Recording

Since emerging from the Liverpool music scene at the turn of the '80s, Ian Broudie has juggled parallel careers as an artist and a producer. He has a new solo disc in the shops, and with albums by the Coral and the Zutons riding high in the charts, his production services are in greater demand than ever.

Mike Hedges made his 1980 debut as a producer with one of The Cure's most enduring singles. 'A Forest' and the accompanying Seventeen Seconds album used his and the band's creativity in the studio to the full.

Sade's ice-cool vocals and sophisticated, jazz-tinged instrumentation defined a new kind of soul music for the '80s. Engineer and producer Mike Pela describes the organic recording process that produced one of the singer's most memorable hits from 1985.

After more than 20 years making uncompromising industrial records, pioneering German band Einstürzende Neubauten escaped a creative and financial crisis through an Internet project which allowed their fans to influence the recording of their latest album.

Fed up with being treated badly by spoilt divas, engineer Mark Nevers abandoned the country music establishment to start his own studio, and has made a name for himself on the 'other side' of Nashville.

Can you explain once and for all why the speed at which you burn a CD should make a difference to the quality of the audio?

I'm wanting to record a band all at the same time in the same room, and my main problem is that the drummer is much too loud...

Binaural recordings can sound amazing on headphones, but do not work very well on conventional stereo speakers. Can they be adapted more successfully for surround systems?

With 'Heroes', David Bowie pulled off the rare feat of having a major hit with a highly experimental piece of art-rock, which featured among other highlights live synth treatments from Brian Eno, pitched feedback from guitarist Robert Fripp, and a lead vocal with level-triggered ambience.

Nowadays, plenty of hit albums are recorded in bedroom studios — but Liam Howlett of the Prodigy has gone one better, by recording his latest in bed.

I am looking at buying a matched pair of SE Electronics SE1 mics for drum miking. Would the SE1s be suitable for 'over and under' miking of the snare? If not, could you offer any alternatives for this kind of configuration?

Some of the legendary names in engineering and production didn't just make great records — they also invented equipment and techniques we take for granted today.

The Beach Boys' SMiLE album was to have been the pinnacle of Brian Wilson's groundbreaking recording and production achievements — but it was never completed. This year, in an extraordinary tale of emotional drama, tape-vault archaeology and recording technology, Brian finished it, debuted it live, and then re-recorded it in the studio. SOS brings you the full story...

Recent years have seen a revival in back-to-basics recording techniques, but few engineers or producers have taken things as far as Jim Sutherland did with Edinburgh folk-pop band Aberfeldy...

When punk rock broke in 1976, the Sex Pistols caused panic in establishment Britain — and more than a few raised eyebrows in Wessex Studios, where Chris Thomas and Bill Price recorded the band's milestone EMI debut album.

Recording chamber music in Birmingham's Symphony Hall is not something you get to do every day, so SOS decided to make the most of the occasion by using two completely different setups, one based on professional equipment (manned by Hugh Robjohns) and one on project studio gear (operated by Paul White).

For his third album with Shania Twain, reclusive production legend Mutt Lange introduced an ambitious concept: different mixes and instrumentation for different markets. And as engineer Bob Bullock found, even the 'country' version left Nashville and its conventions pretty far behind...

The 18-month gestation period behind Michael Jackson's Dangerous album and its lead single 'Black Or White' saw '80s studio perfectionism taken to extremes — and despite their success, the experience helped to convince co-writer, engineer and co-producer Bill Bottrell that there had to be another way to make records!

Is there a way of using an external hardware compressor with a Roland VS1880 multitracker for mix compression?

Can you explain to me how data reduction in audio files is achieved? I understand the general idea behind data-compressed formats like MP3, but I have never seen an explanation of the actual process.

At the base of the inlay card to Michael Jackson's album Thriller, it claims that the album was recorded using the 'Acusonic Recording Process'. What is this?