
Studio SOS: Monitoring Woes
David Ashman felt that his mixes lacked energy and were sounding 'too digital', so the SOS team set off to his home in Bristol to sort out his monitoring system and mix processing.
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David Ashman felt that his mixes lacked energy and were sounding 'too digital', so the SOS team set off to his home in Bristol to sort out his monitoring system and mix processing.

As with so much surrounding the Hammond organ, there's much more to the Leslie rotary speaker than meets the eye, and synthesizing its effects involves considerably more than just adding vibrato, as we find out in this installment.

This Voice Modeler plug-in is designed to change the character of a recorded vocal, adding breathiness, chest resonance and 'growl', and allowing you to modify inflection and vibrato.



It seems as though every audio card manufacturer is keen to promote high sample-rate audio formats. Terratec's Phase 28 and Phase 26 attempt to do this in PCI and USB formats respectively.

The biggest music technology manufacturer in the world has stuck to hardware — until now. Do Yamaha's first plug-in processors have what it takes to compete with the big names in Mac and Windows software?

In the final part of our series on Roland's family of sound modules, we show you how the more advanced synthesis parameters can breathe life into your patches.

One of Yamaha's most well-known studio products receives a makeover for the 21st Century.

Although many of the most famous music mixing engineers have been in the business for decades, we find out how a new generation of up-and-coming stars are combining traditional and cutting-edge recording techniques to make their mark on modern production.

The Sonar adventure continues with a new audio engine, a fresh look, new plug-ins and a surprising sampler.

I've recently started using the Antares Auto-Tune plug-in (version 3), and I need help! Even when using the plug-in's Automatic mode, I can't get a good sound out of it — the corrected voice sounds 'warbly' and fake. Can you offer any advice?

I produce electronic dance music. Much of the time I work with headphones on, to help me focus on detailed sounds in repetitive loops. However, I often notice that when I switch to listening on speakers (to check the actual mix and so on) the track seems a bit faster. What could be the cause?

I had four tracks transferred to vinyl and told the pressing plant to do any necessary EQ'ing required. I got the test pressings back and found them to be very harsh in the upper frequencies when compared to my CD master. Should I get my tracks professionally mastered for vinyl next time?

I have just purchased the new Novation KS4 keyboard and want to have a complete drum kit playing in performance mode but there's nothing in the manual explaining how to do this! Can you program full kits to sound like the keyboard demo or must you use an external sequencer?

These active monitors can have their responses tailored to suit their environment when used with the powerful four-band DSP equaliser option.


As Apple's recent Panther operating system upgrade is adopted by the Mac community, the usual problems that accompany such a major change begin to surface. We take a closer look at the issues worth considering before making the jump to Panther, and report on Apple's new iBook G4.

A frequently recurring question from new sequencer/DAW users is what else they need to set up a complete studio. We show you how to create the most simple usable system, and how to expand and adapt it to more demanding applications.

Behringer's rack-friendly versions of their V-Amp 2 and Bass V-Amp add extra connection flexibility and rugged 2U hardware.