all the same work to each channel but not solo them! I’ve taken to doing this many years ago -even in live performances where I sometimes have had to put up with musicians who don’t want to sound check like this & only want to sound check one vocal at a time solo; endless BamBam on the snare drum followed by endless Bam Bam Bam on the kick drum etc because “that’s how the pros do it & that’s what were used to“ but rarely ever complain about the sound afterwards AND more importantly neither does the audience because they’re the most important thing… sure if no one is going to ever hear stuff and you don’t want them to then you can record it however you want & whatever way you want because it doesn’t matter however if there’s a chance that it ever gets heard by someone it’ll be by someone who doesn’t care about all this tech crap cos they’ll only want to know if they like WHAT they hear not HOW they hear it

And yes, your values on what matters are so true. I needed reminding. Especially right now. Thanks again brother.

These are all great points and I like to illustrate them visually because people who make these kind of mistakes seem to have difficulty “thinking in terms of sound“ but are very open to analogies and examples that involve the visual arts The worlds best photograph that is ever possible to take of ME is not even remotely as interesting as a crappy photograph of Marilyn Monroe… Think about it! I called this “the Zapruda Effect“ because the footage of JFK‘s assassination is awful quality. Zapruda had to rely on a lady in front of him crouched in an unnatural position to be a “tripod“ because he didn’t have one; the Sun was in his eyes; the composition is SO bad that the only interesting bits (the assassination itself!) Is down one little tiny sliver at the bottom of the frame and there’s whole swathes of nothing above it however it’s a fascinating document that’s been seen many many times & will continue to fascinate simply because it’s the best available The moral to this is performance is everything if you have a well recorded poor quality performance people will hear how bad it is but if you have a poorly recorded wonderful performance everyone will love it because of most people are not audio engineers!

I agree the experience lead me to this unspoken rule.. thank you for sharing this knowlege and myth breaker

Chris, great advice! Thank you.

Most excellent - great information - intelligent - well presented - very good production values for the video -

"the sound is disconnected to the performance" - excellent advice, thank you for the share

I could not agree more about the vibe and performance being the most important part of getting a GREAT recording. Most listeners care more about the vibe of a song than all the technical garbage that they care nothing about.

11:14 That's great! You sum it up very well!

Some of you might’ve heard of a fairly popular beat combo from the 60s and 70s called the Beatles..? They didn’t do too badly with their mono drums and hybrid transistor amps 😂👍

This is a great reminder! Thanks Chris! (Are those trumpet lips?)

Well said, sir.

Love your logic brother. Subcribed. Thanks!

RTA Mic is used Plus the Dynamic to TUNE a ROOM

@point 1: Sonarworks SoundID Reference does wonders!

hi wich model of dbx drive rack ? the photo is different than the official dbx models on their website...Don't you like alternatiives as ARC of iK Multimedia or Sonarworks as well ?

All right on!

Producers of current main stream pop music: Take notes!

You're basically saying if you don't put you're emotions into a song it won't be good, I agree that's why when I make my instrumentals they come from the way I felt that day.

Tha k really need this been depressed alot lately. Sometimes when over doit you forget these things

How many times times did he say ‘vibe?’

i agree with you on everything, except the tone part - even though i agree even there that it matters only to the degree that the player works with, and the end result - which is all that matters - nails the vibe, the mood, the character and the emotion of the song. but in the end, everything a record is is sound. so getting a good instrument sound - vibe and character wise, not just technically, which is a basic requirement, but, by itself, means nothing - is essential. it's absolutely true that a lifeless, mechanical performance can make the tone useless, and a great performance with not that great a tone can sound better. but a good performance with the wrong tone for it will detract so much. i see it the other way around. the tone needs to be adapted to the performance - to the emotion you feel while playing - not the performance to the tone. so good tone means tone adapted to the playing, not a good performance means playing adapted to the tone. maybe it's a chicken - egg kind of thing, but technology needs to serve you, not you the technology. however good or bad you are as a player, good tone - meaning fitting the song and the playing - can save you, and bad tone can bury you - meaning suck the life out of the part. i'm talking about the tone conception, the timbre, the overtones, and the effects that you use - all those mean vibe, character, and emotion in themselves, before you even chain together a lick, a riff, or a theme. this is how you know you've got good tone, not just using a "good amp miked well" - that's a mindset i don't understand, and it comes from people for whom tone is just plugging into a distorted amp, and a delay is just "something to make it sound bigger", or a chorus "something to make it sound thicker" - meaning they approach effects only as a technical description. delay is part of the instrument, not just an addition. so is chorus, so is everything. so this is how you know you've got good tone: you just hit a note, a chord, an arpeggio. if it doesn't instantly give you the mood of the recording - meaning the atmosphere and the energy - if it doesn't engage, and it doesn't make you go "whoaa", you don't have good tone. it's as simple as that. it doesn't matter how "correct" it is, and how many thousands of dollars it cost, if it doesn't. tone doesn't necessarily have to mean thousands of dollars, i agree with you on this one, too. but how many performances are just, for instance, bar long power chords under the main theme, and they blow you up, and suck you into the mood, and so on? that's because of the tone - the beauty of it, not the technical "perfection" which, again, means nothing by itslef - and so many players mistake that for "tone" - not because of the "magic strum". of course you have to not catch your fingers in the strings, play with some conviction, but that done, the difference in energy and mood is purely tone. so it's a mix, where one needs to go with the other. but tone means the actual sound of your instrument - an electric guitar is a blank, by itself, you have to create it as an instrument, if you don't it doesn't exist - not just a "good capture". cause the clean guitar on "hey you" is not the same instrument as the rhythm guitar on "lithium". so what instrument are you playing? that's essential, i would say. and that's what i mean by tone, not just "well captured". that's why people sound so bad these days, because the very definition of "tone" is skewed. it's the same phenomenon we see in everything, talentless people spend a lot of money, and then follow all the "correct" steps, with no personal input, direction or calling, and without creating a instrument - and that's "tone". it's not.

Just get used to your speakers and listen to a lot of other songs and then reference to other songs and listen to the song on other headphones. I fully believe you don’t need a perfect room.

Where is Graham?

I know for a fact it can’t be fixed in the edit, I just gave a bad singing voice.

You can have a million dollar Studio Gear in Equipment but you have to Talent that isn't in the zone it's not worth recording it. As an engineer with humility... talk to the Talent.. ask them to do their homework and come again

hello I have been fighting for a long time to produce but due to the cloud 9 fault all my sounds in my software have been swapped and I have had so much peg though I want s 4 years now also due to their fault I did their bacteria at medicine there she has got pulmonary fibrosis am almost coughing and am also stopped to be able to go to work my MacBook also did their 4 processes on the motherboard and let me steal stuff I'm boy guilt was huge that's meaning 2015 en that 1 happened toe mij

I’m thinkin Chris must be related to Leo Mizzoni

The last 2 are very band/ genre dependant. Lets say you are working with a hard rock band going for an Avenged Sevenfold or Disturbed kind of sound, and the musicians are....well....sub par. As an audio engineer, my job is not to deliver that band an "honest representation of their sound", they are paying me to make them sound like Disturbed, and with the correct drum edit/ oversample and the right DSP guitar tone/ edit, I can absolutely get their track 90% of the way there, because that genre is very "over produced" sounding in the first place. Would it have been better/ easier on me if they were great musicians? Sure! absolutelly, and yes, there is a "flavor" that comes from great musicians that are all tight, natural, and locked in...but some genres don't call for the sound. The same would go for a lot of pop-esque genres where the band is present but really the samples are king. Now if we are talking about some Nashville style singer-songwriter/ country? Then yes, I 100% subscribe to everything you are saying. Maybe im just calloused at this point working in the industry full time as a local studio owner for the past 8 years, but ive worked with alotttttt of musicians who were far from "studio tight" and made them sound pretty darn great.