Hey everyone! I have been utterly fascinated with Tom Petty's Wildflowers home demo tracks from '93-'94. They have such a roomy vibe; I just love how raw and authentic they sound.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

Confusion Wheel (Home Recording)
Only a Broken Heart (Home Recording)
Leave Virginia Alone (Home Recording)

My budget is around $500-$550 CAD! I was wondering if any of you guys could give me some recommendations or advice to suit my needs?

My current microphone is just a USB Blue Yeti. Not anything shocking, and I don't think it is really the greatest for what I want to achieve. I am aware Tom used two mics, one for guitar, one for vocals + harmonica. I heard SM57s are very good, and that Scarletts are great for the audio interface portion. I already have a DAW, which is Reaper.

Non-gear-wise, how would I go about producing something equivalent to those home demos? To me, his vocals and guitar just sound like simple EQ and compression. I am also curious about how I would go about mixing harmonica to get a similar feel to the demos. They sound very mellow in the second and third tracks I linked.

All the help and support are highly appreciated!

Not sure how Warm Audio is ranked , I heard they’re highly great .
But Im deciding between a Warm Audio WA76
or Warm Audio Bus Comp 2 Channel Stereo VCA Bus Compressor.
I’m slowly building a Rack mount and I got these in mind . I know one is mono and the other is obviously stereo. If you guys got other suggestions please let me know or have any warnings of Warm Audio .
I don’t mind plugins but I like to own my things.
I no longer have interest in spending money on plugins.

I've been going back and forth on this lately, especially with multi-mic drum recordings. It's pretty easy to look at the waveforms, move everything into alignment, and assume you've made the drums tighter. But sometimes the result sounds smaller or loses some of the character that made the kit sound good in the first place. I've been experimenting more with phase correction instead of just automatically time aligning every transient. The difference can be pretty noticeable on the kick and snare, particularly when you're balancing close mics with overheads and rooms.

For those of you mixing drums regularly, what's your approach? Do you always time align? Do you manually adjust polarity and phase, use a plugin, or mostly trust your ears and leave the timing alone? I'm particularly interested in workflows that improve low end punch without making the whole kit sound unnatural.

I normally mix and listen on headphones (Sony MDR) because I have pretty severe high frequency hearing loss (roll-off around 1kHz coming to a complete cut-off point by 4kHz. Though lately, I've pulled out my old monitors (JBL 305's) and started experimenting with those again because I really like the stereo imaging of speakers.

My point of frustration is this: I really like not wearing headphones, and I really like how stereo sounds on speakers, but the problem is that it seems like whenever I'm trying to mix (or even just listen to my collection) on these monitors, I can't hear nearly as much detail as I can on the MDR's. The sound is much darker, and transients don't poke through very much.

That said, I fully acknowledge that my room is untreated. It's probably a good 16x20x14 bedroom and the floor is concrete. There's tons of stuff along every wall, so I'd like to think that helps a little bit, but probably not much.

So I guess I'm posting to ask, what do y'all think is the issue here? Is my hearing probably just too bad for me to use monitors effectively? Or do these problems sound like typical untreated room symptoms? Do you think I just need better/different monitors? Turn the volume up more? Skill issue? Would love any suggestions from more experienced people

EDIT: In case it's relevant, I'll just mention that I have noticed that my listening experience is much better when I EQ up the mids in iTunes' equalizer. It's not perfect, but it does seem to sound remarkably closer to how I'm used to things sounding on my headphones. I'm not sure if this is a clue that it may just be my ears

We are talking up to 8 hours of sustained 130-140F. Obviously acoustic guitars need to go and probably my synths too. I'm still unsure about the GIK acoustic treatment. I'm very unsure about my E8XT monitors and Kali IN-5's.

Recommendations for vocal chains

Anywhere I can find vocal chains to tweak ? Any good sources , sites, people , patreons you recommend?

I just need a good foundation point to build off from and customize, and fine paying too

Styles are for rock electronic and jazz, (ableton)

Thanks!

—

P.S I’m aware it’s best to build your own. I’m just looking for a good starting point to heavily customize

Hello everyone!

I have enough money set aside for essentially one solid online course, and I want to find a course that will be most worth my while.

For context, I work full time teaching basic music production at both the primary school and university level. I live in the LA area and love attending synth expos and meetups, etc. I also produce my own music and hope to record my first album within the next year or two.

I really just want to take my knowledge to the next level. The main courses I am considering are mixer brain from Jeff Ellis, Greazy Wil’s courses (particularly the recording one) and of course Think Like a Synth from Anthony Marinelli.

My question is, would any of these (or other courses be worth the $400-500 they cost, or would I be better of learning for free online and putting the money toward something else?

Thanks!

Just messing around with 2F big bootie mixes making a new combined mashup. Feel free to dm for a copy to upgrade, improve, etc

https://soundcloud.com/mayorwardproductions/rays_final_master_320kbps-4

Went to Jensen’s website today for the first time in around a month to find it absolutely neutered by Jensen them selves. Product listings, gone. Data sheets, gone. White papers, gone. Direct to consumer sales….. gone. Jensen used to pride them selves as the only transformer company who published the full specs of their transformers and to remove all the information from their website spits in their founders face.

Hey everyone,

I'm a 21-year-old software engineering and computer networking student based in Europe, and I want to break into the live sound industry. I have a massive passion for acoustics, physical properties of sound, mixing, and system engineering. I also have a tiny bit of practical experience from organizing a one day music festival, underground raves, playing in amateur bands live and music production in Reaper as a hobby.

I have a direct connection to the owner of one of the major regional rental companies (they do big arena shows, corporate events, and festivals). I’m planning to sit down with him soon to ask for a foot in the door.

I want to be brutally honest with myself: I am 100% aware that having an IT background doesn't make me an engineer on the field. I suppose that for the first year or two, my job will be pushing heavy flight cases, wrapping muddy cables at 4 AM, and doing the dirty work which I am completely fine with. I understand that college teaches you practically nothing and I have a strong will to learn. I am brutally afraid of monotonous office IT jobs.

However, my long-term goal is to leverage my networking and software knowledge to become a System Tech / Audio Network Engineer.

Since all of the experience I have gathered during college is basic networking, systems administration and coding (basic as in elementary network setups, wiring, OSPF and VLAN configuration, DNS, ...) I suppose that the learning path will be rough.
I am looking to narrow down to a structured and well tested learning path.

I’m currently planning to get my Audinate Dante Level 1 & 2 which will be my first ever certs.

My questions for the experienced folks here:

1. What does the learning path look like for someone transitioning from pure IT/Networking into System Tech roles?
2. What are the absolute "must-know" concepts in acoustics and audio electricity that my IT college didn't teach me?
3. Which software should I start messing around with at home? (e.g., Soundvision, ArrayCalc, SMAART, SysTune, ...?)
4. How do I balance my IT brain with the reality of the field so I don't end up the "boss's little boy"?
5. This one I feel is the most important for me. Should I first brush up on specific details and knowledge needed for the role before actually contacting the boss or should I just do it and potentially learn there?

Any advice, book recommendations, YouTube channels, or harsh reality checks are highly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone new to post production for audiobooks. Just picked up a gig where I master the audio for these long form books . What plugins are you guys using to hit the levels on the long form audio format? The levels they want me to hit are -16lufs and -2 true peaks. Is there a way to batch this for the files? At the moment I have 50 files and they are all supposed to hit this range. Am I overthinking it? What is the easiest way to do this? I am on pro tools of that makes a difference. TIA for any help.

Hi. I just graduated this Friday with a degree in Sound Technology from ITLA in the Dominican Republic. I had the highest GPA among the Sound Technology graduates. All my classmates are celebrating, but I still haven't posted anything on my socials.

When I was about to start college, I had dreams of helping independent bands and artists in my country who might not have a lot of money, and of helping my church achieve a whole new level of sound quality. But somewhere along the way, while I was still studying, that light started to fade.

Now I'm depressed and questioning my existence after feeling like I've wasted my youth. All my friends are making good money, and I can't even find a job in my field.

AI stole my spark the moment I first heard an AI-generated merengue song in 2024. I knew us music producers had no hope.

On top of that, my institute focused almost entirely on music production. Our electronics class consisted of listening to the differences between types of saturation. I don't know how to solder a cable, let alone anything about electronics.

The same thing happened with acoustics. We were asked to draw a floor plan of our rooms and even design a studio in Autocad, but I don't have the slightest idea how to properly soundproof a room.

The live sound portion of the program, which is practically the only area offering job opportunities in my country, was also taught very poorly. I have no idea how to set up an entire sound system by myself. I barely know my way around the Behringer X32.

I sent my portfolio to a film studio here in the Dominican Republic, and they completely ignored it.

I spoke to my institute to ask whether they offered scholarships to graduates who wanted to pursue a second degree, and to my surprise, they told me they don't offer scholarships to former students. I'm screwed.

I wanted to hear some advice from someone with experience because I can't take all this mental shit anymore. I don't want to end up living on the streets.

I don't know whether pursue a bachelor's degree at a university abroad, take live sound courses here in my country or study a completely different degree unrelated to sound.

Is there a program or plugin that can analyze the pitch of multiple samples at once?

I have a ton of one shot kick and snare samples, and it would take forever to check each one separately.

The way I do it now is to load a sample(s) to an audio track, then translate it in Melodyne. And then I have to go thru each one individually and rename the file....

Thanks.