Headphone Mixing Mistakes: Why Mixing Exclusively on Cans Can Destroy Your Low-End Translation
Headphones solve one of the independent engineer's biggest problems: the room. They remove speaker placement, wall reflections and most...
BACKDOWN Department
Audio Engineering
Stories filed under Audio Engineering from BACKDOWN Magazine.
Gain Staging 101: Why Hitting Your Plugins at the Right Levels Prevents Digital Distortion
One of the easiest ways to make a modern DAW session feel amateur is to make everything unnecessarily loud. The waveform fills the lane, pl...
How to Prep Your Raw Vocal Stems for a Mix Engineer Without Triggering Phase Issues
A mix engineer should not have to reconstruct the recording session before mixing the song. Yet that is exactly what happens when an artist...
Microphone Placement Secrets: Getting Crisp, Radio-Ready Vocal Recordings in an Untreated Room
When a vocal sounds expensive, listeners tend to credit the microphone. Engineers are more likely to ask where the microphone was placed. A...
How to Sound Professional on a Budget: Acoustic Treatment Hacks for a Bedroom Studio Setup
A bedroom can be a recording studio, but calling it one does not make it acoustically neutral. Bare drywall, parallel surfaces, low ceiling...