Mac Audio Guy

If you’re reading this article you probably are aware that shooting HD video with DSLRs is all the rage among digital filmmakers. There are far more reasons to shoot this way than not, but one of the problems with DSLRs are their sound recording capabilities. THe Canon 5D Mk2, the Canon 7D and the Panasonic GH1 have external microphone inputs but unfortunately these use auto gain control and have no manual control over input levels. Also these cameras don’t have headphone monitoring. Continue reading »

written by macaudioguy \\ tags: %D, AUDIO FOR VIDEO, Beachtek DXA-5D, Canon 5dmk2, Double System Sound, DSLR, GH1, HDSLR, Jay Shaffer, Mac, Panasonic GH1, portable recorder, Second System Sound, Zoom H4N

I recently received an e-mail from Mike Hohmann and he wants to set-up a home studio using his new iMac and GarageBand, but he was confused with what mics, audio interface and reference monitors he should get, in short, he asked “I know this is a lot of info to cover but I am doing as much research as I can before I spend my hard earned money and simply put I need professional advice from anyone who really knows this stuff inside out and can ask the right questions and say okay here is what you need to get and you should be good to go for awhile. I would like to spend around 1000 dollars for this stuff give or take a little…”

This got me to thinking. What gear I would buy, in order to put together a flexible Mac based home audio recording studio?
Okay, here it is; The amazing $1000 Mac Audio Guy home studio gear list. Continue reading »

written by macaudioguy

Recently I was doing an authorized remix of Herbie Hancock music for a remix contest in Second Life. The first thing I did was download a MIDI file of “Watermelon Man.” You probably know you can drag a MIDI file into GarageBand and GarageBand will try to map the instruments to the closest software instruments that it has. Sometimes this works great, but most of the time it just makes a horrible mess that doesn’t sound at all like the General MIDI Instruments that were intended for the piece. Continue reading »

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The fact that the online community of Second Life provides a way listen to streaming audio has created opportunities for musicians , DJs, and others to stream live audio broadcast into Second Life. Since there are no real good tutorials out there on streaming from a Mac and that I’m getting tired of repeating the same set of instructions, I put together this article. First I’m going to make the assumption that you want to stream to more than ten listeners at a single location in Second Life, and that you already have installed and are familiar with the basics of using Second Life. Please note that you can also stream to even more listeners over the internet using this same method.
Continue reading »

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I wrote an article a few years back on basic audio recording on the Mac, While much of that info is still valid, a lot of it is out of date. So I thought I would update that article and I also plan to make a video tutorial as well, In the meantime here is the article.

We are going to assume that we are recording a simple mono or single channel microphone for the purpose of this tutorial, But the tutorial works just as well for any stereo audio source such as a turntable or a mixer. Continue reading »

written by macaudioguy

It seems at least half of the people I talk to about Mac audio recording are really confused about what software and hardware they should be using. While projects vary widely, they can generally be broken down into three categories:

1. Basic recording and stereo editing. An example is transferring an editing your vinyl collection or a radio program.
2. Basic MIDI and audio multi-tracking. An example would be using Garage Band to compose a song.
3. Professional level MIDI and audio multi-tracking. An example would be live multi-track recording or video soundtrack work.

Continue reading »

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DLS and General Midi Part one, GarageBand’s Best Kept Secrets.

This week I’m starting to tackle a little more complex subject than usual.
I’m working on a soon to be released Cell phone game (or as it’s known in the industry, a mobile entertainment project) and due to the paltry memory of some cell phones the music has to be delivered as a General MIDI file. No, General MIDI isn’t a French military officer; it’s the file format that we’ve come to know and hate from the animated Gif School of web design. The trouble with this project is that the original soundtrack was created in GarageBand. And I need to deliver a MIDI version of the thing. The reason is that as a WAV file the 30-second intro song would be well over 200K even at 8KHZ 16bit Mono. Whereas, the Midi file will be a modest 8K in size. Continue reading »

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In my last Podcast I talked a bit about headphones and monitoring. I did want to mention one follow-up item. Another downside to using headphones exclusively for monitoring beside the dangers to your hearing is that headphone can cause your ears to produce more ear wax, can lead to ear canal blockage which essentially makes you deaf until you get you ears cleaned. There was a period in my career where I would have to go to the doctor twice a year for this. Now I try to avoid headphones and I regularly clean my ears before the wax builds up.
Okay on to loud speakers. Typically professional speakers are called monitors, and manufacturers design these speakers to be accurate rather than hyping certain frequencies to sound louder or more pleasing as some “hi-fi” and computer speakers do. Professional monitors are divided into Studio monitors, which are usually large speakers with woofers in the, 12″ to 18″ range that are soffited into the control room walls and near-field monitors, which are usually smaller, with woofers in the 4.5″ to 8″, range and are freestanding. Near-fields are what most of us use in the home studio environment. Both these types of monitors come in passive and powered versions. Passive monitors need to be driven by an external amplifier, whereas powered monitors have an amp mounted within the speaker enclosure and have line level inputs. One of the pros of a passive monitor is that you can choose an amplifier that suits you budget and taste. The downside is that passive monitors generally have passive crossovers and matching the amp’s characteristics to the monitors can be problematic. Active monitors often use a separate built-in amp fro each driver as well as using more sophisticated active crossovers between drivers. Some may argue that the built in amps are inferior to a separate external amp but personally I think this is academic. The other argument against active monitors is that; “they eat while you sleep” in other words there are always consuming power. Again, remember that you just need to remember to turn them off just as you would an external amp.
The preferred method for choosing monitors is to take a CD that you know well and is representative to the music that you record and listen to the CD through several brands of monitors at a store. Monitors are in my opinion the most important piece of gear in a small or home studio. You need to listen before you buy.
That said, I’m going to mention a few low budget pro-level monitors that you may want to consider. Here’s a list of active monitors that run from about $400-$500 a pair with 5 to 6″ Low frequency drivers:
Alesis MI active 620
Event tuned reference 6
KRK RP6
And M-Audio BX5s
I’m sure I’ve missed some other good monitors in this range, but these four should give you a good place to start for comparison listening.
I could literally write a rather thick book on speakers and studio monitoring, The most important thing to remember is that you want to by speakers that are as accurate as possible and sound good with your type of music within your budget. And remember that speakers are about the most important investment that you can make in your home studio set-up.

written by macaudioguy

Okay let’s talk monitoring, which is a fancy word for actually listening to what you are recording or have already recorded. There are basically two ways to monitor, via loudspeakers and via headphones. I’m hoping to address using loudspeakers in the next episode and I’ll concentrate on headphones for this episode.
If you are going to do any serious recording on your Mac you need both a good set of speakers (and I don’t mean the cheapy computer type) and a decent set of closed back headphones (not the “walkman” type.) The main reason for this is that if you’re recording with a microphone and monitoring the recording with speakers or open type headphones you are almost sure to create a feedback loop. And feedback is both damaging to your hearing and your psyche.
Although you may be tempted to buy a cheap set of headphones, don’t. There are some excellent headphones out there for under a hundred dollars and they are worth every penny.
I’ll take a quick look at three brands that you can get for under a C-note. Specifically Sony MDR-7506s, AKG 240s and Sennheiser HD-260s. A listener recently e-mailed me about my choice of the Sony MDR-7506 headphones in my “best toys for under a hundred bucks” article. He had tried out the Sony, AKG240 and Sennnheiser HD-280 headphones. His contention was that the Sennheisers where acoustically superior and wondered why anyone would consider the two other models because of their “colored” sound.
I wrote back that besides acoustic accuracy, there are other factors to consider when choosing headphones. To quote my reply:
Truth in monitoring is probably the most subjective and complex area in all of pro-audio. It’s like when gawd awful Yamaha NS-10s used to be the near field “standard” speaker in studios (yuk!). In essence almost all audio playback is “colored” unless you are in the exact same room with the same speakers that the mastering engineer used for a particular album. Headphone serve other purposes than just accurate monitoring, in fact I would argue that for true critical listening you need great speakers in a great room, something you’re not going to get for under a $100. Now, what headphones are good for is hearing yourself sing or play when recording, listening to playback in less than ideal environments and as a portablPersonally I like the 7506’s for several reasons. First they are more portable and louder (efficient) than the 240s or the HD280s. I’ve used AKG240s in the studio for years and yes they are excellent cans although the don’t isolate you from external noise as well as the other two. The Sennheisers are very neutral and my only real gripe is that they break. The “fork” that mounts the ear cup has broken on several pairs that I’ve seen. I’m always throwing my Sonys in my bag and haven’t broken a pair yet. As far as how they sound, I’m used to the Sony’s and as my hearing deteriorates having something that you are familiar with becomes more important.
But the real bottom line is that you can’t go wrong with any of these three models and buy whichever of them best suits you and your needs and taste.
Now let’s take a look at how to use headphones while recording. The simplest set up is where you plug your headphones into the built-in Audio output of your Mac or audio interface hooked up to your Mac. This works sometimes but more often not the sound in your headphones is slightly delayed from what you are recording with the microphone. This is called latency, and is caused by the time that it takes for the computer to process the audio from analog from your mic to digital and back to analog for you headphones again. There are a couple of work-arounds for this situation. The first is reducing the audio buffer size. Most audio recording programs have some sort of buffer setting in their recording preferences menu. In the Case of GarageBand it’s under Audio MIDI in the preferences menu. Set the radio button to “Minimum delay when playing instruments live.” The second thing you can do is turn off monitoring for the track that you are recording. This allows you to hear the playback of your previously recorded tracks just not the track that you are recording. Since you can hear yourself acoustically this method can work. However a lot of vocalist and players like to hear effects on their voice and instruments as they record. If this is the case you are stuck with monitoring the record track and any resulting delay. This even applies to the next method that I’m going to talk about. Many higher end audio interfaces have a feature called “direct monitoring.” This takes the takes the signal directly from your mic and mixes it with the sound of your previously recorded tracks from the computer. This method allows you to hear yourself without latency, however, like I mentioned before, it doesn’t allow you to hear effects on your voice or instrument. Latency is less of a problem on really fast computers using dedicated internal sound cards but usually theses out of the budget range of the average recordist. You can also try to lighten the load on your computer’s processor by “freezing” or locking previously recorded tracks.
One final note is that with headphones it’s especially important to protect your hearing at all times. If you want to continue to enjoy your music later in life keep your monitoring levels low. Everybody’s hearing deteriorates over time, but reasonable monitoring levels will help you keep your golden ears until your golden years.

written by macaudioguy

Last week I introduced you to the DLSMusicDevice which allows you to compose General MIDI songs within GarageBand. In part two of this series I’ll show you how to export your General MIDI compositions from GarageBand.
GarageBand is a powerful program but one of its most glaring faults is that it only allows you to export your music to iTunes. If you want to export a tune that you’ve composed using software instruments or the DLSMusicDevise you options are limited. The first and easiest method is to buy Logic Express and import your GarageBand composition into Logic express and then export a MIDI file from Logic Express. Of course if you have Logic Express it raises the question as to why you would compose in GarageBand instead of its big brother. For me, it’s a matter of simplicity. I like to sketch out my ideas using GarageBand as a “quick and dirty” tool then export the tune for polishing in a more sophisticated program. But I digress.
The second, and somewhat harder method of exporting MIDI from GarageBand involves the use of an Audio Unit plug-in called MidiO. MidiO is a freeware utility from RetroWare and can be downloaded from: http://home.comcast.net/~retroware/. Don’t worry I’ll post the link in the Noise section of MacAudioGuy.com. This plug-in will allow you to export a garageBand Software Instrument track as a MIDI stream. What this means is that you can only export one track at a time and you will have to a have some form of MIDI sequencer in order to record the MIDI stream. Kludgy? Sure, but you get what you pay for. So in order to use MidiO, you have to have some sort of MIDI Sequencer program. I like a cool shareware program called EasyBeat. Which is available from: http://www.macility.com/ . The next step is to set the generator of the track that you wish to export from GarageBand to MidiO.. Also set the MIDI output to MDI Virtual source in the edit window. Make sure that no tracks in GarageBand are set to record ready, because you’re likely to create a MIDI feedback loop. It’s far too easy to create a MIDI feedback loop with MidiO so be very careful. Next set EasyBeat or your MIDI Sequencer to use the MidiO as a MIDI Source and then set the sequencer to record. Once the MIDI sequencer is recording then hit play in GarageBand. If you’re lucky and did every thing right you should now be recording MIDI from GarageBand. Once you’ve recorded the stream, you’ll have to repeat the process for each track you want export and then you will have to offset the tracks so that they all start at measure one in your MIDI Sequencer. This process sounds more difficult than it is, but after a couple of tries, you’ll find it becomes at least tolerable.
Okay so now you’ve exported your software instrument tracks from GarageBand and have them as MIDI tracks in your sequencer. How do we turn them into a General MIDI file? The good news is that most sequencers make this fairly simple. In the case of Easy Beat, all you have to do is set the tracks instrument to an appropriate General MIDI instrument, and then after you have set all the instruments, export a MIDI file. And again if you’re lucky you will have a General MIDI file of your song.
Exporting MIDI from GarageBand is much more difficult than it should be, but now you know that it is possible, if your willing to jump through a few hoops.
New and Cool!
If you want to get audio into an iBook or just needed an inexpensive USB audio interface Griffin technology’s $39 iMic is a lifesaver. Guess what? Griffin has just released the new improved iMic 2 and it’s still only $39! What’s new and improved? Mostly the improvements are in appearance. The rather obscure icons are replaced by plain English labels for the inputs and outputs also the new iMic is iPod white instead of the old clear and silver. It also still comes with Final Vinyl software for transferring your vinyl to digital. The iMic 2 is available from Griffintechnology.com or most Mac retailers.
Another easy do product is MXL Microphone’s MXL Desktop recording kit. The all-in-one kit includes a condenser mic a preamp and all the cables you need to get audio into your Mac’s built in audio port. This is a great no-brainer starter kit for only $149. The Desktop recording kit is available from MXLmics.com.

written by macaudioguy