Audio Recording

There are lot of instances you might be recording a live band performance such as garage band taping to a live concert. In this way, you can make it as your own demo or even as a marketing tool to promote your band songs. In this tutorial, you will be presented with 4 different ways and methods on recording a live band. It depends on your available gears, recording skill and budget. OK let’s start.

Method #1: The Simplest Method- > One microphone

The crudest yet acceptable method is to use only one microphone to record the band. The best type of microphone is an omnidirectional pattern because of its ability to pickup sound waves from all directions. For example, you can use blue yeti USB microphone to record a live band set up as shown in the screenshot below:

This does not however pickup the stereo image of the band since you are only using one microphone and the recording will be in mono. The recording chain can be as follows:

Microphone — > Computer USB port — > DAW (setup to record in mono at least 24-bits)

In the above setup, you only need DAW software (Reaper for example) and you need to configure it to accept signal from the USB microphone. Read this Reaper DAW tutorial to get started.

However, if you want the best sound quality that you can get with a single microphone, you need the following:

a.) A high quality external audio interface. If you are using Windows and you computer has an USB port, you can get some recommendations for some affordable 24-bit 96 KHz USB audio interface.

b.) Omnidirectional large diaphragm condenser microphone with flat frequency response. These are not very expensive and some microphones are affordable such as Behringer C-3. The recording chain will be:

Behringer C-3 — > Audio interface preamp input (with phantom power on) — > USB port on your PC — > DAW (recording in mono)

Of course you need to watch out for clipping and all other stuff that could degrade the quality of your recording. You might want to make sure that the sound of the band is balanced; that is the drums would not drown the vocals as well as the guitar amplifier. These needs manual adjustment and discipline on the part of the musicians. In all methods discussed in this tutorial, you need to apply proper gain staging to minimize noise and optimize recording levels.

Bear in mind that the recording quality using this method (and also other methods below) strongly depends on the acoustic environment where the band would be performing. In some instances, it would be hard to get a clear definition of the band particularly that there is no way to mix the instruments after recording since they are recorded together. This method would be useful for creating a rough demo of any of your songs.
Read the rest of this entry »

BWF (Broadcast wave format) is simply an upgraded version of the standard WAV file (lossless). In BWF format, a user can add non-audio information to the WAV file such as text. This information can be associated to the nature of the recording. It can be the name of the engineer, date of creation, timing/synchronization information, etc. There is however a limit as to what you can add and most standard DAW would provide text fields for convenience in filling up this information.

How to check if you are dealing with a broadcast wave format?

Take note that the broadcast wave format file extension is still .wav. So by file extension you won’t be able to distinguish whether that file is a BWF. The only way to check is to confirm through WAV file properties inside your DAW.

Follow the steps below:

1.) Load/import or insert the WAV file in your digital audio workstation. In this example, let’s use Reaper.

2.) Select any of the audio waveform in your project (you can check them one at a time).
3.) Go to Item — > Source Properties.
4.) In the properties, if you are able to see the text information under “BWF chunk”, then the WAV file is using broadcast wave format such as this:

Reaper by default will use broadcast wave format when you are recording and saving the tracks to the hard drive. As you can see on the above information, the date and time as well as the “start offset” has been provided. These are the most basic information that you can get from a BWF file.

What is “Start Offset” and why it’s very important?

Start offset is defined as the start time of that specific BWF file in your multi-track projects. This is a very important piece of information in synchronizing your tracks in a multi-track project regardless of any DAW.

For example, say you recorded 3 guitar tracks in Reaper. By default, it will be assigned with a “start offset”. And supposing below are the start offset data taken from the BWF chunk.

Guitar1: 0:00.000
Guitar2: 0:01.500
Guitar3: 0:06.500

These are visualized as follows in your Reaper session:

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a compilation of the frequently asked questions on digital recording studio troubleshooting. This is a helpful guide for beginners and novices that are encountering some technical issues with their studio.

To make this a user-friendly guide, it will be grouped into the following topics:

a.) Hardware related issues
b.) Operating system related issues
c.) Digital audio workstation (DAW)/Recording software issues

Hardware related issues

Q.1) I already bought a USB audio interface, but the computer is running out of USB ports; any advice?

If you are really serious in completing your digital recording studio; you should assign a dedicated USB port for your audio interface. You should have at least 4 USB ports to get started. The following are the most important peripheral devices that will be using the USB ports in your PC:

a.) Mouse
b.) Keyboard
c.) Audio interface
d.) Spare USB port for external hard drive/etc.

If you don’t have enough USB ports for the above peripheral devices (highly unlikely unless your computer is very old); it is much better to buy a new computer with modern motherboards. This means assembling a new computer dedicated for recording and music production use.

The main benefits are increased USB speed (modern motherboards supports fast USB connections such as USB 3.0) and lots of available USB ports. They also support faster CPU and memory devices.

It is not recommended to connect your USB audio interface to the USB hub because of performance issues; see the next related question for details.

Q.2) Can I connect my USB audio interface to a powered USB hub?

USB hub provides an easy way to connect more USB devices than the available USB port in your computer. The problem with this setup is when you are running out of available USB bus bandwidth typically if there are other USB devices connected to the hub.
Read the rest of this entry »