SettingUp

the audio interface. Both cases represent analog inputs because the sound has not yet been
converted to digital.

The reason we have to specify “analog inputs” is because the manufacturers will potentially
mislead people with their claims of a “10 Channel Audio Interface” or “26 Channel Audio
Interface” when there significantly fewer actual analog inputs. See the audio interface chapter
for details.

Anechoic Chamber

This is a room designed to measure the frequency response of speakers and such. It's a
room that has about as close to zero reflections as possible. From what I'm told, being in
such a room is scary because the human ear will never ever hear this type of sound under
natural circumstances.

Arming

If you were to hit Record on your recording machine nothing would happen until you actually
had a track that was armed. Physically switching a track so that it will record when you press
the record is known as arming. We require this functionality because we may not want to
record over our guitar tracks we did last week when fixing a vocal today.

Arrangement

The way a song is structured and the various layers are introduced and taken away. For
example, the decision to start a song with just an acoustic guitar and vocal, introduce hi-hats
in the first pre-chorus, and then slam the song into overdrive in the chorus make up
arranging. Arranging is about highlighting what needs to be highlighted, taking away what will
be distracting, and basically lining up all the individual pieces of the song together for
maximum musical intensity. One of many handy uses for music manuscript paper.
The arrangement is extremely important to audio engineering. An example would be an

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acoustic guitar where the player is only hitting the G, A, and then A# notes on the Low E and
the bass player is just hitting a G low the Low E. It will become difficult to hear what the
instruments are doing individually. By moving the bass an octave up to the next G, the
notes within the acoustic guitar will become dramatically clearer. It's up to the person doing
the arranging to gauge the musical effectiveness of each decision.

ATA

ATA is a format of connecting hard drives and CD-ROM drives to the computer’s
motherboard. It's been an accepted standard since the late 1990’s but by the mid 2000’s had
been slowly replaced by SATA.

Audio Interface

An audio interface is a device that allows you send audio to and from your computer. An
audio interface is essentially the same thing as a soundcard. However, we usually don't refer
to consumer-grade soundcards (like the stock soundcard in your computer or Soundblaster
cards you can purchase at Best Buy) as audio interfaces.

An audio interface must be low latency. A signal must be able to travel from a microphone, to
a preamp, to an audio interface, to the computer, to the software, back through all this mess
again, and into your headphones real time. Most soundcards made for gaming are way too
slow to handle this process. If you attempt to use a high latency soundcard for music
recording, you will experience an undesirable delay when attempting to monitor anything real-
time that passes through the computer..

Because of latency, a real-deal audio interface is highly recommended for recording music.

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There are other reasons to use an audio interface. The conversion from analog to digital
(A/D) is going to be more accurate and better sounding with a real deal recording audio
interface.

If you are looking for an audio interface and aren’t exactly sure which one is right for you, I
highly recommend the Home Recording Soundcard Wizard I created. You can quickly search
for the exact features you require and ignore the features you don’t need. The Soundcard
Wizard will save you 10 hours of research.

Automatic Delay Compensation

Automatic Delay Compensation is a feature found in some recording programs that
automatically compensates for the processing time caused by plugins.

If you have zero plugins on an audio track #1, it takes X amount of time for your recording
computer to play back that track. If you have another track (audio track #2) with a
compressor on the insert, your computer will take X + compressor plugin processing time to
play back the audio. Let’s just say it takes an extra 3ms to play back the track with the
compression on it. In this case, audio track #1 is now out of sync with with audio track #2. If
the tracks are similar in nature, this can cause problems with the timing of the performance
and lead to comb filtering (which is an audio engineering nightmare!)

Most good recording programs have Automatic Delay Compensation. This means the
program automatically adds up the processing time of each track and aligns all the tracks so
that they play at the same time without any phase problems.

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Autotune

Autotune is a product made by Antares which was developed to modify pitch of single-
instrument tracks. If a musicians had an incredible take, but there was a pitch problem, the
take could be saved by fixing the pitch. However, the result is that too many singers rely on
autotune to fix their pitch problems. While autotune can help improve the pitch of a recording,
it's not magic. It doesn't work perfectly.

Autotune is the tool of choice for those looking for the “Cher effect” which quantizes all
pitches in a vocal to the closest note in the scale. This is also known as the “T-Pain” sound
by the younger crowd.

Aux Send

An Aux Send is part of the routing on a mixer or virtual mixer in a recording software
application. It allows you to keep your vocal routed as it normally would be, but also send a
signal to another bus for further processing. The most popular use of Aux Sends is reverb
and delays. To add space to a vocal, a reverb processor or plugin is placed on Aux #1 and
then the vocal track is sent to Aux #1, whose output goes to the 2-bus.

Any track on a mixer can be sent to an Aux Send. It's very common to use one or two reverb
algorithms for all the reverbs on an entire song and then adjusting the reverb level for each
instrument by tweaking the amount of level sent to the aux.

Axis

Axis deals with the positioning of a sound source in relation to a listening device (like your
ears or a microphone). If you have a speaker pointed directly at your head, it’s known as
being “on axis”. If the speaker is pointed directly towards your head, but your buddy with you

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is to the side, the speaker is “off axis” to him.

With speakers, it’s always an issue of how the high end changes when you are off axis from
the speaker. Obviously, if the high end is not shooting right at you, it will be less audible. The
low end is much less directional. This is why studio monitors usually have a “sweet spot”.

Miking can also be done off axis with the mic in relationship to a speaker in a guitar amp, for
example. If the mic is shooting directly at the cone, the mic is “on axis”. If the mic is turned so
that it’s not shooting directly at the speaker, it is considered “off axis”. The angle at which we
mic our instruments can have a dramatic effect on the captured sound of that instrument.

Bandwidth

“Q” is another word for bandwidth. It’s a term most often found in parametric equalizers. Let’s
say you bump 1kHz up by 6dB with a parametric EQ. If you use a very narrow Q (or high
number) the bump affects other frequencies much less. In this example, 500Hz is probably
not touched at all by the bump. But if you lower the Q, the EQ processing will effect a much
wider range of frequencies.

Just remember the “width” of the parametric EQ's boost or cut is called “Q”.

Bass Traps

A bass trap is a form of acoustical treatment that is designed to absorb the low end
frequencies bouncing around the room. There are many different designs for bass traps that
are intended to absorb various frequencies.

Bass traps are a requirement in control rooms because most control rooms have radical
ambience in the low end causing inaccurate monitoring conditions. These low frequency
problems are caused by room modes. The reason you should be concerned about room

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modes is they are the number one reason for mixes not translating to the outside world even
though they may sound great on the studio monitors you are mixing on.

Bleed

Bleed is the extra stuff that gets into the microphone. For example, if you record a floor tom
track, you will still hear plenty of kick, snare, cymbals, and other toms. This is called bleed.
In some instances, bleed is a terrible thing that should be avoided. In other instances, bleed
is HIGHLY welcome and can add a 3D quality to the recording. Generally speaking, I happen
to like instruments bleeding into the mics of other instruments in moderation. It does add
something good to the music in most cases.

Boost

Boost is a term used in equalization. When we say “Boost 2K by 3dB” we mean “increase
2,000 Hz by 3 decibels on a parametric equalizer.

Bounce

A bounce or “bouncing” is the process of combing multiple tracks together to make room for
more tracks. This is used in situations where you have a limited track count. It's more
common to do this with tape machines or all-in-one standalone recorders, but it can also be a
great way to free up tracks in recording software with limited track counts.

Breakout Box

A breakout box is found on many multichannel soundcards that connect to your computer
through a PCI card, but every USB 1.1, USB 2.0, or Firewire audio interface IS the breakout
box.

In order to reduce the noise of your recorded tracks, all analog to digital conversion are done

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in a box that is several feet away from your computer and connected a computer via a cable.
The idea is that your computer can add noise and distortion if analog signals get too close to
it. So, soundcards convert the signal to digital before it even gets to the computer. It’s also
just plain handy not to have to connect the rest of your gear’s cables to an already over-
cabled computer.

Bus

A bus is a term used to when discussing the routing of signals. A bus is any place on a mixer
or recording software where signals can be combined. It’s like a city bus. Signals get on,
travel a while and then get off. For example, if we had 10 mics on the drums, we could route
all 10 drums mics to the drum bus. The advantage of this is substantial. We can now apply a
compressor across all the drums at the same time. We can EQ all the drums at the same
time. We have a single fader that can control the volume of all the drums at once.

It's common to use several busses in a mix. I'll often use a bus for drums, a bus for electric
guitars, a bus for lead vocals (if the vocals are doubled or there is more than one lead vocal
track), and a bus for background vocals. This can greatly simplify the mixing process but still
leaves you the option to apply processing to the individual tracks.

A common question is “What is a 2-bus?”. A 2-bus is the master fader or master stereo out.
On a mixer it's usually the fader on the far right. This is where “mastering” style effects can
be placed.

Cardioid

Cardioid describes the pickup pattern of a microphone of most dynamic and some condenser
microphones. Cardioid microphones are also called directional microphones. If you point the
mic at the ceiling, the mic will pick up sound coming from the ceiling and reject sound coming
from the floor and to a less degree, the side walls. For a detailed explanation of “Cardioid”
see the chapter on Microphones in Killer Home Recording: Audio Engineering.

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Chipset

In layman's terms, a chipset is a series of circuits connected together inside a computer. For
recording, you just need to understand that most audio interfaces have at least one chipset
they don't get along with. This is true for all Firewire, USB 2.0, USB 1.1, and PCI devices.
Do the research before purchasing any equipment using these types of connections.

Clipping

When an amplifier has been pushed to the point of the distortion, the audio signal is clipped.
Ideally, a theoretical waveform looks like a pretty sine wave that’s very smooth. An audio
amplifier has a limit to how much output it can push out. If an audio engineer tries to push too
much signal (or too big of waveform) out of that amplifier, the amplifier can only make the
waves so tall which turns the peaks of the waveforms into essentially horizontal lines. If a
waveform is distorted enough, it starts looking more like a “square”. The term “square wave”
comes from waves that have this quality.

Clipping, or distorting, a guitar amplifier is often a pleasing thing. Clipping a digital signal is
almost always an unpleasing thing.

Clock

See Wordclock

Chorus

Chorus is an effect that manipulates pitch of a signal and blends it with a dry signal to create
a spacey type of sound. For a further explanation of “Chorus” see Killer Home Recording:
Murderous Mixing.

Comb Filtering

Comb filtering describes a situation where combining multiple signals causes the resulting

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signal's frequency response to look like a comb. The resulting tone is nasally, unfocused, and
highly undesirable. For a detailed explanation, see Audio Engineering.

Condenser Microphone

Examples of condenser microphones include Neumann U87, AKG 414, Audio Technica AT-
4050, and Oktava MK-012. When people think of the stereotypical “studio mic” they usually
think of a condenser mic in a shockmount. Condenser mics require phantom power. Tube
condenser mics typically have separate power supplies and don’t use phantom power.
Condensers do get used for most of the pretty stuff. They are used most of the time on drum
overheads, vocals, and acoustic guitars. You can pretty much use a condenser mic on
anything you want and it most cases it will take it, but there are times when condensers bring
out the details that are not flattering to the instrument.
There are two types of condenser mics: large diaphragm and small diaphragm.
Small diaphragm condensers look like pencils. They are long and skinny. They are usually
exceptionally fast and this gives them the appearance of being bright. Large diaphragm
condensers are what everyone thinks of as “studio mics” and are much larger. They are
typically used for vocals.
Every studio should have a variety of condenser mics. When it comes to getting detailed,
sparkly sounds, it’s tough to beat a condenser.

Control Room

The control room is the room where most of the work is done by the engineer or producer.
You often see the big boy studios that contain an enormous mixing console, racks and racks
of gear, and a window view of a glorious live room.
Since critical audio decisions are made in a control room, it is extremely important that the
acoustics of this room be amazingly flat and the studio monitoring extremely accurate. This is
the one major flaw of recording at home. Seldom are control rooms in home recording
studios accurate. This leads to mixes that don't translate well to the outside world.

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