Audio Recording Tips

One of the best recording advices I could give to newbie in home audio recording and music production is to record at the highest bit rate as possible.

If you are confused, ok this is an explanation in bulleted format:

1.) CD Audio standard is using 16 bits 44.1 KHz.
2.) Typically for better quality of recorded audio, it needs a high dynamic range for your music to flow.
3.) This high dynamic range can be obtained at a much higher bit rate (higher than 16 bits) which is 24 bit or 32 bits.
4.) Think of dynamic range as a size of your painting canvass. If a painting canvass size is limited; of course the resolution is limited also and you cannot clearly see the visual image of the painting at a farther distance.
5.) With big dynamic range available in higher recording bit rates, it is analogous to a large canvass painting which you can clearly see even the small details. This increased in resolution increases the ambiance, clarity and volume potential of the recorded audio. In music production, this is also offers a comfortable audio working environment since lots of audio details are available. This is recommended in mixing and mastering, where detailed tweaks to the audio signal are done.

OK, so you now understand the need to record at a much higher bit rate. So what is the standard? It all depends on the following:

1.) Sound card – you need to ensure that your sound card is capable of recording at a much higher than CD bit rate. For example, the industry standard has been 24 bits.

Quality inexpensive sound card can do this job, for example Audiophile 2496, which can record at 24 bits, 96 KHz:

Of course, it is not possible to get this kind of recording bit rates using onboard sound card or other types of sound cards not designed for professional music production.

2.) Recording software – Pro tools for example is capable of processing 24 bit audio. Adobe Audition is using 32 bit float, but is essentially a 24 bit audio processing engine internally. You need to make sure that your recording software can record at a much higher resolution than CD audio, to take advantage of increased audio resolution. Read the rest of this entry »

“Dithering audio” is the process of putting unrecognizable/white noise in a lower bit depth as a result of the conversion from a higher bit audio.

In the audio mixing process, the mix down is mostly 24 bit audio or 32 bit which is higher than CD audio resolution (16 bit). If these are converted to 16 bit, there will losses in the audio digital signals due to downgrading the audio resolution.

These losses can be noticed in a 16 bit audio as minor distortion of the signal. Bear in mind that since dithering is adding “white noise”, this strategy is more preferable than not applying dithering at all which results to “distortion” (or we can say that white noise is more preferable than distortion).

By applying “noise shaping” techniques you can further minimize the effects of “white noise” on the converted audio. Noise shaping will basically place “white noise” away from audible frequencies (those that can be heard easily by humans). This will be covered also in this guide (see below).

Below are the some of the important steps in how to dither 24 bit or 32 bit audio to 16 bit CD audio. This is an important task in the audio mastering process. The steps illustrated below are using Adobe Audition 1.5, although similar procedures and functionalities can be done in mostly audio recording and mixing software.

Step1. Open the high bit depth audio in Adobe Audition Editor view.

Step2. Confirm the audio resolution by going into View — Wave properties. The audio is shown as:

It shows that the source file is a 44.1 KHz, 32 bit audio wav file.

Step3. Close the file in Adobe Audition Editor view. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most difficult things to check is the bass frequencies of your studio related monitors (whether it is near field, subwoofer or headphones). If you are mixing or mastering audio in your home studio; it is highly recommended that you will be able to hear and feel the sub-woofer frequencies from 20Hz to 70Hz and then the rest of the bass frequencies from 70Hz all the way to 200Hz.

Precisely the bass frequencies are commonly assigned to 20Hz to 200Hz range. These frequency ranges are audible by the human ear; as we all know that the audio frequency range is from 20Hz to 20,000Hz.

If you have monitor in your home studio that does not have sub-woofer set, then things can be very complicated because you will not be able to mix the sub-woofer bass frequencies properly (even impossible) which are highly critical in pop and rock genre.

So if ever you have purchased or acquired a studio monitor but do not know how to check whether it can handle or play subwoofer frequencies; you can follow these procedures to know whether your monitor is enough to playback subwoofer bass frequencies or you need to buy a a new sub-woofer system:

Step1. Download the low frequency bass audio test file here (right click and save as): http://www.audiorecording.me/audiosamples/audiocheck.net_frequencychecklow.wav

Source of file: http://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_frequencychecklow.php
Read the rest of this entry »