Theory / Technical

Once the preserve of academic and experimental music, granular synthesis is more accessible than ever and has a lot to offer in all sorts of genres.

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

Colin Cartmell’s decades‑long tonequest has led him to create some of the best guitar cabinet IRs out there — so we asked him for advice on how to roll your own.

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?

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

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

Immersive audio has huge creative potential for music production, but it can be hard to get your head around. Here’s the explanation you’ve been waiting for!

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