Check Your Mix, Don’t Wreck Your Mix Pt. 2: The Wreckoning

This post is a follow up / addendum to a post from 2018 (WTF?!). If you haven’t, I’d suggest reading that first. https://bobmaccsblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/mix-buss-compression-limiting-check-your-mix-dont-wreck-your-mix/ I thought I’d continue from that article with a similar terrible title. So what?! Since posting that article I’ve shared it with a few producers/customers, with the intention of helping them out. […]

Interview with Matt Davis

Matt Davis falls into a very specific category for me. I’ve never met him, and never heard any of his work, but I have the highest possible respect for him. Some people just know WTF is what, and Matt knows WTF is what. That we share a love of picking up heavy objects would also […]

Chasing LUFS

Written in response to a fairly standard ‘the numbers say X, can you make it louder?’ email. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while and it finally burst out. I didn’t direct this at the customer though, poor fella would have wondered wtf was going on… Firstly, in my experience RMS is […]

Quick Bettermaker Mastering Compressor review

Typed this on Gear….. space, thought I might as well bung it here. Lots happening here peeps, sorry for silence. More stuff soon, honest. ********* Ok, I wanted to write more about this comp but here we go. I’ve had it for about 6 months I think. It’s growing on me. The sound: In BM […]

GOLY Dynamic shelving equaliser review

Hey hey everybody 🙂 This review will start with the now-standard apology to the manufacturer, for the lengthy delay in writing this review. I’ll follow that with the same reason I’ve given before: I’ve been too busy using the thing to write about it. So, I’m sorry Gustav, but it’s your own fault. I’ll follow […]

Bob Olhsson quote

Just saw this courtesy of the Gearslutz mastering forum. He puts it much better than I ever have. And you can’t argue with Bob O, I don’t care who you are. ‘Mastering is creatively frustrating. We can work our “miracles” but they’ll never sound as good as getting the basic integrity of the mix right […]

Mix headroom for the 86 billionth time

Response on a friend’s Facebook page, essentially asking “how much headroom is good for dance music?”. Short answer – it doesn’t matter. Just stay under 0dBFS and don’t worry about it. Export at 24-bit, or at 32-bit floating point. I can explain the difference if you need but it doesn’t really matter if you’re under […]

Limiting / clipping things in the mix

“… Do you think it’s degrading my sound quality to be limiting my groups in the mix down process? To be honest, I never use compressors, only limiters if I’m trying to control sharp peaks or potentially smash a snare or clean sound. I just feel like there’s something I’m doing wrong, or some technique […]

51dB Audio PEQEX review

I want to start this review with an apology. I’d like to apologise to Peter for it taking so very long to get this thing written. I could blame Coronavirus, lockdown and all that stuff. But the fact is I’ve been so busy using this thing that time has got away from me. So Peter, […]

Technical frustrations be damned

[An email reply from a few years back – it’s been in draft on this blog for years now but there’s no reason not to post it…. Background: 2 years of work on an album and it’s quite possibly all going in the bin because of frustration about technical matters, sample rates being one of […]