Routledge Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio

Not for beginners,Beginners u can go for audio engineering 101 by Timothy A. Dittmar

Excelente libro, son de esos libros que no puedes solo leer una vez y va siempre al grano con los problemas que los estudios en casa tienen en cuanto a problemas derivados del incorrecto (o hasta nulo) tratamiento acustico de un cuarto común y corriente, recomendaciones para obtener el mejor sonido en cuanto a monitores, audífonos de referencia y sobre todo el detalle de cada pasó en el proceso del mixing en un contexto exclusivamente de home studios.Un libro que me ha abierto la mente en cosas que desconocía sobre el proceso del mixing y sobre todo que está respaldado por comentarios de grandes personalidades de la producción en audio.

As a mature 'student' wanting to cement my existing knowledge of the mixing process, as well as explore the yawning gaps in that knowledge and develop a consistent workflow, I found this book to be almost perfect.I'll get the few (minor) niggles out the way first - and these are repeated in my review of Mike Senior's other book, Recording Secrets for the Small Studio. You should read that book as well - in fact, read it first, as it is focused on the capture of material. Get that right and you're in a much better place when it comes to the mix.Firstly, in the niggle list - the speech bubble call outs are not useful (to me, anyway) as they are no more than verbatim lifts from the text. Fine if the text consists of sprawling passages with no breaks, but this book is usefully broken down into short, titled sections, so the need for those additional highlight bubbles is minimal and they become a distraction. More useful might have been something like another short comment from a respected producer/engineer/artist on the subject being discussed.Secondly, the larger secondary text boxes are often annoyingly placed, such that they unnecessarily interrupt the flow of reading a section or require you to turn back to a previous page to read them. It might make for an interesting layout, but it gets annoying. To be honest, in most cases I couldn't see a reason for the passages to be treated as supplementary text boxes as the topics often deserved inclusion in the main text.Finally on the minor niggle front, the quality of the graphics was up to Focal Press's usual standard - variable. I don't get how a thirty quid book can't offer consistently high quality images and illustrations. Screenshots, as always, look the worst.So, those weeny complaints aside, in pretty much every regard I found the book to be brilliantly structured, clearly written (with enough humour to raise a smile in some of the drier sections) and with an excellent progress from one chapter to the next. It is pretty much laid out like an all-purpose mixing session workflow sequence, starting with prepping the material, moving on through balancing, compression, EQ, and so on. It's crammed with useful tips from Mike and from respected producers and engineers.The book exposed huge gaps in my knowledge and some terrible practices I had developed over the years. The arguments for and against doing things in a certain way were clear and compelling and made total sense, often backed up with comments from the industry experts. It was interesting to compare this with a lot of other free and commercially available mixing training to see how many seemingly elementary mistakes many other people are making. It made me feel a little better about my naivety! In fairness, the 'rules' are made to be followed, bent, broken or ignored as appropriate for the situation at hand, and the end result - the final mix - is the final proof of the pudding. So, for example, while Mike promotes using EQ in the first instance to CUT rather than BOOST to balance a track in the mix, he also goes on to say that there are times when doing the opposite might work better for your desired result. I doubt that people like Brian Eno or Tony Visconti slavishly followed all the rules in the studio. Of course not. While I am sure these pioneer producers have a solid understanding of the 'correct' way to do things, they took those rules and wrapped their own experimentation and fearlessness around them to come up with something different. As a basis for developing your own techniques, or simply as a standard guide to straightforward, logical mixing, either way this book is a fantastic source.I have read it once, cover to cover, and now plan to go through it again with a specific mix on my desk, applying Mike's logic and workflow. I'm rarely excited about reading the same book twice - especially back to back - but on this occasion I am raring to go. I don't think I will pick up another book on mixing for a while, but I will buy a few masterclass style video tutorials to supplement this. It will be interesting to watch these given the solid understanding I now have of the mixing process.

In einem künstlerischen Bereich, wo die Geschmäcker und Arbeitsweisen verschieden sind, habe ich selten ein Buch gefunden, dass so viele für mich wertvolle Informationen enthält.Der Anfang des Buches ist der richtigen Ausstattung gewidmet, da geht es schwerpunktmäßig um die richtigen Monitorboxen, die man wahrscheinlich aber bereits schon hat, wenn man das Buch kauft. Ich springe deshalb bei Lesen munter zwischen den übrigen Kapiteln hin und her, und jedesmal gibt es viel zu lernen. Klingt alles sehr plausibel und logisch.Mir gefällt besonders, dass dem Autor gaaanz viel Musikpraxis zugrundeliegt. Ich habe schon deutschsprachige Bücher gelesen, die sehr technisch waren, aber dieses Buch hier ist durch die Bank musikalisch. Es diskutiert technische Fragen immer im Blick auf die Musikalität und Kreativität. Der Titel weckt hohe Erwartungen, aber das Buch erfüllt diese problemlos. Es wird mich noch sehr sehr lange begleiten.

I have been learning about recording audio for several years now on my own and have read a few books on the subject. Mike's book really helped me to get some things in order in my home studio. I have purchased new monitors based on his recommendations and it has really helped in how my mixes translate. My new monitors are still ported but I think they are in a qaulity range which would allow for a ported monitor that will provide excellent results. (Neumann KH120) I am also going to buy a pair of quality headphones soon. I find the Avantone that I use in mono to be very useful as well.I have read the book once through and am about to give it another go and focus on some of the hands on suggestions provided in each chapter. The online resources are a bonus as this gives you access to songs that you can quickly get to the mixing stage and experiment with Mike's suggestions.Mike also quickly answered an email I had sent which was nice.