Recording

I have a five-piece drum kit with the three standard cymbals. I am trying to get the best sound possible on a very small...

Everyone knows how much a classy vocal sound can add to any recording, but achieving this in the studio can seem something of a black art, so this month we demystify the recording, processing, and mixing techniques required to produce professional results.

The Brothers In Arms album turned Dire Straits into one of the biggest-selling bands of all time, thanks to some technical innovation, tough decision-making, and that guitar sound — which was created by accident. Find out how they did it...

Country Music's greatest showcase, the Grand Ole Opry, is a bastion of traditional values — and the home of some seriously advanced technology. Step inside...

In the past, tie-in video games have had to use samples to recreate real orchestral soundtracks from the original TV series or film. With 24: The Game, however, it was the other way around.

Do I really need to use a 'matched pair' of microphones, or even two mics of the same make and model, for stereo recording...

If you have two bits of gear that you'd like to run into your computer interface via S/PDIF, do you need two S/PDIF inputs?

Three decades after they disappeared into obscurity, the cult of Big Star continues to grow. John Fry was the engineer and studio owner at Ardent, who oversaw the recording of their now-classic albums #1 Record and Radio City.

I have been reading the book Mastering Audio by Bob Katz. In it he addresses the issue of the detrimental occurance of comb filtering when recording in stereo and then combining the signals in a single track...

Each time I record audio I get a continuous buzz and high-frequency noise recorded along with any music. It is clearly audible during intros, quieter passages and outros. However, when my screensaver comes on, this noise drops considerably...

Bob Marley & The Wailers were the first Jamaican musicians to achieve world stardom. Tracked in Kingston and finished in London by Island engineers Phill Brown and Tony Platt, their breakthrough album was a truly international recording and a true reggae classic. Find out how it was recorded...

Kick drum and lead vocal present tough processing challenges in this installment's remix.

The unique musical world of Yann Tiersen was opened up to millions of people by the soundtrack to Amelie. His idiosyncratic working method involves toy instruments, songs built from fragmented ideas, and entire string sections created by recording himself over and over again.

Recording the One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back album, Roy Thomas Baker and the Darkness used 400 reels of tape, up to 1,000 tracks per song and a year in the studio — not to mention custom-made panpipes. Find out more...

Craig Bauer has been part of Kanye West's career from the beginning, and as a mix engineer on the smash hit Late Registration album, he had to marry West's artistic perfectionism with his own technical standards.

The art of the record producer blossomed in the 1960s, with the likes of Phil Spector crafting miniature symphonies in the studio. As that decade drew to a close, Bones Howe masterminded one of its biggest and most innovative hits. Find out how...

For the Staple Singers' landmark 1972 Stax album, engineer Terry Manning and producer Al Bell employed the talents of Memphis's finest musicians and two of the South's most famous studios.

The likes of Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and Nine Inch Nails all owe a sonic debt to engineer/producer John Fryer, who explains his approach to production.

I've read about a technique that increases the perceived width of the stereo mix using phase inversion. Can I use this method even though my mixer doesn't have phase-invert buttons?

With their oblique, short and often brutally noisy songs, The Pixies reinvented rock music at the turn of the '90s, and influenced almost everyone who picked up a guitar in the following decade. Producer and engineer Gil Norton helped them to shape their breakthrough single.

After maximising my mix, so that the level of the audio is just below the point of clipping, if I insert a high-pass filter at, say, 40Hz, suddenly the audio starts to clip. What is happening?