audiorecording.me

I use this mixer in my recordings for almost more than 2 years I think. This is one of the smallest mixer available for home studio recordings yet even as powerful and sounds good as a professional mixing console. Official documentation/manuals can be found in official Behringer Xenyx 502 website.

Tip #1: Pre-amplication of weak instrument signals

Frankly, I do not use this for analog mixing as I use this as an interface for recording sound from the instruments (vocals, guitars, piano). The diagram is shown below:

Instruments –> Behringer Xenyx 502 mixer –> Sound card

Note: I mixed digitally using digital recording software like Adobe Audition. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most important instruments for producing rock, pop and country music are guitars. In fact, a band alone can be formed by just having guitars, drums and bass (for example it can become “legendary” like Led Zeppelin). Because of this importance, it has been used frequently to produce songs; however some difficulties are encountered during the mixing process.

The common mixing problems in working with guitar frequencies are that it is conflicting with vocals and bass frequencies. If guitars are not properly mixed, it can result to muddy sound. This means that guitars, vocals and bass are not clearly heard in the mix. The most common problem with guitar mud problem is “drowned vocals”. Drowned vocals are not surely acceptable in pop and country genre, where the vocals should be clearly dominant in the mix.

The following are the important mixing tips I used for producing rock, pop and country music. The most important requirement before you can mix guitars is that it should be properly recorded, clean (no noise) and of course “in tune”. You should also have a parametric equalizer to mix guitars. Remember that without EQ you cannot properly mix guitar frequencies at the optimum level. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you plan to seriously record and produce music at home? Seems like a broad plan but below are the details:

1. First but the most important thing that you need is a very powerful personal computer. If you use Mac, consult them to provide a hardware specs suitable for audio recording. Then same thing for Windows PC. Invest in latest CPU, maximum RAM size for your motherboard and lots of hard disk space. I won’t go into details as I have already write a tutorial on this: Computer specifications for professional audio recording purposes.

2. Second, do not forget the sound card. This is the most important piece of hardware in your computer for recording. Creative Audigy sound cards is enough but if you can buy more expensive professional sound cards the better (if you have a big budget).

3. Buy a mixer, small is enough for home studio applications. I personally use Xenyx 502 mixer. Read some tips for buying a mixer for home studio applications. Read the rest of this entry »