Recording

I have to record a 30-strong mixed choir that will be performing on a small stage in a packed village hall. I have several SM58s and AKG C1000s, but would be willing to invest modestly in alternative mics if necessary. What would you suggest?

A heady blend of world music, dance and Irish folk, Afro Celts' music has been heard on film soundtracks and festival stages across the globe. Their latest album Seed was the first to be produced in their own studio, built in the Britannia Row premises that were once the home of Pink Floyd.

When label boss David Geffen teamed respected engineer 'Bones' Howe with an unknown and very strange songwriter called Tom Waits, he set in motion one of the great artist-producer partnerships.

An established studio in the USA is planning to rely on software that can be freely downloaded from the Internet. Are they crazy, or do Linux-based recording applications offer a real alternative to the established Windows and Mac packages?

Half a century in the business has seen recording engineer Al Schmitt reach the very top of his profession, but even a man of his experience can find himself faced with new challenges. So it was in 1991, when he was called upon to turn a classic Nat 'King' Cole recording into a duet with Cole's daughter Natalie...

Teenager Dylan Mills (aka Dizzee Rascal) captured the headlines in 2003 by winning the UK's Mercury Music Prize with one of the most uncompromising albums of recent times. Dizzee and engineer/manager Cage describe how they made Boy In Da Corner.

I did a recording session recently using a mixture of dynamic and condenser mics, and realised my desk does not have switchable phantom power for each channel — they're either all on or all off. Luckily, I had some external channel strips which I ran the condensers through, but is it safe to apply phantom power to dynamic mics?

I was told by a sound engineer that, when mixing, it is not a good practice to have all the channel volume faders way up and to have the master fader down, and that this applies both to analogue and digital consoles. Is this true?

Engineer and producer Bruce Botnick recorded some of the greatest artifacts of West Coast psychedelia, among them the first five albums by The Doors. Here he describes the making of their influential second album and its title track, which saw them develop their live sound through radical experimentation in the studio.

Since Lamb first came to prominence at the height of the mid-'90s trip-hop movement, Andy Barlow and Lou Rhodes' distinctive blend of electronica and organic songwriting has gone from strength to strength.

With their number one album Absolution, British three-piece Muse have established themselves as one of the most ambitious and innovative rock bands in the world — and in Rich Costey, they've found an engineer and producer who understands their aims and encourages them to experiment.

How do you get that double-tracked vocal sound you hear on rap records? Are there any plug-ins I could use?

This month, Sound On Sound begins a major new series, looking back in detail at the engineering and production behind some of the most historically significant recordings ever made, with the story of the first and greatest British rock & roll record.

The Doc proffers diagnosis and suitable cures for another batch of reader-submitted meisterwerks.

When Jimmy Page decided to mine a massive archive of decaying Led Zeppelin live footage for a DVD and double CD, the epic task of restoring, editing and mixing the audio went to rock specialist Kevin Shirley — who has gone on to help veteran metallers Iron Maiden return to the upper reaches of the charts.

Over the last decade, Mouse On Mars have become one of the leading names in European electronic music. Their experimental approach brings together analogue and digital, lo-fi and hi-fi, real instruments and samples to create an organic-sounding whole.

Musicality isn't everything when you're trying to make a decent-sounding recording at home, even if you're as talented as the multi-instrumentalist Harding family. So the SOS team travelled north to help them get their engineering techniques up to scratch.

What is the difference between audio and data CD-Rs? Surely digital audio is just data?

I'm going to be adding some woodwind parts to a track, recording flute, clarinet, alto and tenor saxophones one at a time. Can you offer any advice on how to mike them up?

I have recorded an acoustic guitar into Cubase SX, both with a mic and DI'd. As I had expected, there are some phase issues...

I read that the level meters in most DAWs don't give a true indication of when audio is peaking, and that audio which looks like it's below 0dBFS may actually be peaking above it, causing distortion when played back. Is this true?