Revised & Updated! This is an old article I wrote in the early 90s. Quite a bit has changed since then, but most of the advice here still applies. With the reworking of my site in 2012, I have gone through this article and made some additions and revisions to make it more relevant. MAXIMIZING […]

Steve's picks for Music Business Success All You Need To Know to Succeed in the Music Business If you are serious about music business success, then the following books are absolutely REQUIRED READING! You can't expect to succeed in this business if you don't fully understand how the business works! Very few people are ever […]

Question: does compression affect different frequencies differently?  More specifically: if a compressor set at the same settings for attack and release were used to attenuate a 100 Hz signal and then a 5000 Hz signal, would the frequencies react differently to the same settings on the same compressor? And if they do, what are the […]

I have a question regarding headphones and mixing.... I think most of us know that mixing in headphones is not a good idea for many reasons. However, many of us, including myself, do not have a lot of control over my mixing environment and often depend on headphones. Are there some headphones that are better […]

Hello!  I've not asked you a question in a long time, but now I have a silly question. I don't know if I am recording correctly on a very fundamental issue: input levels.  When I record I push the faders on the input "mixer" (these faders are in my Cubase software - so not real […]

I have another question for you about EQ'ing...you answered an earlier one for me with great detail and I learned alot from it..... I was experimenting with sweep EQing after watching a video of George Massenberg? demonstrating a parmetric EQ he'd designed. Anyway, after reading up on it and trying it I found I was […]

I just started using an audio editing software, and the decibels are negative scaled (zero is SUPER loud, -24 is no noise). I can't find anything in the software documentation about the reference level; is there a standard used in the music biz? Also, is there any chance that the decibels shown in the program […]

I just want to make sure I have my PA run the safe way. I don't want to trip any breakers playing live. In a large are we use 4 sw218 subs. I run one pair in stereo on a p7000 Yamaha and the other pair off of another P7000 Yamaha. I use 4 main […]

DAWs are a very specialized application that requires a high performance machine that is stable, and where all the hardware works together without any conflicts with your audio interface and other devices. The wrong choices can lead to random clicks, pops, and other audio glitches, or simply not being able to achieve a low enough latency to work effectively with VST instruments. In the worst cases, hardware conflicts can cause random crashes or freezes, or the system may not even boot up.

I'm curious as to how often you might (and I know it probably depends wildly) cut high frequencies as a matter of course. For example, I usually cut quite a bit of low frequencies on most tracks just to keep the muddiness to a minimum in the overall mix. Do you also do the same […]