Ideas to albums—working the sonic technology

The cycle

Studio layout

 ‐different kinds of studios
  ‐home
  ‐project
  ‐real
 ‐keeping things in order
  ‐racks
 ‐studio layout for each

Pathways and signal routing

 ‐buses
 ‐patch bays
 ‐wiring
 ‐analog vs. digital,
 ‐patchbay vs. electronic
 ‐channel issues
  ‐multichannel effects very difficult (even stereo!)
   ‐current buses not wide enough
   ‐analog technology does not handle parallelism well

Gain structure and noise accumulation

 ‐dropping gain ideal but impossible
 ‐the problems with digital audio
  ‐gain is lossy!
  ‐duping data should be lossless, but often isn’t
  ‐dithering and redithering
  ‐noise shaping
  ‐the importance of high intermediate bit‐widths
  ‐sample rate conversion is very bad
   ‐working at a constant rate
   ‐integral conversion ratios

Multitracking and storage

 ‐editing intermediates: ADAT
 ‐open reel
 ‐hard disk

The hard core solution—hard disk recording, plugins

 ‐access time and storage limitations
 ‐A/V drives for guaratees
 ‐dedicated environments vs. PC extensions vs. pure PC software
 ‐the reign of Mac

Synchronisation—SMPTE, MTC, song position

 ‐black boxes
 ‐the MIDI time piece
 ‐sync to adat: proprietary
 ‐sync to home equipment: impossible
 ‐sync: drum/arpeggio vs. real music

Mixing and the console

 ‐inline/out of line
 ‐internal dynamics/EQ
 ‐phantom power
 ‐returns

Automation

 ‐storage
 ‐mastering!
 ‐sequencing/sampling
 ‐techno!

Mastering for success

 ‐the master tape
 ‐audience in audio post‐production
 ‐aux data
 ‐with DVD much more complicated