Audio Engineering Session 3

Heyyy!! I didn't get lost. Not only didn't I get lost but I confidently walked straight to the class. This was really good news for me as I was running late and was quite worried that I would be late for class. We started this session out by burning up some song tracks to CD so that everyone had some material to work with. They were burnt at 4x so that it would be a nice deep burn.

While the CD's were burning we entered a discussion about analog versus digital. Upon discussion we quickly realised that even though we all had a basic idea of what the two technologies were, we were not able to quickly describe them. In analog recording systems, the continuously varying amplitude of the sound waveform is translated to a continuously varying level of magnetism, LP groove amplitude, etc. In contrast, with digital audio encoding, discrete (noncontinuous) time sampling and amplitude quantization is required, a process that breaks the originally continuous and smooth waveform into a staircase or other pattern of pulses. The instructor went on to mention that "The Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlmann" was a really good read for anyone that wants to get in depth information about digital audio and it's origins. I found a summary of this book here http://mcgoodwin.net/digitalaudio/digitalaudio.html.

After a short break we began discussing a bit about frequencies of instruments and why it is important to know them. Basically it is important to know the frequencies so that through the use of EQ you can increase (amplify) or decrease (attenuate) the corresponding frequency allowing for the instruments to sound better in the mix. We briefly talked about impedance which is basically resistance. High impedance cables are intended for short distance of under 15 feet. By contrast low impedance cables allow for an audio signal to travel a lot further without introducing signal loss. It is important to select the appropriate cable for the task at hand.

"Enough of the theory stuff" says the instructor and off to the control room we go. We begin with a quick review of the Roland DAW. When quickly moved on to the steps required to route a signal to the Roland DAW and onwards to the Peavey console. We setup the a computer to loop a song for continuous playback which would be used as a quick and easy sound source. We grabbed a SM57 from the mic closed and set it up about 12" directly in front of the computer. We then plugged it into the closest wall plate. Once this was done we returned to the control room to route the signal into the DAW and console. Once all the routing was physically connected we began working with the Roland DAW routing so that we could forward the signal to the console. I will stop writing here as there would be too many steps to list.