ORH suggested that I start a thread after I mentioned some of the recording podcasts to which I listen. He is a wise man, so I heeded his advice. I have made a habit of listening to podcasts occasionally during my commute to work as well as on the odd road trip. Please add any similar sites that you may head to any find useful (that aren't for a specific brand).
The first out of the gate is Home Recording Weekly (http://www.homerecordingweekly.com/l) run by a very positive guy named Kern Ramsdell. It is a gear and product review site that has a blog as well as a podcast. His podcasts are digestible (20 minutes), and he doesn't talk down to the listeners...quite the opposite as a matter of fact. He is currently learning about front-of-house sound and has shared a few of his horror stories with regard to his learning curve. As of this writing, he has 71 podcasts available.
Blooby
Home Studio Corner (http://www.homestudiocorner.com/blog/) is run by Joe Gilder out of Nashville. While working at Sweetwater, he started an online blog/podcast and then decided to monetize it after a spell with some recording tutorials, a VIP section with unique content, along with some other items. I should mention that there is a boatload of free content on the site as well as YouTube. Since the focus is on home recording, he also doesn't lord knowledge over you. Some of his posts have a lot to do with time management and motivation, but it's all related to recording or songwriting. He comes across as just a guy facing the same hurdles we do, and the content doesn't get too bogged down in tech talk.
He has an easy-going way about him in his podcasts and has plenty of moments of self-effacing humor. His format lately has been an opening ten minutes or so (his rant section) and then he fields questions from his readers. He is up to podcast 156 as of this writing. They vary in length, but I think his latest format has been 30 minutes.
Blooby
Mix Coach (http://mixcoach.com/) is run by Kevin Ward also out of Nashville. Kevin is a pro mixer and has a blog and a podcast as well. His podcasts are very digestible, often clocking in at under 10 minutes. He may talk about getting bass and a kick drum to coexist in a podcast one week, and then he may talk about the loudness wars (over-compression and brickwall limiting) the next. Another super nice guy, he has a ton of free content but also has a members-only community for a fee). Although he has a ton of technical knowledge (far exceeding the first two folks I mentioned), he delivers it in a way that is understandable. He's up to podcast 97 as of this writing.
Blooby
The Recording Revolution (http://therecordingrevolution.com/) is run by Graham Cochrane out of Tampa, FL. While he doesn't do audio podcasts, he has a ton of free content via YouTube videos (He also has fee-based content). Although he has worked in a pro studio, he also comes across as a guy with the same obstacles as the rest of us.
I find some of his approaches interesting as he will impose challenges to himself and his followers. For instance, he recorded an EP with a DAW in which he wasn't familiar and then forced himself to mix it with ear buds in a Starbucks over time. The results are substantially better than what you would expect.
Blooby
The Simply Recording Podcast (http://simplyrecordingpodcast.com/) is a joint venture between Joe Gilder of Home Studio Corner and Graham Cochrane of The Recording Revolution. They teamed up a few years back and offered a recording academy over a few days in a studio in Nashville for some hands-on instruction. They also started a podcast where they tackle various recording-related issues (with a large degree of fluff). There is rarely much technical information in these podcasts, but they are amusing and informative in their own way. Their podcast lengths vary a bit I believe, but the last one was just shy of 45 minutes. I think they are up to #35 or so, but their site has been a tad wonky over the last week or so.
Blooby
Pensado's Place (http://www.pensadosplace.tv/) is run by Grammy award-winning mix engineer Dave Pensado and his manager Herb Trawick. Dave is one of the top dogs in the biz (Michael Jackson, Elton John, etc.). He started some free video blogs about the technical side of mixing (which is preserved currently in his "Into the Lair" sessions) but then expanded to online interviews with the big-wigs in the industry. You might see mix engineer Tony Maserati one week and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers the next. The shows are very funny once you get past the seemingly endless thanks given to their sponsors (big-time companies in the industry). They recently put out a biography and started The Pensado Awards, which is a ceremony that celebrates those folks behind the glass in the industry.
I don't believe there are any fee-based products on his site other than the aforementioned biography, and the interviews are super-informative in that you see the process of a different person in the industry each week. Granted, some interviews are better than others, but that might have a lot to do with my own personal biases.
Blooby
The Home Recording Show (http://www.homerecordingshow.com/archives/) is (was?) run by Ryan Canestro (California?) and Jon Tidey (Canada?). After 249 podcasts, I'm not even sure if they've met. Their podcasts involve gear reviews, interviews, and quite a bit of sophomoric humor. They sometimes geek out excessively on topics like impedance or DIY effects kits, and there are times when some of it goes over my head. Having said that, they are just about always interesting.
Both of them moved from Pro Tools set-ups to Reaper, and I believe they have continued with a Reaper Blog, which is why I'm not sure they are continuing with the Home Recording Show blog/podcasts. All 249 of the original show are archived and labeled at the site. They range in length from 20 to 70 minutes.
Blooby
Some other sites I occasionally head to...
Music Radar (http://www.musicradar.com/) - Product news, interviews, feature articles.
KVR Audio (http://www.kvraudio.com/) - Latest plug-in releases for DAW's
Plug-in Boutique (http://www.pluginboutique.com/) - Latest plug-in releases for DAW's
Reverb.com (https://reverb.com/blog) - A buy/sell site for musicians that has a blog and various feature articles.
Wow! Now I need to find some time to check all these out.
Thanks for listing this out. I'm big into the recording revolution but I've not really listened to the rest. Now to find the time to check it all out.
Slightly off topic, but kind of not.... Otis Gibbs has a podcast https://soundcloud.com/otisgibbs (http://thanks%20for%20giving%20a%20damn) (soundcloud) that is awesome. He sits down and talks with musicians and they talk about stuff. Funny gigs, meeting famous people, horror stories... just talking. Very seldom is it about recording or songwriting, but it's well worth checking out if you haven't.
Here are some other links to the same podcast depending on how you like to listen:
http://www.podcasts.com/thanks_for_giving_a_damn (http://podcasts.com)
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/thanks-for-giving-a-damn (http://stitcher)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/thanks-for-giving-a-damn/id568743610?mt=2 (http://itunes)
http://tunein.com/radio/Thanks-for-Giving-a-Damn-p473094/ (http://tunein)
Hi,
I'm sure that I have read a post on Songcrafters about LANDR - the mastering web site but I couldn't find it.
I just signed up to the site and did my two free mp3 mixes.
I thought that the mixes did sound more cohesive and balanced.
I'm interested to know if anyone has used the paid service and if the outcomes are good?
cheers,
Ian
I use LANDR all the time as it just adds a certain professional quality to a mix. You get two free 192K mp3s per month, then it's $1.99 per track after that (about £1.40), which even I can afford. I wouldn't go any further than that, for higher bit-rates or different formats like WAV, as my ears can't tell the difference.
A couple of years ago I decided to go down the Hi-Res route for my music collection & bought an mp3 player with FLAC capability. I ripped a couple of CDs to FLAC format, which all the Hi-Fi buffs rave about (Alchemy by Dire Straits & The Planet Suite by Holst - just to try it across a couple of different genres), but even through a £150 pair of headphones I couldn't hear the difference between FLAC & 192K mp3. As soon as I go below 192K, I can detect a drop in sound quality, but nothing above 192K makes any difference at all to my ears. As the free mp3s from LANDR are at 192K, this is ideal for me & as long as I don't do more than two tracks per month (which is rare), then it's a free service.
The really difficult thing is the mixing. treat each individual track, equalize and right position in the stereo panorama.
Landr that i knew, optimize, pump the volume but if the track aren't good, could be a lost time
I've tried LANDR on several songs.
First off, regarding Johnny's post about not being able to hear a big difference between 192kbps and WAV. Alot of folks bitch endlessly about how poor the sound is from MP3's compared to wav. I'm with John. I can't hear the difference, although i will admit i wear bilateral hearing aides in social situations. In quality headphones, i think i do pretty well mixing altho i get ear fatigue quickly. One thing about WAV tho, you need to be in that format to burn files to a CD that many players will accept, as well as cd makers.
Regarding LANDR. I record on a standalone Boss BR1200CD. I do ALL my production on them with no software whatsoever. The Boss has (i think) great mastering presets (many to choose from, all of which add different amounts of compression, EQ, etc.) I use the same preset almost all the time. I recently noticed a song i did where i kept all the recording levels quite low and the LANDR process was very evident and impressive...and not just with a volume pump. I also did a song where i kept the levels at near peek, just below clip levels. LANDR did almost nothing that i could notice. Then i read this...which makes alot of sense and will , i believe, make a big difference in the results of songs you send to be "Landr'd" :-))
http://blog.landr.com/prepare-music-landr-mastering/
I'm also a 2 song a month max guy like Johnny, so i will probably stay as a freebie. I can convert their MP3's to wav. via online software like switch sound file converter if need be. They say converting files also causes fidelity loss but i'll be darned if i can hear it. Maybe it would show up on a visual read out, i don't know.
cheers
I've tried LANDR on about 50 songs of various recording/mix quality but just the 192kbps MP3 version. They offered an introductory fee of $9.99 for one year and you could master as many songs as you wanted. It has since expired and I didn't re-subscribed at the higher price. Some songs came out really good and others didn't. A lot depends on how much compression the song already has on it and if the record level is low at about -6db. The song needs to be mixed at -6db or thereabouts for the best results, in my opinion, instead of just lowering an already mastered song's level down by 6db.
One other thing I noticed is if you had a quiet intro, mid, or outro it would also bring that level up to the point where it changed the mix some.
Overall I like it but I would like to try the higher quality version but that means having a payed subscription which I haven't justified...yet.
Just my thoughts on it.
Farrell