To most people noise might just be noise, but in the audio world there’s more than one type of noise. The various types are named after colors, such as white and pink. According to Wikipedia, the color names for these different types of sounds are derived from a loose analogy between the spectrum of frequencies of sound wave present in the sound and the equivalent spectrum of light wave frequencies. That is, if the sound wave pattern of “blue noise” were translated into light waves, the resulting light would be blue, and so on.

The rest of this article (with a lot of technical explanations) can be found on this Wikipedia page.

The commonly accepted colors are white, pink, blue, brown, purple and grey. Sometimes the names differ, and some wants to add other colors to the list as well.

The Equalizer – or EQ for short – is basically a device that let’s you “sculpt” the sound by raising or lowering the volume at a specific frequency as opposed to lowering or raising the volume of the entire spectrum like a regular volume control does. When talking about EQs this is generally referred to as “boosting” or “cutting”. The number of “bands” decides on how many places the EQ can boost or cut. The width of the spectrum that the bands will affect is set with the “Q value”. There are a myriad of different EQs available that functions in different ways.

The compressor is a device that basically compresses the sound , that is, reducing the dynamics. By doing so it is possible to better “glue” the sounds together and in the end also raise the volume.

Each compressor functions differently, but common controls are threshold which decides at what levels the compressor shall start working, ratio which decides how much compression will be applied, attack and release which are timing parameters for setting how fast the compressor will work, and finally gain (or makeup gain) which helps in setting the level of the compressed signal.

One more of the fundamental tips is to keep your distance from the mic which most people forget for with proper distance (which by the way you get only with experience with your setup) from the mic for whatever cost you may have spent on a mic use it wrong and you get trash. Mic filters, wind screens and many other stuff will get you respectable audio yet if you are still in the learning curve, try this trick, make a distance cue, say a pencil with the tip coated with some fluorescent paint to make it stand out and focus on the proper distance using it as a guide till you get it to sink in. More →

Here’s a series of clips where I’m basically playing around with a couple of rhythm loops and a synth. They’re variations of the same theme.

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Mid-side – or M/S – recording is a way of setting up two microphones to create a wide stereo image. The mid microphone is placed to face the sound you want to record. The side microphone must be a figure-8 microphone (such as a ribbon). It’s placed at about the same spot as the mid microphone but aimed differently, like 90º off-axis.

A big mixing desk have a lot of channels that you can record and/or mix through. Usually these channels have a preamp, an EQ and sometimes a dynamics section (I.E. a compressor). A channel strip is basically one channel that could’ve been pulled out of a mixer. Home recording have had a great impact on what kind of recording gear is available today. Many of us only need one or two channels to record at once, and possibly a nice compressor to even the levels as we do it. With that said, channel strips are probably more popular and common than ever before. So instead of buying a separate compressor, mic preamp and EQ, the channel strip allows you to have it all in one box.