I studied the Biosphere tracks on the Shenzhou album that I love and I learned a lot about why I like that one. It has repeating loops of orchestral music for the most part and this repetition varies a bit throughout. It gives a steady rhythm where there is none normally and I think this is what I like. By first filtering the orchestra...

I learned some valuable information about sample rates from Dan Worrall today on the FabFilter YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/-jCwIsT0X8M?si=3FSJ6zgBaOWgMX2i https://youtu.be/-jCwIsT0X8M?si=3FSJ6zgBaOWgMX2i 1. Oversampling in plugins is better than upping my project sample rate or running brick wall filters to filter out the high fr...

I've just started using Notion and their AI feature is really quite good. I asked it to brainstorm ideas for sampling and electronic music and it came up with a bunch of really good ideas that I can work with. Or I can let it expand upon each one by itself. So I would recommend Notion AI for anyone looking to get some ideas and to have...

I learned a lot today about consoles, and I am glad I did. They sound amazing! I had been using Decapitator to get "desk" distortion into my music to try and replicate some of that console sound, but now I have tried the Satson console by Sonimus and it sounds like I mixed and mastered my music at a real console! And a great one at tha...

I've known about this for some long time. Mike or Marcus said it in an interview: Sandison: " Yes, it's loaded with patterns and messages. There are various tricks embedded throughout the whole body of this album, so it'll be interesting to ses whether people pick up on these things. Some things are just structural things. For instance...

PLR is a measure of the "macrodynamics" and PSR is a measure of the "microdynamics" of a track. I think I had these wrong last time. Mastering has become so much easier now that I understand the Ian Shepherd way of mastering. I am actually writing music and uploading it to my next Bandcamp album. Lars Lentz larslentz@hey.com (424) 262-...

Finally, I think I have reached my goals in mastering. By that I mean I have understood and set my levels: 1. -10 LUFS maximum short-term. 2. PSR that is consistently not below 10 except for a few points due to naturally non-dynamic material. 3. PLR <13 for Spotify. 4. Peaks less than -1 dBTP <-10, >10, <13, <-1. Lars Lentz larslentz@h...

🤦♂Wow. Over the last few weeks I've discovered something that I don't do that I should, and that has been a game-changer for me. 1. I didn't know about PSR on my meter and I thought it should be always >8. 🤔 2. I didn't know what triode and pentode meant on two of my plugins, and on one of them it meant one thing and on the other it me...

I had been going by the assumption that PSR minimum should be 8 LUFS according to Ian Shepherd, but I just read his manual for the Meterplugs Dynameter and it says... "Some sounds naturally have low PSR values without any additional processing. For example: smooth, sustained sounds, “sine wave” bass sounds, solo flute or keyboard pads,...

I did some further reading about PLR and PSR since yesterday's post. PLR is peak minus integrated loudness. So if I am trying to have all my tracks -14 Integrated LUFS or higher (-13...-12...etc.), and if I am trying to have my peaks <1dBTP, the best PLR I can get is -14- -1 = 13 PLR value. This would be a track with integrated loudnes...

I've read about PLR and PSR again with respect to mastering. This time Bob Katz's book on mastering told me that PLR is a good measure of microdynamics of music (a.k.a. the quick ups and downs in volume). This is opposed to macrodynamics that can be controlled via compression/expansion and can be gain-ridden (knob automation of the gai...

ProAudioDSP has a "DSM V3 Prismatic Compressor" product that makes multi-band compression easy for me. This plugin was made by the same guy who made all the really great Sonnox plugins, so I kind of knew it was going to be good, but did not realize it would be such a game-changer for me. I put this on the end of my mix bus before going...

Playing around with the Serato Sample plugin has been eye-opening for me. Because it makes it easy to drag a tune into it and cut it up into samples, it has let me work much faster on a long-held theory of mine and others, namely that Boards of Canada used a lot of samples (duh, well-known) but the samples were more than simple cuts be...

What if you made a synth out of samples like in Kontakt, TAL Sampler, or something that was, get this, all different actual bird sounds for each key or one type of bird sound across multiple keys, pitched? (You could probably even do this in Serato Sample for ease and convenience. Quick and elegant.) "Bird Synth" is born! Lars Lentz la...

I learned about IIR and FIR filters today. Using the Vertigo Sound products, I could enable the FIR filters for oversampling, so I wanted to know what kind of filters these were and what were the "standard" filters. IIR is an infinite impulse response, while FIR is a finite impulse response. FIR takes more processor power but is more s...