Studio a Writeup

7/23/2019 Studio a Writeup

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Studio A and B Health and Safety

When in the studio ensure that all wires and cables are neatly placed and aren’t causing a

tripping hazard. Do this by keeping them tucked behind a desk or by coiling them into a pile. Fire

exits should never be blocked and the route to them never obstructed, the studio is fitted with a

visual fire alarm so that anyone listening to music loud enough to block out the sound of the

alarm will see the light flashing red. It’s advisable to not bring any food or drink into the studio as

they can be spilled on sensitive equipment or create a messy work environment. Ensure that

anyone using the studio knows where fire extinguishers can be found and also which

extinguisher to use on which fire.

Visual Fire Alarm

Fire Alarm

Fire Alarm

Fire Extinguisher

Fire Exit

Fire ExitFire Exit

Live R

Studio B

Live R

Studio AFire E

2 volume knobs, the top is fo

adding or reducing gain durin

recording and the bottom doe

same but for playback.



Noise Gate Section. Has settings

adjust the range, threshold and th

release.

EQ section. Some channel strips

will have a parametric EQ while

some will have a semi

parametric. Also, some may

have LF and HF settings which

are essentially shelving EQs.

Auxiliary adjusters are used to

determine how much signal from

the channel strip is sent through t

busses.

Panning.

Channel fader, allows forvolume adjustment during

playback and when mixing

with the desk.Solo Button: When selected o

this channel will play.

Mute Button: When selec

the channel will be muted



Equipment in Studio A

- Soundcraft Sapphyre Mixing Desk: The Sapphyre is a 36 channel mixing desk. It

has EQ and noise gate on each channel strip. See below for diagram.

- Motu 2408 Sound Card: Very low latency, converts analogue signal to digital.

⁃ KRK e8s: Speakers, well balanced frequencies with good tonal balance.

⁃MIDI Mixer 7s: Allows up to 8 devices to be connected.

⁃ Bantam Leads (Patch Cables): Used to route signal through the patch bay. You can

send signal through from an input to a piece of outboard equipment and then routed

back into the channel.

⁃ RJ45 (Ethernet Cable): These are used to connect a computer to a router. They usually

produce a faster connection than you would get on Wi-Fi.

⁃Firewire: Connects the Sound Cards to the tower. It was originally developed by Applefor use on their old mac models but has since been replaced entirely by Thunderbolt.

⁃ USB Cables.

⁃ Thunderbolt: The fastest connection after USB 3.

⁃ LA-610 Pre-Amp and Compressor: This piece of hardware is comprised of the 610

preamp and the LA2A compressor. The preamp and compressor were originally two

separate pieces of hardware that were renowned as some of the greatest analogue

units.

⁃ XLR Cables: These are primarily used to plug microphones into an input. They have a

Male and Female end, the Male end being the end with the connectors. The most

common XLR has 3 connectors but can have anywhere up to 7.



Terms

⁃ Auxiliary Send: Also known as buses, these sends allow you to group tracks together

which can be useful for simplifying a mix with many tracks. From here you can send

signal through an effects unit and then return the signal back to the desk with the effects

on it. On the Sapphyre mixing desk the outboard reverb unit is plugged in to aux 2. On afew tracks we adjusted this send so that the signal was sent through the reverb unit.

Then we adjusted the reverb fader to set the desired amount of reverb.

⁃ Noise Gates: A noise gate works a lot like a Compressor in that it has a set threshold to

which it adheres to as it waits to take effect. Noise Gates work by cutting off a signal at a

certain dB which can be useful for minimising background noise or creating a punchy

drum sound. You can tamper with the reduction to determine how many dBs the noise

gate lets through when it takes effect. Some have an attack, hold and release setting.

⁃ Direct Injection (DI): An instrument can be recorded via DI as opposed to being miked.

This is generally accomplished with a jack cable that runs from the instrument to anaudio interface.

⁃ Outboard Compressor: An outboard Compressor is a piece of hardware that works by

compressing an audio signal. The peaks of the waveform will be brought down to a

lower level that’s more coherent with the rest of the signal.

⁃ Unbalanced Cables: These cables consist of two wires inside the cable, one is a ground

wire and the other a signal wire. The ground wire carries some of the audio signal and

also shields the main wire from outside noise. However the wire will still pick up some

background sound. Most unbalanced cable are quite short, only being around 4-6

meters. An unbalanced lead will have 1 ring around the jack.⁃ Balanced Cables: These cables carry a ground wire and 2 other signal wires. Signal is

preserved and noise is cancelled by these cables. These cables can be 15 to 30 meters

long. A balanced lead will have 2 rings around the jack.

⁃ Audio Interface: These allow you to get sound in and out of your computer. They act as

an external sound card and give a greater clarity in your computer’s audio output. Some

models allow for mic and line inputs and volume adjustment through the hardware.

⁃ Semi Parametric EQ: A parametric EQ will allow you to select frequencies, adjust dBs

and reduce or increase the bandwidth of the frequency. A semi parametric EQ doesn’t

allow for band witch configuration.⁃ Shelf EQ: Shelving EQs apply equal gain across a range of frequencies. For example, if

you were to apply a shelving EQ at 200Hz which boosted the frequencies by 5dB, all

frequencies up to and including 200Hz will be boosted by 5dB. Conversely, a shelving

EQ can be used to cut frequencies, the same principal applies in this case.

⁃ Patch Bay: The patch bay allows you to route signal from one location to another. On the

patch bay each channel has its own set of 7 inputs and outputs, these are line in, insert

send and insert return, channel out, tape send and tape return.



To route signal from the live room to the desk first we had to set up microphones in the

live room. As we were miking a drum kit this required quite a few microphones. The

microphones we used were as follows:

-Audix F14 (Kick Drum): Filtered lows and extended low end punch and for this reason is perfect for the Kick

Drum. Has a cardioid pickup pattern to reduce pickup of room ambience.

-Homemade Speaker Mic (Sub Kick).

-Snare Top (Shure SM57): One of the most common microphones around. It’s a dynamic mic with a cardioid

pick up pattern and is ideal for miking an amplifier or acoustic instrument. It is commonly used in a studio

environment to record brass instruments such as the saxophone as it picks up very little sound from anything

other than what it’s directly pointed at.

-Snare Bottom (Shure SM58): Has a very wide frequency response from 50Hz to 15.9kHz. The most common

and iconic microphone in production, it is often used on stage for live performance for it’s durable design and

good vocal clarity. It is useful for recording most things but was appropriate for the snare for it’s cardioid

pickup pattern and wide frequency response allowing for the low end hit and the high end rattle.

-Rack Tom (Audix F10): Dynamic microphone with a cardioid pickup pattern. Has a frequency response of50Hz to 12kHz.

-Floor Tom (Audix F10).

-Overheads (Shure SM7b) Bass and mid range frequency boost. Perfect for vocal recording or to act as

overheads.

The top faders on channels 25 to 36 are used for recording. We adjusted the knob at the

very top of these channels to set the gain during recording, we made sure the ‘line’

button wasn’t selected as we weren’t using line recording. Then we activated the 48v on

the channels which were recording through Condenser microphones. We checked that

the drummer could hear us through the headphones and then adjusted the headphone

volume, the headphones are on aux 1 so we adjusted the fader until it was at a good

level and then recorded.

When we started our mix on the desk we had to first spread the tracks across the

channel strips, this is accomplished by selecting different outputs on Logic. The outputs

are stereo so we have to pan on Logic either hard left or hard right to assign them to

channel 1 or 2, 3 or 4, etc. When our tracks are assigned we can begin mixing. Using

the channel strip you can adjust the faders to the right levels then do more in depth

mixing using the controls higher up the channel strip. It is advisable to remove

muddiness in your mix by cutting out frequencies on tracks that aren’t using them. For

example, the Kick Drum probably won’t be using any frequencies above 2kHz so you

could us your EQ settings to create a low pass filter to remove these unwanted

frequencies where not much is happening. You might want more bass in your mix, you



can accomplish this with EQ again by boosting your low frequencies possibly with a

shelving EQ.

During our sessions we wanted to record a Bass Guitar, we used DI to accomplish this.

Using a jack lead we plugged the Bass Guitar into the Mesa preamp and then selected

the Hi-Z setting. We created a new channel on Logic and assigned it to a channel on the

desk, then we hit the line button and adjusted our top faders to get level. When we werehappy with everything we recorded a bassline into the song.

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Studio a Writeup