Well Eddie,
I have been recording for quite some time now. Finally own a pretty damn good studio (check it out at
http://www.echostarstudio.com and in all this time, I have never found a "industry standard" for doing anything concerning recording. A consultant that I use somethings made a statement one time about recording, he said, "Learning good recording techniques is simply a matter of trying a bunch of things that you will never do again". What a smart ass I thought at the time. But, I have come to realize the wisdom in those words. Recording is an art! Like playing an instrument, you get better at it with practice, and you start to find you 'voice' in your art.
I think that you will be hard pressed to find any one source that will supply all the answers you seek. Instead, you will need to look to many places to find this information out. The first place will be the library. Laugh if you want, but if you look under Recording,Music, you will probably find at least 10 books on the subject at just about any major library. Check one out and start reading. Check out another and read. Keep reading new books until you start seeing that they all say the same things, just with different emphisis. Then you will have some head knowledge. Next, start reading those manuals you have for all that gear. I read EVERY manual I get with a new piece of gear, even if I already know what the product will do. I have found that manuals will supply something that I didn't know about that piece of equipment, as well as some tid bit of info about audio in general. Even reading the stuff I already know at least reminds me of the basics, and recording is about basics, really it is. All of those fancy techniques that you read about in the magazines, and sometimes on this site, are just things that were tried that worked out to solve some kind of problem that the basics couldn't handle. What are the basics? Start reading those books, and anything related to recording and you will start to get the basics down pat.
Microphones pick up sound. Mic preamps convert mic signals to line signal. Cables carry the sound somewhere. Recorders store the sound. Mixers adjust the volume, eq, and provide ways to send the sound to other places. Compressors control the amplitude. Noise gates remove low level noise when an audio signal is not present. Effects are simply natural events that are stored on a chip, and you can modify these events to suit you. Monitors let you hear. How you use all these tools is a matter of taste. Go to any of these MP3 download sites and listen to what people do with music. It varies significantly. Listen to two different rock bands on the radio. Two differnet sounds altogether. There is no right or wrong thing in art. Standards don't even really exsist. Good luck.
Ed Rei
Echo Star Studio
[This message has been edited by Dragon (edited 09-01-1999).]
