The 5 reasons why most Recording Artists don't get a quality recording and overspend money

How to find the right Studio for you and get the most out of your Sessions

The Art and Science of Recording Mixing and Mastering is an uncharted topic for most people, In order to make it easier to understand will be comparing money value of equipment since money is a universal language that everybody understands and also an easier way to measure quality since you pretty much get what you pay for when it comes to Audiophile Recording Mixing and Mastering gear

1 - Poor audio quality or even recordings that appear to sound good made with average gear such as Plug-ins or most digital equipment and average quality analog equipment have an emotional impact on the listener, It actually produces electric activity from the human brain which can be measured and it's known to be associated with the areas of frustration, Even of anger! (Which makes us wonder if some of our social problems come from the listening of these recordings) It's called Quantifiable electric activity from the brain... In a paper read at the 91st convention of the AES (Audio Engineering Society) in 1991, Professor Ohashi and his team from the Institute of mass media education Tokyo read a paper entitled "Audible range affects brain activity and sound perception" He claimed that extension of the frequency range beyond audibility was beneficial to sound quality and produced brain electric activity from the area associated with pleasure. his paper called Rupert Neve's attention (Rupert Neve, often credited as the man who made the recording console. He was the third person to receive a Lifetime Achievement Technical GRAMMY and became an inducted member of the Mix Hall of Fame in 1989. He was named man of the century by Studio Sound Magazine in 1999, and was selected by his peers as the number one audio personality of the 20Th century) Neve traveled to Japan to confirm this audio effect in the brain phenomena, and to put it on his own words "I did experience the fact that when there was wide bandwidth one could relax, One could take pleasure, Cutting back the bandwidth it was quite amazing, I started to feel restless" Higher end analog and also some of the highest quality digital rack gear seems to have a warmer sound, Sweeter, Fuller, Seems to affect the lower frequencies, Gives them a richness of sound

We are in the digital era and about 90% of Recording Studios use mostly this forms of cheap recording mixing and mastering gear called Plug-ins aka "mixing in the box" When you choose a studio, Regardless of the type of music you make, Pick one that has mostly the expensive kind of analog gear combined with the highest quality digital equipment, For example, XCyrus Recording Studios has some of the best and most expensive Recording / Mixing / Mastering Analog and digital gear in the world such as Neve, Martech, API, Summit Audio, Manley, Neumann, Universal Audio Teletronix, t.c.electronic, Sennheiser, Lexicon, Just to mention a few, If you want your music and recordings to sound good and to make people to feel good while listening then pick the studio that sounds good and offers the highest quality equipment, If you don't know much about equipment then all you have to do is find out the equipment list from your studio, find out how much it costs and compare, prices would give you a very accurate idea of the kind of equipment you are dealing with, The things to look for are Microphones, Microphone Preamplifiers (Mic Preamps or Mic Pre) Compressors, Equalizers, Tape recorders, Analog to digital and digital to analog converters, and Mastering Equalizers, Mastering Compressors and Mastering Limiters

2 - The big console myth: think the bigger the better? Looks are most of the time not what they seem to be, and this is one of the most important facts of recording, Recordings you hear on the radio are made on very expensive consoles from $50,000.00 to $1,000,000.00 plus, For example an SSL J9000 channel strip (Mic preamp, Compressor and Equalizer) costs about $4,200.00 therefore a 96 channel SSL J9000 console costs about half a million dollar, However, If you for example are a singer, You will only use one channel, So the recording quality you get won't be a half a million dollars sound but $4.200 (if you are a drummer or guitar player, etc who needs more channels bare with us, will get into that next) and that's why all big studios that have these consoles still get separate channel strips (preamps, Compressors, Equalizers) that are more expensive than single channel trips on their million dollar consoles, For example XCyrus Recording Studios Uses Several channel trips at the range of $8,500.00 that's right, some of the best recording gear in the world and history of recording, Including Neve, API, Martech, Universal
Audio, Manley, Summit Audio, etc. these channel strips are about twice as more expensive than the ones found on those million dollar consoles and they sound like it! Now here's a very important fact, If you choose a studio for its console all you have to do to have an idea of the quality you are getting just do the math, A $22,000.00 Midas console with 48 channels has channel strips of an average of (22000 / 48 = 458) $458 and that's what it sounds like, a 32 channel Mackie board has an average of $100 per channel strip, and it might not sound too bad, However, when mixing all your tracks together it's like it never sounds the way you thought it would and you just wonder what went wrong... One of our channel strips are worth almost 3 32 channel Mackie boards (that's 96 Mackie channel strips!!!) This makes our channel strips about 85 times more expensive than the mackies and 2 times more expensive than the best SSL channel strips, You get what you pay for.

If you are a Drummer and need several channels then there's a couple consoles that shine on this application and are favorites for world class drummers, Engineers and Producers around the world, The top ones are Neve and API, Now in order to have the Neve or API sound you don't have to have the console itself, For example XCyrus Recording Studios Has Rack mountable Neve and API preamps, Which are exactly the same used in their respective consoles therefore getting the same exact sound you'd be getting if you were tracking drums on one of those bad boys. in fact, Our Neve 1073 preamps (most sought after in the world and history of recording) are hand made in the the United Kingdom!

3 - Get quality coaching, Having a world class studio doesn't guarantee results by itself, if you have a half a million dollar Panavision camera and your actors didn't rehearse their lines then you probably won't be able to make a quality movie and will end up spending way more money and time trying to get the takes over and over until you get something OK, Pre-production is most of the time neglected, However it will give you way better results in less time, XCyrus recording Studios offers quality pre-production, from producers who deal with this issues every day and know how to get you to the next level without draining your bank account

4 - Most studios don't take Mastering seriously, They just get a $150 to $600 plug-in and you are up and running... Mastering is one of the most critical parts of your hit song, and professional mastering equipment is very expensive, At XCyrus Recording Studios we use 2 t.c. electronic Mastering 6000 with a Multichannel license and the optional mastering quality 2496 ADDA converters, A Neve XXX tape emulator, A Manley Vari-Mu and a Manley Massive Passive this is some of the best of both digital and analog worlds combined and it's about 200 times more expensive than what you'd find at your average studio

5 - Rooms treatment: Often times people just look at a fancy looking studio and think it must be good because it looks good, However, The truth is that 90% of studios don't treat their rooms professionaly so what sounds good at the studio doesn't sound good anywere else, XCyrus Recording Studios cares about your recordings and so rooms are professionaly treated for Acoustics and Noise, With details like double doors and non paralell walls and also professionally measured with real time analizers and optimized for mixing and mastering so that your mixes travel and sound good wherever you listen to them

Questions / Comments, Please Email: Francisco@XCyrus.com