How to understand audio speak.

Getting the glossary

A friend of mine follows this site and likes reading what I have to say. We’ve been friends for a while, recorded some songs together, shared some beers and late night outs. But through the awesomeness that is social media he told me all this through Twitter.

Granted, I don’t live in the same country as him anymore and I like using Twitter as much as the next guy so I don’t take offense.

Getting to the point, he pointed out that sometimes I use terms that can be indecipherable for a newcomer to audio technology, using slang and general lingo that people have a hard time understanding. So I’ve decided to every once in a while write glossary posts with terms that relate to what I am talking about here on this site.

Scanning through previous posts I have found some terms I think might be confusing to the newcomer. Some are obvious to those in the know, but then again everything is obvious if you know the answer.

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P.A.

• Public announcement or P.A. is what you usually call the sound system or speakers you are working with. Slang like “Coming over the P.A.” basically means “shit that’s coming out of the speakers.”

Outboard equipment

• This is the equipment, whether it be compressors or multi-effect processors that don’t come built into your mixer or DAW. In a live setting, this is usually a big rack filled with all sorts of compressors, multi-effects, gates and other types of effects.

DAW

• Digital Audio Workstation. This is your software sequencer, Logic, Pro-Tools, Cubase. Whatever you use to record music in your computer.

FOH

• Front of house. This refers to front mixing area, where the sound-engineer mixing the concert is stationed. Also the best are to watch a concert sound-wise because if the engineer is a pro, it will sound the best around this area.

FX return

• When you send a signal from a track to an effects processor, you need to return the effected, or wet signal to a track. These tracks are referred to as FX returns.

White noise

• This is noise that has equal distribution of energy over the frequency spectrum. Used for measuring electrical equipment. Can be used for enhancing sounds, like snares or hi-hats.

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These are just some of the terms I’ve been using these last months. I’ll come back to this subject again in a while and give you some more glossary to understand.

Is there anything you guys need to know especially? Let me know in the comments or in an e-mail.

First tip of audiotipaday.com

Hello and welcome. This is the first post of audiotipaday.com. I had the idea of publishing a different, short audio tip every day for all you audio enthusiasts out there. I will try to cover as much as I can regarding recording, mixing, mastering, music theory and writing. These tip will be short and quick to read over your morning coffee or midnight tea, without much complication.

Many of these tips will be tricks I have learned from my professors at SAE Institute in Madrid where I am currently studying. A more detailed bio on me later, but without further ado, the first tip of audiotipaday.com.

You all know the classic reverse reverb, where the reverse seems to swoosh in before the phrase of the singer or the hit of the drum. A neat trick for something different is to record an infinite reverb on a different track and then reverse it.

For example, say you have a slow intermission type middle part and the part before ends on a snare hit. You can record that last snare hit on a different track with a big cathedral like reverb with infinite decay. Then you can reverse the audio part and put it low in the mix, then you have a weird controlled reverbed ambience filling out your slow part.

This tip was taken from my Top Ten Reverb tips and tricks published on www.emusictips.com. Check out the article for more tips, although I will probably post more of them a different day.

Björgvin