#TheMakingOf is where producers, engineers and mixers lift the lid on their processes by dissecting past projects, revealing the secrets behind the stems.
Nashville-based producer, engineer and music production advocate Jeff Balding (Eagles, Shania Twain, Taylor Swift) reveals how he approached opening up the stems for the immersive mix of Blake Shelton’s triple platinum-certified hit ‘Boys ‘Round Here’.
As well as being behind the boards on many Grammy-nominated projects, Jeff is a proud member of METAlliance and a key figure on the National Steering Committee for the Producers and Engineers Wing of the Recording Academy, where Jeff dedicates a lot of time to establishing best practices for music creation, as well as leading on advocacy, educational and technical initiatives. Now frequently mixing in Dolby Atmos (and streaming his mixes to clients with Audiomovers), he harnesses cutting-edge technology to bridge the gap between fans and the songs they love.
LISTENTO is the industry standard for remote audio. Get an extended free trial when you use the code MAKINGOF at checkout.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
A movement isn’t necessarily theatrical going, you know, over your head, it’s something that’s adding to the groove, so it’s making you bob your head more than you would on the stereo mix.
I was working on Blake Shelton, Boys ‘Round Here doing the immersive version of that single. That production to that song actually had a lot of great elements for an immersive mix. I was able to cut some of the hook, redneck, redneck hook stuff up and put that in different speakers. So it’s bouncing around.
There’s a lot of other elements that I could move around in the room, and the whole idea of we wanted, with that immersive mix, working with Scott Hendricks on it, was to make sure it’s. It not only kept the song intact, but it had an entertainment value to it. It was entertaining to listen to, and that’s not necessarily flying stuff around, but that’s going, oh, where the sounds come out.
It moves you, it keeps your attention, but it doesn’t distract you from the vocal. We’ve worked hard on it to get that out of it. You know, finding elements and where to put ’em and being very specific and intentional. That song really turned out great. Not only do you hear more space around things, but you’re getting a movement that you can’t get any other way.
In this episode of #WhereIWork, seven-time Grammy Award-winning producer, engineer and mixer Vance Powell (Chris Stapleton, Elle King, The White Stripes) talks about his role in helping build two of the most well-equipped and storied studios in the world – John McBride’s Blackbird and Vance’s own Sputnik.
#WhereIWork is where we flash our VIP passes and gain access to the sacred spaces, the hallowed grounds where some of the best producers, songwriters, engineers and artists call home, and explore some of the amazing projects that took shape there.
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LISTENTO is the industry standard for remote audio. Get an extended free trial when you use the code WHEREIWORK at checkout.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Blackbird is a kind of a, it’s a, it’s a unicorn in the business.
I was sort of basically hired onto Blackbird because I had just built a studio for this band for Jars of Clay that we’d won this Grammy award for.
It’s a studio that didn’t, uh, I mean it had a budget. It’s just nobody paid attention to it. If John wanted it, it got done. 2000 microphones, you know, 800 tube mics, you know, I mean, just craziness.
There are things that Blackbird has that I don’t think anyone’s ever used. There are MIDI tie-lines between buildings. I don’t think anybody’s ever used that.
So all these different things, what you kinda learn is what works and what doesn’t work. So we moved over here to Sputnik. This is my studio, my half of the studio that I share with my partner, Mitch Dane.
I came after Mitch did. Mitch’s side got done first. I knew what I needed. I knew where it needed to go, and I knew that we needed it fast.
They put the console in here, then they painted, and then we put these tiles up on the day before the session, and then a band came in the next day and we started recording.
And it’s evolved tremendously since.
#MixTricks is where the very best mixers, engineers, producers, and musicians let us in on some of the best secrets tips and tricks they’ve picked up on their way to the top.
In this episode of #MixTricks Grammy-nominated mastering engineer, and owner of Infrasonic Mastering Pete Lyman (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile) speaks about the power of EQ and why it is every mastering engineer’s best friend.
LISTENTO is the industry standard for remote audio. Get an extended free trial when you use the code MIXTRICKS at checkout.
My name’s Pete Lyman, and my mix trick, which is actually a mastering trick, is how to use EQ to raise the apparent level of a track.
Most mastering engineers don’t pay attention to meters or numbers. It’s all about EQ. In mastering, I think there’s a misconception that we’re just using a ton of compression and limiting.
To get a track to sound louder reality, I would say 90% of it is EQ, getting the mid shaped and, and getting the areas that your ears hear immediately.
You know, really working on that midrange. Oftentimes a midrange boost, maybe a boost around like somewhere in between one or two k.
A nice broad boost will make the track sound louder than just pushing it into a limiter, especially if your mix already has a lot of low end.
You can push it into a limiter and you can get a reading on a meter that says minus 6 LUFS or whatever.
But that song could still sound significantly quieter than a well mastered song that was, metering, lower controlling the sub frequencies, tailoring the mid-range properly. That’s really the trick to loudness.
A successful career in music doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and an unwavering sense of dedication to achieve your goals and reach the dizzying heights of your dreams.
#TilYouMakeIt is a collection of stories chronicling those moments and capturing wisdom from the game’s most esteemed producers, mixers and engineers.
This time around, Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer and owner of Nashville-based mastering powerhouse The Hit Lab, Nathan Dantzler (Niall Horan, Megan Moroney, Teddy Swims, Kelsea Ballerini), sheds light on the importance of creating emotionally impactful listening experiences for artists and fans alike.
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LISTENTO is the industry standard for remote audio. Get an extended free trial when you use the code TILYOUMAKEIT at checkout.
We’re trying to remove as many barriers as possible between the artist’s heart. And the listener’s heart.
Make it feel as effortless as possible. When a fan or a listener listens to a song to connect with the song, we don’t want anything getting in the way of that. Sometimes that’s something as nerdy as sibilance. You know, like I find sometimes like if something’s overly de-essed, then you kind of struggle to pay attention to the vocal.
And so we try to figure out how to get that right on the edge to where it’s intelligible again. So that’s like a technical example, but sometimes we’re working on a master.
We don’t know what it is that we’re looking for, but like it’s like as soon as you’re kind of find that thing, it’s almost like the light and the air of the room changes and it like clicks into place.
And so it’s a really fun experience when you’re working on something and maybe it’s a small move, maybe it’s a big move, but sometimes you feel that and it’s almost like the air changes density and everyone in the room can feel it.
And it’s really fun to experience that when no one’s saying a word and we all just click, we all just feel it.
Like, boom, that’s it. We got it. We work on a record. And sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s really special when it does.
The long awaited arrival of Greta Gerwig’s live action take on Barbie –The Movie is finally upon us. As we celebrate its release, we are thrilled to share the role that Audiomovers has played in bringing the Barbie Dream World to life.
Ryan Gosling, who plays Ken, recorded his vocals in Abbey Road Studios alongside engineer Riccardo Damian and Senior Runner Sarah Meyz, as the seven-time Grammy Award-Winning Music Producer and Songwriter Mark Ronson tuned in from New York via LISTENTO.
Streaming high-resolution, multi-channel audio in real-time, Mark Ronson could share feedback, give direction and enjoy the seamless remote collaboration made possible with LISTENTO.
Abbey Road Studios was also home to the recording of several of the film’s orchestral parts which were penned by Ronson and Andrew Wyatt and arranged by Matt Dunkley.
Recorded in Abbey Road Studios’ iconic Studio One by engineers Geoff Foster, Peter Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley with recordists Dan Hayden and Chris James Parker, alongside engineers Neil Dawes, Tom Ashpitel and Joe Wyatt, senior runner Sarah Meyz and runner Mack Kniese.
Using multiple audio devices in a DAW session can be a gruelling back-and-forth process, as DAWs will only support one audio device as their playback engine.
When you need to switch between devices for bringing in or sending out audio from your DAW and external audio devices, the experience can be frustrating.
Our recent update to OMNIBUS now allows you to utilise both virtual and hardware inputs from any audio device connected to your Mac.
In this article, we’ll be discussing using multiple USB audio microphones and audio interfaces within your DAW using OMNIBUS. This context is a great use case for anyone getting started in podcasting or recording with a DAW but who may also be struggling with not having enough audio inputs from their audio interface.
As mentioned earlier, OMNIBUS supports hardware audio inputs, allowing you to connect any audio device to your DAW of choice through OMNIBUS.
1. First, navigate to audio settings in your DAW of choice and select one of the OMNIBUS drivers as your DAW’s playback engine. Once set up, all audio travelling in or out of your DAW will have to be routed through OMNIBUS. For this example, OMNIBUS B is selected.
2. Once you’re set up with your playback, you’ll need to route your DAW’s output to your designated monitor outputs in OMNIBUS. For this example, we’re using external headphones.
Simply scroll along the routing matrix until you find your audio destination device and route your DAW’s audio to your output destination. In this case, OMNIBUS B channels 1 and 2 are travelling to channels 1 and 2 to our external headphones output. Now we can hear our DAW’s audio through the external headphones. This doesn’t have to be for just one audio device. You can route to as many audio output destinations as you see fit.
Step 2: Routing in the application
Now it’s time to move on to routing inputs into your DAW. Combining multiple audio devices has never been easier. For this example, we’ll combine our Macbook Pro’s built-in microphone, a UAD Apollo Interface audio interface, and two virtual inputs from OMNIBUS from an incoming LISTENTO stream.
To simplify navigating the OMNIBUS routing matrix, hide audio devices with the toggle on the device list, freeing up space in the routing matrix by removing unwanted devices.
As OMNIBUS B is our DAWs playback engine, any audio input routed to a designated OMNIBUS B channel will now show up on that channel in your DAW.
1. Let’s start by routing the audio interface into our DAW. Navigate to your designated audio interface on the audio inputs side of OMNIBUS’ routing matrix and locate channels 1 and 2. Route channels 1 and 2 from this interface into channels 1 and 2 of OMNIBUS B. Now channels 1 and 2 of our audio interface will travel through OMNIBUS into channels 1 and 2 of our DAW.
2. As mentioned earlier, we have a LISTENTO stream coming in through the LISTENTO app that we also want to record. The LISTENTO app’s output is set to OMNIBUS A channels 1 and 2. Now audio being received from the LISTENTO app will travel into OMNIBUS A’s channels 1 and 2. Now in OMNIBUS, route channels 1 and 2 from OMNIBUS A into channels 3 and 4 into OMNIBUS B.
3. Finally, you can route your built-in microphone into our session. Navigate to the built-in microphone in the device list and route channel 1 from the built-in microphone to Channel 5 of OMNIBUS B.
Now all of our devices are routed into our DAW, we can move on to setting up our DAW.
Step 3: Recording in your DAW
As our incoming audio is all mono microphone signals, we only need to create mono audio tracks.
1. Let’s create five mono audio tracks and cascade our audio inputs from inputs 1 – 6.
2. Now, all we need to do is arm the tracks (enable input monitoring) and start recording.
Make sure your DAW’s playback engine is the same OMNIBUS device you are routing audio to.
“OMNIBUS makes complex audio routing easy whether you’re an audio professional or enthusiast. Now with OMNIBUS 2.0, there is hardware input support and a new and much-improved user interface for greater flexibility. “
IGOR MAXYMENKO
AUDIOMOVERS COFOUNDER
In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of music producers live streaming on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube. Artists like Kenny Beats, Disclosure, and Ian Kirkpatrick regularly share educational and entertaining live streams that delve into their writing and music production processes.
Live streaming is an incredible way for artists, producers and engineers to create secondary revenue streams, and establish and nurture their online fan bases. It can also provide them with the opportunity to learn new skills, techniques and workflow hacks.
However, setting up your live stream can be a complicated process. Most opt for OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), a free, open-source software for video recording and live streaming.
Thanks to our newly updated OMNIBUS tool, it has never been easier to live stream audio from multiple applications using OBS. Below we break down how you can use OMNIBUS in conjunction with OBS when live-streaming sessions to an audience.
OMNIBUS is a software solution for seamless audio routing within your Mac. It allows you to route between applications and hardware inputs and outputs, split audio from one source to several destinations for easy A/B, combine audio input devices for DAW outputs and quickly sample audio from various sources.
It offers an intuitive interface and streamlines the audio routing workflow, making it accessible for all users, from beginners and absolute professionals.
OMNIBUS has an easy-to-use routing matrix, allowing you to simply click the connections between devices you want to make. It also allows you to save and recall complex routing setups with ‘snapshots’, which you can label for ease of finding in future and also has precise metering and support for hardware inputs and outputs meaning it can adapt to even the most demanding scenarios.
Let’s see how OMNIBUS makes capturing application audio easy with OBS.
OMNIBUS & OBS in action: How to live stream a music production session
For this example of using OMNIBUS and OBS, we are using the DAW Logic Pro. The same logic will also apply to your DAW of choice.
1. Set your DAW’s playback engine as one of OMNIBUS’ virtual drivers so that your DAW’s output will be travelling through the OMNIBUS application. For this example, we are using OMNIBUS B.
2. Before moving to OBS, you’ll first need to route your DAW’s audio to your designated monitor output so that you can hear your DAW. Simply drag channels 1 and 2 from OMNIBUS B to your chosen monitor output. In this case, a UAD Apollo interface.
3. In OBS, set up an audio input capture and assign it to one of the OMNIBUS drivers, here we’ve got it set to OMNIBUS A channels 1&2 as we’re only sending our stereo masters output to OBS.
4. Now let’s move to OMNIBUS and get started on our routing configuration. As we have our DAW’s playback set to OMNIBUS B, we’ll simply need to route OMNIBUS B’s channels 1 and 2 to OMNIBUS A’s channels 1 and 2. Once completed your DAW’s audio will be travelling directly into OBS
5. Now, let’s set up a microphone to use for our video commentary. As OMNIBUS 2.0 supports hardware inputs, we can utilise any channel from any of our hardware inputs and route them through OMNIBUS to another designated input for OBS. Doing this will allow you to adjust the levels between your microphone and your DAW audio.
If you’re just starting and don’t have a microphone yet you could always use your computer’s built-in microphone.
6. Let’s repeat the same steps as before in OBS and set up an audio capture device but this time, let’s use OMNIBUS C.
If you have a USB audio microphone such as a Snowball mic, you could select this right here. However, for this example I have a microphone plugged into my audio interface that I wish to use as my commentary microphone. All I need to do is route channel 1 from my audio interface into OMNIBUS C channel 1.
As this is a mono channel, however, you will notice on the input level for our mic in OBS that it is only capturing audio from the left channel. We’ve selected a mono signal and OBS is thinking it’s a stereo input. To amend this, simply navigate to advanced audio properties in your audio capture device for your microphone OBS and navigate to the mic input capture you created and change it from stereo to mono.
7. Now we’ve got our DAW’s audio and mic’s audio we’re now ready to start streaming or screen recording.
Before you start streaming, it’s good practice to test out your stream. Simply start recording and pass some audio from your daw and your microphone. Now play this video back and see whether the audio is being recorded.
Once you’re happy with your setup, you can go back into OMNIBUS and save this routing configuration for later use.
“OMNIBUS makes complex audio routing easy whether you’re an audio professional or enthusiast. Now with OMNIBUS 2.0, there is hardware input support and a new and much-improved user interface for greater flexibility. “
IGOR MAXYMENKO
AUDIOMOVERS COFOUNDER
As of the latest release of the INJECT plugin, Audiomovers supports Pro Tools’ new channel layouts and expanded track widths.
Audiomovers INJECT Version ver1.52 – Released 5th July 2023 – boasts support for all of the new Pro Tools channel layouts. The new Pro Tools version 2023.6 offers support for track bus and IO widths greater than 7.1.2 (specifically up to 7.1.6 in Pro Tools Studio and 9.1.6 in Pro Tools Ultimate), opening up support for Atmos mixing setups.
As of the latest release of LISTENTO plugin, Audiomovers supports Pro Tools’ new channel layouts and expanded track widths.
Audiomovers LISTENTO Version v2.94 – released 26 June 2023 – boasts support for all of the new Pro Tools channel layouts. The new Pro Tools version 2023.6 offers support for track bus and IO widths greater than 7.1.2 (specifically up to 7.1.6 in Pro Tools Studio and 9.1.6 in Pro Tools Ultimate), opening up support for Atmos mixing setups.
The support for Pro Tools’ new expanded channel widths comes on top of the existing partnership between Audiomovers and Avid, who have partnered on a bundle to bring remote audio collaboration to new and existing Pro Tools users:
– New annual Pro Tools Studio subscribers get a free year of LISTENTO Basic, – New annual Pro Tools Ultimate subscription get a free year of LISTENTO Pro. – All existing Pro Tools Studio and Ultimate customers get 25% off either a LISTENTO Basic or LISTENTO Pro annual subscription. – This Pro Tools Audiomovers promotion will run from June 21 to July 26, 2023.
We are excited to announce that Audiomovers have partnered with Avid on a bundle to bring remote audio collaboration to new and existing Pro Tools users.
Whether mixing hip hop or recording orchestral sessions for major motion pictures, Pro Tools and LISTENTO have become essential parts of the audio engineer’s workflow for rapid client feedback.
What’s LISTENTO?
LISTENTO from Audiomovers is a remote collaboration plugin that allows users to share uncompressed audio straight from the DAW. Users create and share links with clients or collaborators, which can then be opened in the DAW, in a web browser window, or on Audiomovers’ own apps for iOS and Android.
Stream audio in real-time from Pro Tools in up to 32-bit PCM/96 kHz quality
Stream 16-channel multichannel audio, or spatial up to 7.1.4
Adjust latency from 0.1s and stream bit rate for ultimate stability
Listen to the stream via a link – open in your web browser, on your phone, or in Pro Tools via Receiver plugin
The offer to any new Avid Pro Tools Subscribers is twofold:
Those who opt for Pro Tools Studio will receive a free year of LISTENTO Basic, while those who opt for Pro Tools Ultimate will receive a free year of LISTENTO Pro.
In addition, all existing Pro Tools subscribers will be offered 25% off either a LISTENTO Basic or LISTENTO Pro annual subscription.
Features
LISTENTO Pro
LISTENTO Basic
Simultaneous listener count
150 listeners
10 listeners
Up to 32-bit/96 kHz streaming quality
✓
✓
Adjustable latency and bitrate
✓
✓
Stream in up to 7.1.4 surround
✓
✓
Up to 16 multi-channel audio transmission
✓
✓
Stream MIDI
✓
–
Custom backgrounds
✓
–
Watch how you can record a LISTENTO stream directly into your Pro Tools session in three easy steps.
Set up an aux track and add the receiver plugin.
Send the output of the receiver aux to another aux track and set up an audio track with the input source set as the previous aux track.
Paste the streaming link you’ve been sent into the receiver plugin and record your audio track
