Theory / Technical

What benefits have the latest crop of CPUs brought for audio users — and what might the coming year have in store for us?

I’d like a clearer understanding of what a fully floating balanced output is and how I can take advantage of it....

MIDI is the universal language of the studio — and if you use hardware instruments, you need to understand it!

I recently rewired my studio and patched a compressor and an effects unit into my mixer’s master inserts. Both processors were set to work with +4dB signals but the levels from the processors seemed low, so I switched them to their ‑10dB positions and the levels seem healthier. Have I done the right thing?

Mix engineers used to prefer hardware to software because it sounded better. Is that still true? And if not, is there still a reason to use it?

The waveform of an audio file looks bizarre when I load it in Adobe Audition, with a curious displacement of the audio...

I keep reading about the use of ‘negative feedback’ to reduce distortion in audio gear. How does this work and how effective is it?

Could you please explain why audio gear uses balanced signals and how they work?

Intel’s latest CPUs promise big performance gains. But can they topple AMD in our audio benchmarks?

I’m a long‑running technical electronics repair and design engineer working in music for film...

I’m about to be given an old mixer to play with in my studio and am planning to check each input and output, check the EQ does...

I got a separate 1TB drive to use with NI Komplete and told NI’s Native Access installer app to put the plug‑ins/apps on the system drive and the sample data on the external drive, and left it overnight...

The next evolution of Bluetooth contains a number of innovations that should appeal to consumers and professionals alike. And it’s coming to a device near you.

We speak to some of the leading experts in hearing loss to find out why it happens, how to prevent it, and what to do if your hearing fails.

Have you ever wondered what lies behind the intriguing wobbles and lush swooshes of this classic effect?

Whether you are setting up a bedroom studio or the next Abbey Road, choosing the right audio interface for your needs can be brain-meltingly difficult. Editor In Chief Sam Inglis breaks down everything you need to know into 26 bite-sized chunks!

I've just bought a new MIDI controller keyboard that has a selection of velocity curves. How should I go about choosing which...

In the final part of this two-part Net Notes about broadcasting your audio and video on the Internet, Dave Shapton discusses error correction and quality control, helps you to prepare for your webcast and suggests some solutions for broadcasting live events.

After looking at the development of and theory behind mLAN, Paul Wiffen continues his series on the new FireWire-based music and audio protocol with a practical look at the effect it will have on the gear in our studios and how we connect it together.

Monitor speakers affect nearly all the descisions we make when recording and mixing — yet most of us know very little about how they are designed, and why they sound the way they do. In the first of a new series, Phil Ward explains what goes into the design of typical passive nearfields, and the effects they can have on what we record.

Last month, Paul Wiffen explained how he heard about mLAN — a new data-transfer protocol which will allow us to send audio, MIDI, and even video down one FireWire connector. This month, he finds out from Yoshi Sawada of Yamaha's mLAN development team how the system is likely to work in practice.