Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Home Sweet Home
The Billie Eilish-Finneas sweep at the Grammys put the spotlight back on home-based, bedroom studios, proving that a good song is a good song,...
Mike Levine, Mix Technical Editor-Studio, has been a music-technology journalist for over 20 years. The former editor of Electronic Musician and Onstage magazines, he was also the US editor for the Paris-based music-technology site, Audiofanzine. You’ll also find his writing on pureMix.net, the Yamaha Music blog (the Hub), Waves.com, the Universal Audio blog, Sound on Sound, Popular Science and ask.audio. Levine is a professional musician, producer and composer. He’s written music for TV shows on CNN, the History Channel and A&E and TV commercials for Advil, Days Inn, Lysol and more. He played in Broadway and Off-Broadway pit bands, on numerous sessions on guitar, pedal steel and dobro, and engineered and mixed countless projects. Check out his music at michaelwilliamlevine.com and his writing at mikelevine.journoportfolio.com.
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Shake, Rattle and Roll
Mike Levine went to see an Oscar-nominated film in a Dolby Cinema and loved the experience... except for the trailers, which felt more like...
New Products
Product of the Week: Warm Audio Bus-Comp
Despite the accuracy and ease of use you get from analog-modeled digital plug-ins, there’s still nothing quite like mixing through the real thing. Warm...
New Products
Product of the Week: Audified ToneSpot Voice Pro
Audified’s ToneSpot Pro line of plug-ins includes ToneSpot Bass Pro (which we covered in February of this year), ToneSpot Electric Pro, ToneSpot Acoustic Pro and ToneSpot...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Together or Separately?
With two simultaneous recording projects in the works, Mike Levine finds himself working in two very different manners, both of which work just fine...
New Products
Product of the Week: Strymon Iridium
You may be wondering, “What the heck is a guitar stompbox doing as Mix’s product of the week?” Well, the Strymon Iridium is an...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Murphy’s Law, Home Studio Edition
Mike Levine has had more than a few niggling, frustrating things happen in his home studio lately, which led him to find out more...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: What’s With Avid Updates?
Updating a DAW's software, and hardware, is a big deal, and Mike Levine is not a fan of the perceived push to move users...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Finding Beauty in the Dirt
Thoughts on parallel compression got Mike Levine thinking about applying parallel saturation to dirty up his guitar tracks in a mix.
Daw -Recorders
Review: iZotope Ozone 9
Major Update Adds Even More Powerful Tools to Mastering Suite
New Products
Product of the Week: Apogee Clearmountain’s Domain
Bob Clearmountain, the original hit-making engineer, worked hand in hand with Apogee in the design and feature set of his new signal-chain plug-in
New Products
Product of the Week: Sonnox Oxford Drum Gate
Sonnox Oxford plug-ins have a reputation for quality, so when I learned about the Oxford Drum Gate ($169) at AES, I had pretty high...
Reviews
Focusrite Scarlett 18i20
This Third-Generation Interface Offers Improved Specs & Useful New Features
New Products
Product of the Week: Steinberg WaveLab Pro 10
WaveLab Pro is among the most fully featured audio editing and mastering applications on the market. With the recent release of version 10, it’s...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: The Benefits of Actually Being There
It wasn’t that long ago, maybe 10 years or so, when there was talk bout trade shows being on their way out. People speculated...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: When Bad Sounds Good, and Vice Versa
There’s a certain irony to the fact that we put so much time and energy into getting the best fidelity possible in our recordings,...
New Products
Product of the Week: Arturia 3 Delays You’ll Actually Use
When it comes to Arturia software effects, good things seem to come in threes. Following on its previous bundles, 3 Preamps You’ll Actually Use,...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Before You Press That Upgrade Button…
In October, Apple will release Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina, and when it does, my Mac will start bugging me to upgrade—and it can...
New Products
Product of the Week: United Plugins/FireSonic FireCobra
The recently launched United Plugins is a conglomerate of several different smaller European plug-in developers. The company hit the ground running with several new...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Get Smart
Over the weekend, I read a fascinating op-ed in the New York Times called “How to Build Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust.” Its basic...
New Products
Product of the Week: Reason Studios/Propellerhead Reason 11
Reason 11 will be released on September 25. The highlight of the new version is the Reason Rack Plugin, which will allow you to...
New Products
Product of the Week: TC Electronic Finalizer
Software options for DIY mastering are getting more plentiful and powerful. The latest entrant in the space is TC Electronic with an application called...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Of Moods and Mixing
Here’s a thought exercise. Imagine you had to mix the same song twice, in different studios with different monitors (I know that sounds like...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Something Is Rotten in Copyright Land
A couple of weeks ago, Katy Perry and some members of her production team were hit with a $2.8 million copyright-infringement verdict, which stated...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Separation Anxiety
I have a modular music system in my house that has speakers in three different rooms. It’s super-convenient, allowing me to listen to the...
New Products
Product of the Week: Sonible smart:comp
Software keeps getting smarter. At the rate it’s going, it may be controlling us someday. But for now, we thankfully still have the upper...
New Products
Product of the Week: Audient Nero
It stands to reason that a company that builds consoles would have plenty of expertise in monitor control features. So when I heard about...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Master of Some
Back in the analog era, it was easier to fully master the gear in your studio because, unless you were working in a large...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Chatty Plug-ins
Do your plug-ins have a good working relationship with your DAW? Sounds like a silly question, right? After all, plug-ins by their nature are...
New Products
Product of the Week: Antares Auto-Tune EFX+
Antares recently released Auto-Tune EFX+ ($199) the latest plug-in in its Auto-Tune EFX series. As in the previous version, Auto-Tune EFX 3, you get...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Audio—A Second-Class Citizen
This week, I’m going to deviate from the usual studio-related subject matter to talk about a more general issue. Have you noticed how in...
New Products
Product of the Week: iZotope Neutron 3
iZotope has been at the forefront of incorporating artificial intelligence into music software. Many of its major titles, including RX, Ozone, Nectar and Neutron,...
New Products
Product of the Week: Waves Submarine
“Steer course to two-five-four. Kick drum bearing zero-five-niner. Close all water-tight doors. Prepare plug-in for firing…” Oops, sorry. I was just trying out Waves’...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Rent-to-Own Gathers Steam
More than ever, you have options for acquiring music software. You can buy it, subscribe to it and, in a more recent development, rent-to-own...
New Products
Product of the Week: UAD Software v9.9
When Universal Audio announces a new version of its UAD software, you can bet it will feature at least a couple of new plug-ins,...
Blog
Mix Blog Studio: Learning By Doing
Did you know that daisy-chaining AC power strips is considered to be dangerous? Neither did I, but when doing some research for my recent...