0:00

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Inside the recording studio.

0:23

I see what you did there Jody, I see what you did.

0:24

I am Jody Whitesides, and with me as always is Mr. Chris Hellstrom.

0:28

How are you today, Chris? I did that like as I started that out,

0:33

Yeah, nicely done. But to answer your question, I'm doing good. I'm doing alright. How about yourself?

0:36

I'm like, how do I just work my way into this?

0:38

And I just did that. I'm feeling worked over.

0:45

Yeah.

0:47

Well, congratulations. Yeah

0:47

Yes, I played in a pickle ball thing last night

0:52

and the guy that I played with against the three other teams

0:56

that we played with with two other teams with us.

0:59

We did very, very well.

1:01

Yeah, so that was fun.

1:04

Yeah, all right. Well, hopefully a good workout and all that kind of stuff, but I sounds like he did well

1:04

It was a lot of difficult playing, so I am feeling worked over.

1:09

That's a good way of saying it. Yeah.

1:14

Head room.

1:15

Given the intro, what are we talking about today?

1:18

Yes.

1:18

♪ That vrooooooon ♪

1:21

- Mm-hmm.

1:22

Headroom in recording mediums and why it's important to keep track of it.

1:26

And just as importantly, what the heck it is.

1:29

So maybe some definitions are in order here first, I think.

1:30

All right.

1:32

First definition I want to talk about is dynamic range.

1:33

Right.

1:36

And what dynamic range is essentially from the noise floor of recording,

1:42

recording when we just get like ambient noise and all this kind of stuff all the

1:45

way up to distortion or in the digital realm clipping right and yeah well I

1:51

I'm going to agree with that.

1:54

thank you sir I appreciate that most of us are recording 24-bit these days which

1:57

Yes.

2:01

Yes.

2:01

gives us a dynamic range of 144 decibels that's a hefty hefty range and that is

2:09

Sure. plenty for us to work with. There are differences where we can do even like the 32 bit which gives

2:10

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick

2:13

break. I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:16

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:16

us 192 decibels, 48 bit which gives it 288. But as I said most of us tend to work in 24 these days

2:18

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:20

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:22

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:24

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:25

and that is plenty we cannot work with. So that's the dynamic range that we're actually dealing with.

2:26

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:28

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:30

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:31

I think you experienced 288 decibels when you were doing that demonstration at NAMM the other week.

2:32

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:34

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:36

I'm going to do a little bit of a quick break.

2:38

(laughing)

2:38

(laughs) But yeah, 24 is enough for most of us.

2:40

- Headroom is how much audio space you give yourself

2:44

That's plenty to work with. So now when it comes to headroom,

2:47

do you wanna take headroom? Or how would you kinda think

2:49

of what actually headroom is as a definition?

2:52

Right.

2:56

between where you're recording something

2:59

and the upper end of where your things are going

3:02

to start clipping or distorting in your gear.

3:06

Right.

3:07

That is the amount of decibels between your loud spot

3:11

and your ultimately distorting or clipping spot.

3:14

And there's quote unquote a sweet spot

3:18

that you can be sitting in.

3:20

And what exactly is the sweet spot?

3:24

Now we're going to open up this for discussion, right?

3:26

Because people are going to do different things. Now there are some sort of conventions that we tend to stick with.

3:32

If we start talking about the analog world, the sweet spot would be zero, like a unity,

3:35

Uh-huh. Mm-hmm.

3:37

[ Pause ]

3:40

if you will. Now with analog gear, it tend to go into the red, right?

3:47

And that would raise it up like another 4 dB or something.

3:49

And it would show that that's when you start getting to go over and potentially getting

3:53

distortion right now. From what I understand, the analog world and the gear would have another 20 dB of headroom

4:00

before you smash it all to smithereens, right?

4:03

Mm hmm. It's to give you that warning shot across the bow to

4:03

But that was something that was not shown on VU meters

4:07

and still isn't shown on VU meters. So it's just like sort of like a safety valve that's there.

4:12

Yeah, and...

4:16

say, Hey, you might start distorting soon. It depends on

4:17

Right, and sometimes that was a pleasing thing, right?

4:24

If you're recording something. the gear, but yes.

4:25

Yes, it's that and depends on the source

4:26

Mm hmm. Sure.

4:29

and all that kind of stuff, right? But it could give what we call the warmth, right?

4:34

Or you're just going, especially if you're doing more aggressive stuff,

4:37

that that could actually be a pleasing thing.

4:40

Right.

4:40

But when we're in the digital realm, it's not like that.

4:45

So we're showing something that's called full scale

4:47

when we're looking in our meters in the digital realm,

4:51

where zero is now actually the clipping point, right?

4:55

Hmm, where have I heard about that before?

4:55

So the sweet spot here that is sort of equivalent to that unity,

5:01

zero DB of analog gear is minus 18.

5:06

Somebody keeps talking about, right?

5:12

Yeah. Jody is nodding at me here, but yeah, so that that's a sweet spot.

5:13

[laughs]

5:15

Well, I haven't always.

5:18

And that's something that I know you have always flown the flag for like,

5:23

You know, you should always do this. It took me a while to realize it.

5:25

Right.

5:26

And when I first realized it, it was like an aha moment, like,

5:30

♪ Ah, the angel started singing in my head ♪

5:33

and it was like, "God, this is wonderful. "I figured this out."

5:36

Yes.

5:38

So, there you go.

5:39

And ever since then, I've flown that flag.

5:41

(laughing)

5:42

Yeah, right. It's important to understand here at the same time

5:43

(silence)

5:45

[ Silence ]

5:46

why we look at minus 18

5:48

and why that is important as a sort of sweet spot.

5:52

It allows you to if you're right there, that's your sort of

5:55

average thing that you could potentially if you have a really

5:58

dynamic performance, if you're going up a little bit beyond

6:02

that, you're not risking clipping your signal, and it

6:06

still gives you room to kind of go down lower, so that you don't

6:10

Yes.

6:10

go down and essentially touch the noise floor, but that's a

6:13

good level to kind of emulate analog gear and therefore have

6:17

the pure signal while still having some peaks and valleys if

6:21

you need them. You don't risk to accidentally go over and clip the signal. Agree with it.

6:23

And that's a strong, well, I, yeah, it's a very big agreement from me.

6:28

This is the Stamps of the Multitracks.

6:33

It harkens back to getting the stems for walk this way.

6:41

And I shouldn't say even stems. Transform the populated tracks.

6:42

I mean the multi-tracks. ..Don't send me the stems!

6:44

My, I was on a call yesterday and people kept telling, we're going to send you the stems.

6:49

I'm like, no, I want the multi-tracks. Well, no, that's what we mean.

6:53

Yeah. Don't send me the stems.

6:54

(laughs)

6:55

Send me the multi-tracks. Well, that's what we mean.

6:56

[ Laughter ]

6:57

We're going to send you the stems. Like, no, I want the multi-tracks.

7:00

The idea there is when I got to the multi-tracks of this particular Aerosmith song,

7:01

[ Pause ]

7:05

and I was examining it, all the tracks had their peaks really happening at minus 18 in the digital realm

7:07

>> Thank you.

7:09

.

7:11

[ Pause ]

7:14

for wherever it was transferred from.

7:16

And what made it so obvious to me and why I had that aha moment is I threw all the channel strips up at zero,

7:17

[ Pause ]

7:19

[ Pause ]

7:24

and I hit play, and as I'm listening back,

7:25

Yeah.

7:28

it was so easy to make adjustments,

7:32

to make the sound of the song mimic the actual record

7:37

without touching much of anything,

7:41

because it was already set at a proper volume level,

7:44

and it came out to the output of sounding brilliant.

7:48

And that was my aha moment. I'm like, okay, minus 18 seems to be this great spot to be in.

7:51

[BLANK_AUDIO]

7:55

Mind you, in the early days of digital

7:59

and there are still people carrying over

8:01

You mean if you're recording at too low of a level?

8:02

this thought process from that,

8:05

that was a problem because you could literally hear

8:09

the stepping noise of the digital recording.

8:13

Two over level.

8:17

- Yeah. Yeah, if you weren't hitting close to zero in your peaks,

8:17

(Applause)

8:19

.

8:20

you could literally hear that.

8:21

.

8:23

But digital has gotten well beyond that in the last 20 years.

8:23

[ Pause ]

8:28

So we don't have to worry about it anymore.

8:29

I'm going to start with the first one.

8:30

What we do have to worry about is the headroom

8:31

.

8:32

that we're feeding in terms of the signal.

8:33

[ Pause ]

8:35

Now that recording of that Aerosmith track,

8:37

I believe was 36 tracks.

8:39

[ Pause ]

8:41

I might be wrong on that. I can't remember the exact track count,

8:43

but it was fairly big. [BLANK_AUDIO]

8:45

And when they're all across the board like that,

8:48

it was very little fader moveage that I had to do

8:51

to make sure that it wasn't suddenly too loud

8:54

at the output of my master bus.

8:54

Right, yeah.

8:58

And that was the second portion of that aha moment.

9:02

There was so much headroom on the tracks

9:04

that even though once they were all summed together,

9:06

they didn't suddenly blow out the output

9:09

of the stereo master.

9:11

And that's the thing that I think a lot of people

9:12

Yeah.

9:14

have a hard time grasping is it's not the individual loudness of a track.

9:14

Yeah. Because I think myself included, but I think a lot of people can relate to when you're starting out and recording how you start pushing.

9:18

It's the overall, how many tracks do you have and how loud is it at the output?

9:24

Yeah.

9:32

Oh, I want more kick or I want more of this and that. And all of a sudden, like all your faders are up and then you're blowing up your output just like you just said.

9:40

And then you go, oh my God, my mix is so loud now.

9:40

[silence]

9:44

Now to play devil's advocate here,

9:47

today when we have 32 bit floating processing

9:47

Do it. [silence]

9:52

and everything going on inside our DAW,

9:54

it is less likely that you're gonna clip

9:56

the individual channels as you're mixing.

10:00

But when you are tracking,

10:03

this is certainly something to keep in mind.

10:05

So like you end up with that starting point, right?

10:07

Mm-hmm. So where do you set everything?

10:08

And this again goes kind of hand in hand

10:11

with what we've talked about in the past when we talked about gain staging.

10:15

And it's kind of averaging your levels out on each track

10:18

so that you have a more or less uniform starting point.

10:23

At least that's the way I think of it.

10:25

And having that... When I track or when I start mixing,

10:26

You set all your channel strips to zero or somewhere else?

10:30

Both. Both.

10:31

well, it all starts from the recording process

10:34

Right.

10:36

where I look at, my failures are always at zero when I start.

10:41

Right.

10:41

But then I try to have that average level of about minus 18.

10:46

And sometimes I go a little bit higher,

10:50

but I don't go nearly as high as I used to.

10:52

I had the same mindset of that sort of like analog mindset

10:55

where you have to record as close to zero as possible.

10:59

Not realizing that, well, Sure.

11:01

that's clipping in the digital realm.

11:04

And when we're dealing with so much headroom,

11:07

Sure.

11:07

even like 16-bit, there's plenty of headroom

11:11

for what we're doing, that the chances

11:14

Sure.

11:14

of getting a whole lot of noise in there

11:16

is a lot less than you'd think. So there's no need for that.

11:19

So I have come down and I'm usually somewhere

11:22

between minus 18 to maybe if I'm feeling frisky that day,

11:26

minus 12, right? But my levels are much more uniform in that way.

11:33

it just makes it so much easier because now I,

11:36

well, I'm getting ahead a little bit here, so I won't do that, but this has more to do at this point

11:41

that we're talking about when you're tracking and going in,

11:42

Right.

11:44

that you don't wanna go over 'cause you can always change the signal when it's there.

11:49

I would much rather deal with potential noise in the track

11:54

than clipping of a track, you know what I mean?

11:57

Because that is just, even with all the tools

11:59

that are there today, I'd rather not do that.

12:01

I would just deal with some noise issues.

12:02

I agree with that statement.

12:03

- Yeah. - Right.

12:05

I really agree with it. The other thing that I've found is when you record in digital at roughly minus 18, you're

12:14

not going to find yourself in a need of having to pull faders down constantly.

12:19

And what I liken that to somebody that doesn't quite understand is that when you're pulling

12:20

- Yeah. faders down, you're pulling weight out of your sound.

12:27

And when you're pushing faders up, you're adding weight in a sense.

12:31

And when you want something to weigh appropriately, why pull it down?

12:36

Don't pull it down. But if you have everything heavily weighted by the time you get to your master output,

12:43

your obese would be a good way of saying it.

12:45

That's not politically correct, but that would be an analogy that I would make.

12:48

Yeah, yeah, no, it's there is another guy, no, I mentioned him

12:48

That's a good one.

12:52

here before he goes by the name of mixed by Mozart. A German

12:57

guy, he mixing engineer, master engineer. He has a saying that

13:03

when he looks at headroom, that's the bank account of your

13:06

mix, right? If you have too much going in that you're paying for

13:08

[Silence]

13:12

it somehow, right? One thing that I want to bring up here,

13:15

because I think we might have confused people in the past

13:18

because I know we've gotten questions about this.

13:20

And it's a little bit unfortunate actually that it's happening.

13:23

But when we're dealing in the digital realm

13:26

and we're dealing with sample libraries and everything today,

13:28

Mm hmm. No.

13:29

a lot of those when you're just playing a patch

13:34

is they're loud.

13:36

They're not sitting around that minus 18 level.

13:40

Maybe it's holdover.

13:41

And I think part of that is probably just to give you

13:47

sound that you want right out of the box and this sounds great because it's louder. I think I

13:51

don't know the reasoning why they do it, but I think it's a little bit unfortunate because

13:56

it it could be it could be or

13:58

This thing, Mrci,

14:01

Right, or it's simply the fact that when people try something out and it's like, oh, this is so soft

14:02

is in, like, a reflexive otor.

14:06

From what I was talking about. Mm hmm.

14:08

It's not strong enough in my track. And I think that

14:12

Unfortunately with people doing a lot of electronic music these days

14:16

They get a start and they they learn that that this is where my faders are gonna be set at

14:22

Because they see that everything is kind of like tickling into the red with soft synths and God knows

14:26

Right.

14:28

What kind of sample libraries and drum libraries with people are using right?

14:32

It's almost like that

14:34

Perpetuates that myth a little bit I think and I think that's unfortunate

14:38

I have no idea. No. No, we've touched on a few things here

14:39

It is unfortunate, but right now we're going to take a word from our sponsors.

14:46

And we're back. Why should we care about headroom?

14:54

(laughs)

14:56

But that starts at the tracking stage, really.

14:57

already, right? You mentioned not blowing up your master bus.

15:01

The big [ Pause ]

15:04

Yeah, it does. But when we think about the clipping and all this kind of stuff or any distortion.

15:11

So we want to think about obviously all of these things at the tracking stage.

15:16

We want to avoid clipping and again, can't overstate that enough,

15:21

but it's not the same as in the analog realm pleasing distortion.

15:26

If you've heard digital clipping, it's not pleasant unless you're going for an extreme sound

15:31

and you're doing an industrial track, right?

15:34

Yeah, it almost reminds me of a scene from a movie.

15:34

Um...

15:36

It is super annoying.

15:37

That character's doing shit like that. It's annoying.

15:42

Wait, wait, wait.

15:44

But when you have everything in at the starting level,

15:49

let's say that we're in the digital realm,

15:51

which most of us are these days,

15:53

and we're sitting at all our tracks,

15:55

we're sitting at about -18.

15:57

Mm-hmm.

15:58

You're saying sitting at minus 18.

16:01

Are you referring to the fader number or are you referring to the actual audio level?

16:03

Oh, no, the audio level.

16:06

Right. Yeah, the fader is sitting at unity usually

16:08

Right.

16:11

when I start a mix. If the tracks are gain staged well enough

16:15

where they're actually are kind of uniform, right?

16:17

I just wanted to clarify that.

16:18

Not that, no, that's a good,

16:20

Hm hmm.

16:22

it was an assumption on my part and I shouldn't do that.

16:23

Mm hmm.

16:25

So now the benefit of this is like,

16:27

not only are you not clipping your master fader,

16:31

which there are caveats to that as well

16:33

that we'll touch on. Now you have room instead of just with, like you said,

16:39

losing weight by having to pull faders down

16:42

to make everything fit, you now can move in,

16:44

(chuckles)

16:45

you can pull them up or you can pull them down as need be

16:49

to make that the mix sound. So you have a lot more room to grow and move, I think.

16:55

And it makes it a lot more manageable, I think, for me.

16:57

Okay. So that's, I mean, even if you don't think that thinking about

16:59

All right.

17:02

clipping and stuff like that is worth it to you, even if you

17:06

just disregard all of that, that enough, how making your mix

17:11

easier to deal with that should be a selling point right there.

17:14

It should be. All right. Okay.

17:15

The big thing in terms of the whole concept

17:19

of the bank account of your mix or the weight or overweight or underweight

17:24

of when you're upping and downing things

17:26

if they're incorrectly headroomed

17:28

.

17:29

is when that headroom is set as we've been talking about

17:30

(Applause)

17:32

[ Pause ]

17:34

to that minus 18 dB with the channel strip set to zero

17:39

on the fader in the digital world.

17:39

[silence]

17:42

This allows you to have a much easier time

17:47

to be dynamic with the mix.

17:51

And part of that is that joy of hearing things

17:55

that can be louder and softer in the mix,

17:59

post the concept of this loudness wars crap

18:03

that is slowly going away, thank you.

18:07

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And keep coming back to the same, but

18:09

But it gives you the room to have levels come up in the mix,

18:14

as well as just having to pull them down

18:16

when you've recorded at a much more

18:18

headroom appropriate level.

18:20

Mm-hmm, go ahead.

18:25

like a much more dynamic mix, right? You can have things move

18:27

[ Silence ]

18:28

and it's not just, oh, it's just everything is just slamming all

18:31

the time. Unless of course, that's the mix that you go on

18:33

for them by all means go ahead. Another byproduct of this that we haven't

18:39

touched on today since a lot of the software and plugins today are digital

18:47

emulations of analog gear this will also feed those plugins the sort of

18:52

appropriate level where they should be. Now I say that a little bit loosely

18:55

[ Silence ]

18:57

because again it's like internally if with a float engines and everything it's

19:02

not going to clip to like a super nasty level. It gives you a way to feed the signal into these

19:08

plugins and have them behave the way that perhaps are designed to do. If you're going into let's say

19:10

[BLANK_AUDIO]

19:14

1176 or LA2A or whatever EQ and stuff are you going into, if it's designed to be

19:20

The sweet spot.

19:22

taking the input at a certain level, if you're at that minus 18 in the digital realm,

19:29

maybe that's it's easier for you to get the sound that you want under those plugins. The sweet spot, yeah.

19:33

[BLANK_AUDIO] The big thing here that you're going after, I think,

19:35

Yeah, it's so much like goes over each other, but yeah, go ahead. Do you want to explain that a little bit more?

19:39

is kind of hand in hand related to gain staging.

19:44

Do I want to explain gain staging or the headroom

19:53

or the combination of the two? Well, yeah. Yeah, well, let's say we brought up gain staging here, right? So maybe go back to that

19:54

Well, the idea there that you're getting at

19:59

a little bit and clarify before I stepped all over your comment.

20:04

is with gain staging and headroom

20:08

and getting appropriate levels so that you're hitting

20:10

a sweet spot of the sound of the plugin

20:12

[ Silence ]

20:14

that is the emulation of some analog piece of gear

20:17

that you are hoping that it's supposed to sound like.

20:21

When it's got the appropriate headroom or gain stage to it,

20:26

Yeah. With the lack of gain staging, basically. Yeah. Here,

20:26

it's gonna come out sounding like that piece of gear

20:29

has manipulated whatever sound you've sent through it.

20:32

And if you do that from multiple plugins

20:37

on a channel strip, you have to be aware of what the output

20:41

is at each point of each plugin going from one to the other

20:46

in the channel strip. Otherwise, you're blowing out your headroom

20:49

because of the gain stage. Yes.

20:54

And you are.

20:54

it's it's one of those things though as well where now it's

20:58

gonna sound like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here

21:01

but but if you go in I am because yes I am because if you

21:02

(laughs) No, I'm just kidding. [ Pause ]

21:07

go in hotter to these, it's not like you can't do it but know

21:11

that then you are adding distortion to the signal that

21:14

could be pleasing because now it's emulating analog gear. But

21:19

when we're talking about headroom and stuff, it is something that we at least want to be aware of when we're going into plugins

21:26

as well because it is still possible for some plugins to get overloaded and

21:31

they're distorting right and you might wonder what

21:33

- Right, and that's where you're losing headroom on that.

21:35

And that's what I was referring to for compensating

21:36

yeah that is good practice and even still it's makeup gained and things on

21:38

between plugins from one to another.

21:41

- 'Cause louder just sounds so much sweeter, man.

21:45

compressors right it's easy to sometimes fool ourselves with things are just

21:50

getting louder as opposed to actually sounding better. So

21:53

keeping that that signal. It does. Yeah, it can do certainly.

21:57

- Yep.

22:01

Everything else that we've said here, like even if you just

22:02

- Yeah. - Uh-huh. Very nice.

22:05

disregard all of it, and you don't care about analog

22:06

I

22:08

emulations and everything, that's fine. But I would

22:12

encourage everybody to at least make your mixing job a little

22:15

bit easier. Just try to shoot for those level when you're

22:19

starting to mix up sitting at your faders are unity and we're sitting at

22:24

like minus 18 on the levels and have that as a starting point and you'll be

22:30

amazed I think at how easier it can get to mix I think

22:35

I agree with that. When you start smashing up into your headroom limit,

22:37

Yeah. Right.

22:39

so to speak, you're losing your dynamics.

22:41

And the big thing about a lot of modern songs,

22:44

even with the loudness that they can get out of it,

22:48

there's dynamics happening in some shape, form or fashion.

22:53

The idea also as a mixing engineer,

22:53

Hail mate! We are going back on the

22:57

as compared to a mastering engineer,

23:00

is that the mix engineer should do a really nice,

23:03

awesome mix without blowing out the volume level

23:07

on the stereo master bus of whatever they're about to send

23:11

to the mastering engineer.

23:13

And if I can give a lovely reference,

23:17

when you send a mix off to a mastering engineer

23:21

that really knows their shit,

23:21

train. You

23:23

You

23:23

they were probably going to want it to be somewhere

23:25

You

23:26

between minus 20 and minus 19 LUFS,

23:27

You

23:29

You

23:31

You

23:33

You

23:33

for a mix and a lot of people are gonna be like,

23:35

[ dude, that's so quiet.

23:36

Laughter ] [

23:38

Pause ] And technically speaking, it kinda is.

23:39

[ Pause ] [

23:41

Pause ] But that three or four DB of Headroom

23:42

[ Pause ]

23:44

[ Pause ]

23:45

that you leave the mastering guy to do his work

23:46

[ Pause ] [

23:48

Pause ] [

23:50

Pause ] for say Apple Music and the other streaming services

23:51

[

23:53

Pause ] [

23:54

that are requiring mixes to be at minus 16 LUFS

23:55

Pause ] [

23:57

Pause ] [

23:59

Pause ] or Spotify that's at minus 14 LUFS.

24:00

[ Pause ]

24:02

[ Pause ]

24:03

You're giving the mastering guy the room to do his work.

24:04

Yeah.

24:08

And if you don't do that, their hands are tied.

24:09

Yeah.

24:12

If you send them a mix that's already at minus 16 LUFS

24:16

and they're supposed to master it for Apple,

24:20

well, now they've got to pull the volume down

24:23

to match that volume for anything they add.

24:27

or if they don't do it because they don't care,

24:30

which is unfortunate and it can happen

24:32

to mixing engineers and artists alike,

24:36

the streaming service is gonna do it for you.

24:38

Yeah. Yeah.

24:39

And you don't want that.

24:41

That's just something you don't want.

24:42

And if in doubt, contact the mastering person and say, Hey, how do you want these?

24:43

That's why I suggest that the output of your mix

24:46

should hit roughly minus 20 LUFS.

24:51

Yeah.

24:56

Where do you want the levels to be at?

24:58

And you want to give them just something to work with.

25:01

Right. And what we're talking about here as well is the dynamics of the mix.

25:06

of the mix, or at least what I'm thinking about the dynamics of the mix coming out.

25:10

Because if you just give them a mix that's already slammed and it doesn't have any headroom

25:15

and it doesn't have any dynamics in it, what's the mastering edge?

25:18

There's none for them to dig out.

25:19

Right, what are they going to do?

25:22

So let that person do their job, give them some headroom and again, devil's advocate,

25:25

Right.

25:28

yes, he could just pull it down if it's in the red, it's not going to matter.

25:33

if you don't give them any dynamic range to work with,

25:36

there's very little to do without mastering job,

25:38

as far as I'm concerned. So be nice to your mastering engineer

25:42

and they'll be nice to you, so to speak.

25:45

Right?

25:45

I agree with that.

25:47

Yeah. Let's boot on to our Friday finds.

25:48

Woo-hoo.

25:51

Chris, what have you got today?

25:55

Mm.

25:56

Well, I think people are gonna be excited today because I have a freebie today.

26:00

Mm.

26:00

I have mentioned the company Audio Modern before.

26:05

They've had their Filter Gate and Gate Lab

26:08

and these wonderful plugins.

26:10

Well, I discovered this week that they have a third free offering right now

26:14

and it's called Pan Flow.

26:17

And what Pan Flow does is that it can adjust

26:17

Hey.

26:22

the panning of the track, almost like it sounds like, right?

26:24

Hey.

26:25

But it can do so indefinitely.

26:27

(silence)

26:28

So you can draw in your curves - Mm-hmm.

26:30

and have it be just whatever exact that you want,

26:32

or it can be set to random

26:34

so that it can actually just randomize

26:37

as long as your track is running.

26:39

And that is really, really cool if you wanna do just some sound design stuff on,

26:44

let's say keyboard pads or anything, and just add a little swirly things and everything.

26:48

My Friday find is PanFlow by Audio Modern.

26:52

What about you Jody, what do you got?

26:55

I'm going the route of the BBC Maestro series has recently announced that they have brought

26:55

Cool. Never heard of them.

26:57

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

26:59

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

27:01

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

27:02

in Mr. Mark Ronson to talk about audio production.

27:03

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

27:05

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

27:07

I'm sorry. Cool.

27:09

That course is well, hey, the guy's pretty famous for doing some cool stuff with Amy

27:09

Cool.

27:15

Winehouse, Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga.

27:19

No, never heard of him.

27:19

Never heard of them. Very cool.

27:22

Anyway, mine is take a look at the BBC Maestro series and check out Mark Ronson.

27:28

Yeah, while we've got your attention, we ask that you go to inside the recording studio

27:28

Very cool. [ Pause ]

27:33

dot com and sign up for our mailing list.

27:35

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27:36

Doing so will get you weekly reminders about the Tuesday tips when they come out and we'll

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27:39

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27:40

make sure you don't miss any future episodes of the podcast.

27:41

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27:44

Send us an email at goldstar@insidetherecordingstudio.com with the word "headroom" and you'll get something

27:54

cool back in your inbox. If you have a topic or suggestion for Chris and I to explain in a future episode, contact

28:01

us at the contact page and we'll put it into consideration for a future episode.

28:06

With that, I'll say, "See you next week!"

28:09

weak.

28:10

I'll talk to you later, Jody. Thanks for listening, everybody.