Recent content by Tom Hicks

I mailed a package to Charley today returning his adat tapes and a usb drive with all the .wav files arranged in song folders. We spoke on the phone and he told me his intentions to revisit this project, do some new mixes, perhaps add new tracks. I hope he shares his progress with the...

The folks that did the project initially did him wrong, in my opinion. The track sheets are inaccurate, time code listings wrong, many tracks listed on the sheets are simply missing, and poor gain staging. The session musicians were sub par. All except the pedal steel player, who was a real pro...

Old school analog 0vu is about -18 dbfs digital. That's plenty hot to set your levels. Especially if you use plugins that emulate analog rack gear. Too hot will overdrive their emulated input stage. Unless that's a specific effect you are shooting for.

I'm not sure if this link has been posted here before. The Cambridge Library has free Multitrack downloads available in multiple genres. Enjoy and Happy Mixing! https://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms/mtk/

I have a Blackface and an XT ADAT. Charlie is going to mail one of his ADAT tapes to me and I will do the transfers for him gratis. The matter is sorted.

Sounds like you want to remix the individual tracks, to get a balance of volume levels more to your liking. There are multiple ways to skin this cat. Old School - get hold of an analog mixer having at least 8 channels and patch the 1/4" outputs of your Blackface or XT ADAT to tge mixer. Play...

A number of modern plugins are designed to emulate classic hardware units. So the input level is going to affect the plugin in many cases just like it would a piece of hardware. In some cases pushing the circuitry with a hot input level would be desirable. And other cases it would produce...

Many mixers also have one or more separate audio output paths called auxiliary sends. An advantage of this for the recordist is that the recording mix doesn't have to exactly mirror the front of house mix.

LUFS = Loudness Units Full Scale. In recent years its used more often than dBfs. Streaming platforms specify max levels in LUFS. If you are over their number, they compress/limit your track. Since dynamic range is so important, consult the specs if you post to a certain streaming platform...

You never know what device listeners will choose. Traditionally, mixing on NS10s and Auratones translates pretty well. Here's a mix I did today with tracks from the Cambridge Multitrack Library. Listen to Back Home To Blue by Tom Hicks888 on #SoundCloud https://on.soundcloud.com/51e9L

This is for guys who need some drum samples. Maybe you don't have the space or gear to record a full drum kit, but you want to have drum sounds in your projects. Tom Hicks Acoustic Drums Samples

I've had an ADAT HD24 for a couple years now. Great bit of gear! My brother just bought an HD24 for himself this week. He is selling me one of his ADAT XTs, which I plan to use for remote recordings and weekly rehearsals of my rock band. He told me the XT has just recently been serviced, but my...

Here's a cover of the old John Kay tune plus a bonus angry political track. http://music-tom.com/magic.mp3 http://music-tom.com/iraq.mp3

I'm in a band again - classic rock bar band. So we made a demo to help us shop for gigs. Here's the tunes: http://music-tom.com/i-feel-fine.mp3 http://music-tom.com/and-she-was.mp3 http://music-tom.com/burning-love.mp3 http://music-tom.com/kicks.mp3 http://music-tom.com/no-sugar-tonight.mp3

Here's the first piece finished with my new Alesis HD24. Yamaha G60A classical w/Saverez strings (the wrapped G type) through Rode NT1, through the board into the HD24. I FTPd the best take to my PC and used PSP vintage warmer for compression and true verb for a little sheen...