Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Studio Monitors vs. Audiophile Speakers
I know most of us use studio monitors... just thought Paul McGowan's little lecture was informative.
https://www.psaudio.com/askpaul/studio-monitors-vs-audiophile-speakers/
Comments
Interesting viewpoint, not sure I agree with it though if you're talking about full range monitoring and not something like NS-10s or Auratones. There's a reason most mastering engineers favor higher end "audiophile" speakers instead of studio monitors, they can be just as flat and revealing as a studio monitor while being more powerful (in general).
I think it's a bit of a myth that audiophile speakers are meant to make music sound good, and monitors are meant to make music sound "as it is". I've never met a speaker manufacturer (and I've talked to plenty researching my studio speakers) who didn't take transparency as seriously as possible.
It's probably more true for the lower end market where the low end might be hyped and all that, but past a certain price point I think that it doesn't matter as much whether you use dedicated studio monitors or audiophile speakers. It comes down more to who the manufacturer is marketing them towards more than anything IMVHO.
Funny. What he basically said is that if you want clean, honest, authentic speakers, then use studio monitors. If you want a more exciting experience, get an audiophile speaker that colors the sound. This is quite a contradiction to what other audiophiles are preaching.
I can understand him being motivated to create such a video because today, with some studio monitors, you can get a kind of sound quality and character today for a fraction of the price compared to what you would have paid, say, 20 years ago.
I have compared and built quite a number of high-end speakers in the last 25 years, and now I'm more than happy to use studio monitors at home - paired with a quality EQ. 👍🏼
PS: Yamaha NS10 are a bad example. Nobody would claim these are neutral or linear or clear or whatever. It's more like that their "weird" frequency response delivers a valuable contrast to the "good" monitors which can help doing a mix that sounds good everywhere.
Nonetheless it's always a good idea to listen to the mix on more different loudspeakers.
Great topic. Lately I’ve been thinking that if I had it to do over I would forego the Yamaha HS8’s and get a quality pair of full range, powered PA speakers and small studio monitors for comparison.
It is baffling to me. If I understood baffles, that is. To make a mix that sounds good everywhere... Is that possible? Doesn't it just kind of "average" the result and thereby lower it? Every medium does not get the best mix, but something acceptable?
Not at all. There's a lot of issues I can hear on my mastering speakers that I bet most people wouldn't hear on normal day to day speakers or earbuds. So it's more about getting rid of issues that might only appear on higher end speakers, which usually changes nothing on the lower end stuff. For example, I often listen to older albums I love dearly on my mastering speakers and hear things that never stood out as issues before I owned them. Excessive sub bass, a bit excessive plosives, etc. I can reduce those, while making sure nothing else is changing elsewhere.
The only exception I can think to this is when clients specifically ask me to target a certain playback device, almost always Apple Earbuds. They don't care at all about how it sounds elsewhere, they only care how it sounds on that one system (which is fair since it's BY FAR the most common listening environment out there now).
[though in all honesty I'm probably going to make sure there's no huge issues otherwise that might crop up on alternate devices anyway, just as a matter of course]
Put another way, I know that if I can make a nice balanced sounding song on my mastering speakers, it will by default translate to most other playback devices in a predictable way. It's not about making compromises so much as it is making sure I'm getting the best picture possible of what's really going on in the music so there's no surprises like I mention above.
Sure that's possible, but it takes a lot of experience, or trial and error.
Do a simple experiment: Take both your own mix and your favorite Michael Jackson song mixed by Bruce Swedien. Listen to both on your iPhone, on your car radio, on a cheapo tiny bluetooth speaker, on your hi-fi, your headphones and through the telephone.
Using different sound reproduction systems will reveal stuff that you can easily miss on high quality speakers. That's the reason why in many studios, you'll also find additional smaller speakers that are of lower sonic quality - deliberately.
Like the fact that lower-bitrate mp3s sound worse on bad speakers than on good speakers because the non-linear frequency response does not match the psychoacoustic encoding model of the mp3 anymore.
Thanks @Tarekith and @rs2000. Can you explain bit rate a little more? I never make adjustments for that, just assume the apps know what they are doing!
(Edited my response above while others were replying, sorry)
Don't confuse bit rate with bit depth.
Bit rate in effect tells you how much of the information in the song was discarded when converting to a compressed format like MP3. Higher bitrate MP3s (say 320kbps) contain more of the original information of the uncompressed wav file than lower bit rate MP3s (say 96kbps). In effect, higher is better.
Bit depth is a measure of how much dynamic range can be recorded in a digital file compared to the noise floor. IE, 24bit file are generally better than 16bit files, since the noise floor of a 24bit file is approx -144dBFS while a 16bit file has a noisefloor of only -96dBFS. In practice it's typically better to use 24bit or perhaps 32bit while working on music, while 16bit is generally the current standard for releasing music. You're correct that in use, most apps handle this just fine on their own though, so I wouldn't stress about it too much.
Thanks @Tarekith. I upload to SoundCloud with the recommended MP4a (?). I am guessing that is a higher unlit you than the MP3. Would I get a better result not converting the WAV to MP4 as suggested on Cubasis?
YES! If you're uploading to Soundcloud always use the wav or aif file, otherwise you're converting from one compressed format of lower quality to another compressed format of lower quality (also known as transcoding). Especially with Soundcloud which (IMVHO) has a shit MP3 encoder anyway.
MPEG 4 (also "AAC") has better quality at the same bitrate than mp3. A good compromise for mp4/m4a is 128kbit/s with 44100Hz sample rate. With mp3, you should not go below 192kbit/s, and higher if you have lots of percussive sounds (e.g. from analog synths).
Other good quality lossy formats are OGG Vorbis (more widespread) and Opus (even better quality at low bitrates). Both are open-source and don't have license issues like mp3.
Agreed, if you are going to use a compressed format for music, AAC is definitely better. It's how I distribute all my own music on my website, though I tend to use 320kbps AAC files. iTunes can do these conversions for you, and is just as good as some of the more expensive convertors.
Indeed, iTunes has one of the best AAC encoders available - for free 👍🏼
A major drawback of using studio monitors as regular speakers, is that they are usually near field monitors, meaning, they sound best when they are a few feet from your head. Bigger speakers sound better for living rooms and anywhere you aren’t anchored right in front of the speakers.
Actually, the major drawback of using studio monitors is that they are the size of a fridge. I once considered buying a cheap pair or Ureis - double 15" I think they were - but realised that once I'd stuck them in my 3.5m fronted terrace there'd be no way to actually get into the house. Traditional studio control rooms are built around the monitors and the desk.
unless they did a major change recently Soundcloud ALWAYS applies their 'special' codec to uploaded tracks.
Whatever is streamed (direct listening to the site) is processed by that software.
(which is rather sensitive to loudness (better avoid 0dB/fs and stay 1-2dB below zero) and significantly blurs the sound - thus being more forgiving to harsh sounds).
Only tracks with 'download' available keep their original quality, but only AFTER you downloaded them. Otherwise it's always the Soundcloud 128 kbit codec.
Exactly, which is why you don’t want to upload a compressed file.
Hmmm. Live and learn! No more compression for me. Thanks for all the expert advice. @Tarekith , @rs2000, @Telefunky, @Processaurus @pauly. I feel very fortunate to be part of this forum!
Happy to help!