Les pourrisseurs(euses) !

Citation : Ben on ferra une quiche sans pâte

Citation : My advice is simple: turn off the damn Internet and round up the best recorded material you can find. If necessary, purchase an audio test CD. Spend a couple days getting your room fixed up and get a proper monitoring environment happening. If you're using Mackie HR824s, re-evaluate because those "perfectly flat" speaker plots are equally misleading to the charts and graphs that show how the Mackie mic preamps sound great.

Once you have some decent audio material and a good listening environment, get a bunch of software demos going and really listen. Bomb Factory Version 3 will give you a fresh demo period: take advantage of it.

In addition, the better audio retailers will happily let you evaluate hardware, microphones and other gear in your own space. Take them up on this service. Or rent some "vintage" stuff and have a listen. Don't be lazy, do the work, make up your own mind. If you need advice or help, feel free to email us and we'll help you get set up to do your own listening tests.

It's really not a mystery how this stuff works. If you're not hearing the sputtering and wheezing in ChannelStrip when it's set to anything except the 1000:1 ratio (which Metric Halo admitted was a bug, one they still haven't fixed in over a year [update: 2+ years]), get a better monitoring environment. If you're not hearing the crackling and popping in the TC Works plug-in, get a better monitoring environment. If you think that "T-Racks" or "Analog Channel" or "Vintage Warmer" or "L1" is sweetening your final mix, burn a CD, dump the same mix unprocessed to 1/2" tape, and spend an hour with a mastering engineer double-checking your conclusion.

It's really not hard to sort the good from the bad when you're in a decent monitoring environment working with properly recorded material. Develop your ears and learn to trust them. That's your only hope--and it'll save you a ton of time and money.

Erik Gavriluk
President, Bomb Factory
December 1, 2002