RECORDING
TOOLS OF THE TRADE | Doug Doppler
There’s hardly a week that goes by where COMPUTERS + MEMORY
someone doesn’t ask for some advice around Because I buy my computers primarily for audio
their recording setup. Akin to outfitting their and video production, processor speed and
‘first kitchen away from home’, people tend maxing out the RAM are key to every purchase.
to underestimate the scope and expense Although Dropbox is technically an app, I treat
involved. So, the goal of this article is to break it like a virtual hard drive that it makes it easy
things down into bite sized pieces, including to safely synch, push, and retrieve files to and
some of my personal preferences! from the cloud.
ACOUSTIC TREATMENT
The most pervasive problem I’ve seen is the
fact that many people miss how much impact
the room(s) in which they record and monitor
have on their mixes. Companies like Auralex
and Primacoustic make a range of products
designed to tame the way that sound waves
‘reflect, collect, and leak’. While a quick hand
clap will tell you a lot about the reflective
nature of your room, things like standing Apple MacBook Pro waves created by parallel surfaces and the DAWs Apple iMac
bass buildup that tends to occur in corners is Even today, the Pro Tools GUI (graphical user of the session players on the Guitar Hero video
a bit more insidious to hear. Auralex has been interface) emulates the reel to reel recording game franchise, I would not have gotten the gig
helping musicians like myself transform terrible world where I ‘came up’. While there are lots of had I not been proficient in Pro Tools! Now that
recording environments into musical meccas great options out there like Ableton Live, Apple Pro Tools is available on month to month basis,
by providing complimentary room-specific Logic, PreSonus Studio One, and Steinberg I actually have two active licenses, so I can run
treatment suggestions via their web site and Nuendo, if there is an industry standard, it it on my iMac and MacBook Pro simultaneously
app. would be Pro Tools. When I got hired as one for video purposes.
Avid ProTools
Shane D. Wilson’s Auralex Outfitted Studio
58
March 2019
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