- 1). Sit centrally between your speakers and approximately 5 feet in front of them to ensure that you get an equal balance of the stereo image. Play the piece at a moderate volume and listen. Play it again, and make notes of distinctive sonic characteristics. For example, on "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2, the distinctively "roomy" sound of the drums is a prominent engineering characteristic. This was achieved by recording the drums at the bottom of a staircase where natural echos were prominent.
- 2). Draw a graph that represents the stereo image as you hear it. "Panning" is a sound engineering industry term that refers to the placement of a sound in a stereo image. For example, the two guitars in the introduction to "Dead Skin Mask" by Slayer are panned hard right and hard left, respectively. This separates the guitars in the mix and gives the listener a sense of proximity. Plot on your graph where you hear the sounds in the mix. Use the vertical axis to plot position in terms of volume, and use the horizontal axis to plot position in terms of stereo image. For example, the lead vocal might be high and center, while percussion is low and panned to the side.
- 3). Play the music back through an MP3 player. MP3 files are heavily compressed, which limits the frequency range. This limitation highlights certain sonic characteristics that are less noticeable on high-fidelity playback.
- 4). Load the CD onto your computer and open a music player, for example iTunes or Windows Media Player. Drag the file into an existing play list. Listen to the first 10 seconds of the song you are analyzing, and then move to the next song. Note whether the original song is louder or quieter in comparison. Then play the original, and scroll two songs down in the play list and compare the volumes. Compare the song your are analyzing with thirty other professionally released recordings to assess whether the volume is quiet, below average, average, above average or loud. The volume of the recording is influenced by the mastering technique. Mastering is an important post-production sound engineering technique.
- 5). Listen to the album "Death Magnetic" by Metallica to hear an example of "walled" mastering. Use this as a reference CD to compare the mastering techniques used on other work. The album was controversial because critics claimed the extreme mastering diminished the dynamic range of the recordings (See Reference 3).
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -