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The Secret Of Recording Great Sounds – Audio Premium

on Oct 27th 2009 with 6 comments
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In this week’s Audio Premium content, Bobby Owsinski texplains how technique trumps equipment when it comes to capturing great sounds.

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

“Contrary to what many might think, just having great equipment doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’ll capture great sounds. Sure, having expensive vintage equipment helps, but when it’s all said and done, technique will trump equipment almost any day. I’m constantly amazed at the sounds that some people can get out of just an M-Box and an SM-58.

“Here’s a list of variables that you must be aware of when recording just about anything. While you can’t really quantify exactly how much each variable contributes to the way something ultimately sounds because each situation, even within the same project, is unique, you can generally break it down to something like this:

“The Player and the instrument contributes about 50% to the overall sound. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less – but always the greatest portion. You can prove this to yourself. Get a player who’s not yet that accomplished and record him with his equipment. Chances are it will sound pretty mediocre. Then get a great player to come in and play on the same equipment. You’ll be shocked how good the gear suddenly sounds. It’s not as dramatic going the other way around sometimes, but you can definitely hear the difference when a mediocre player goes from mediocre equipment to finely tuned studio gear.

Table of Contents

  • Secrets Of Mic Placement
  • How To Find The “Sweet Spot”
  • Placement Considerations
  • Phase Cancellation – The Destroyer Of Sounds
  • Acoustic Phase Cancellation
  • The 3 To 1 Principle
  • Electronic Phase Cancellation
  • Checking Phase The Easy Way
  • Checking Phase The Slightly More Difficult Way
  • Times When You Might Want The Phase Selector Reversed
  • Summary

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Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

A long-time veteran of the music industry, Bobby Owsinski has produced and composed for records, motion pictures and television shows along the way. Currently a principle in the content creator 2B Media, Bobby has also penned hundreds of articles for many popular industry trade publications and has authored several books that are now staples in recording programs in colleges around the world including “The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook”, “The Recording Engineer’s Handbook”, “The Audio Mastering Handbook”, “The Drum Recording Handbook”, “How To Make Your Band Sound Great,” and “The Studio Musician’s Handbook.”  

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  • http://js-smg.blogspot.com/ James Sutcliffe

    I can’t comment on the actual article because I haven’t read it but I believe the title of the article is wrong and quite misleading.
    “How to record great sounds” would indicate that the article is more about recording sound effect type sound sources, or ‘sounds’ as they are usually referred to, as in anything that is not a musical instrument or an instrument that isn’t being used in a “traditional” musical way.
    I appreciate some of the techniques in the article may be universal when recording any type of audio, however the summary given about the article does indicate that it’s mostly about recording music.
    This point may seem quite anal. But as someone who is much more involved in recording sounds for sound design type purposes rather than recording music, the title got me excited, only to then be annoyed at finding that it is yet another article on music recording techniques.

    Audiotuts is a great website and has proved very useful on several occasions, I just wanted to put this point across though because in a professional world there is a distinction between audio, sound, and music and it would be nice to see audiotuts recognise this a bit more.

    • miniMAL

      I agree with every word james.

      There is NO “Secrets” in recording.
      techniques yes for sure but not secrets and fancy words.

      • Stefan Frank

        When i read “Secrets” i already think of techniques.
        I dont mind if it is called Secret, Magic or supreme awesomeness!
        If you know that there is no secret…where is your point?

  • Jordan Hack

    Audio=Sound=Music. It’s all the same thing. Recording audio is recording music or sound. Audio techniques are directly correlated to music and sound because it captures both. You use audio techniques to best capture the sounds… That’s what this article was about–Highlighting some of the basics in capturing audio. Even though he only touched the tip of the iceberg with his comments, I do think his title was appropriate, just not indepth enough.

  • http://loufie.com Louf Hawkner

    If you want to talk about the “professional world” then, according to the definitions working engineers use, sound refers to all vibrations in the air perceived by the ear (musical and non-musical), and noise refers to all non-musical sounds.

    Before you go trolling a real audio professional again it’d be wise to confirm the definitions of the terms used in the “professional world” you’d so desperately like to become a part of.

  • stephen nuamah mensah

    I eally wanna know more about recordin coz a wanna be a rap artist.
    Still vibes Entertainment in Ghana is my director.Am LIL PURE thanks.