Speaker Placement

Alright, by now we've probably seen the prices of good quality studio monitors. You may very well be asking: "Why are they so expensive?". To which your smart arse friend probably answers: "Because they are good quality." They are good quality because they have a flatter response than normal speakers, i.e. they output roughly the same power over all the frequencies in the audible spectrum. The more you pay, the flatter the response.

This, however, is not my point... my point is that if you spend all this money and set them up like an idiot, than its a waste. This is because the way they are set up in a room affects the frequency response. Below is a figure showing the correct method for setting up monitors.

In the figure, you are the ugly red thing and the grey squares are your monitors. The room is represented by the outer square. Firstly,you must be the same distance away from each of your speakers as they are from themselves (this is represented by distance X in the figure). Secondly, your speakers must be placed an equal distance from each wall (distance L in the figure). You can choose any distance you like to represent X and L.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Sound Proofing and Room Acoustic Basics
Tips for Recording Drums
Free Drum Lessons
How to Capture Audio from Video
Beginner's Guide to Ubuntu Recording

An Overview of Compression

As a newbie to recording, you may have heard of compression or even played around with a compressor. However, at first it is quite difficult to understand exactly what all those knobs do.

First things first... a compressor essentially limits all signals over a certain threshold value. When it limits these peaks or high volumes, it does not simply chop then off like a limiter. It reduces the peak's volume over a certain period governed by the attack and release times. Also, the size of the adjustment to the peak's volume is determined by the compression ratio.

Compression is useful for two things,

1. to reduce high peaks which saturate the output.
2. to louden the quieter bits. By reducing higher volumes and raising the make-up gain, the track volume becomes more constant. i.e. The chorus has loud drums and electric guitar and the verse has acoustic picking - naturally, the verse will be far quieter than the chorus. The solution would be to use a compressor on the master track which limits the chorus but not the verse, and then bump up the volume with the make-up gain.

The following link defines in detail what each knob on a compressor does: Compression Glossary

A Recording of Mine

I've been recording some songs for my church and below is an example of one of them:

Ain't No Rock.mp3
Please note: I did not write this song and thus take no credit for it. This recording will not be used for financial gain in any way.

It is a very simple song recorded with hydrogen drums, an acoustic, an electric, a bass and two vocals. Below is a list of the programs I used to record the song and all of these were run with Ubuntu Studio.

• JACK
• Ardour
• Hydrogen
• JAMin

Please feel free to write any comments or questions...

Other posts you might find interesting:
The Best Programs in Ubuntu Studio
Audio Recording in Ubuntu - Part 1: Plan your Project
Audio Recording in Ubuntu - Part 2: Recording a Hydrogen Drumbeat
Audio Recording in Ubuntu - Part 3: Adding Effects to your Ardour Drumtrack
Hydrogen Drum Machine Basics