My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you.

There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2.

Before we start, I should say: these aren’t all details everyone will care about, by any means. Some of them are quite important; others are downright nitpicky. I highly recommend that you read Round 1 before you read this – it covers many of the major topics, from aesthetics and keyboards to browsers and user interfaces. Also — and I might regret saying this later — feel free to use the comments section down below to ask any lingering questions you may have. I don’t have nearly enough time to test every last minutia – but if you’re curious and I’m able, I’ll add a bit to the post about it. [read]

The problem with “everyone” is that in order to reach everyone or teach everyone or sell to everyone, you need to so water down what you’ve got you end up with almost nothing.

Everyone doesn’t go to the chiropractor, everyone doesn’t give to charity, everyone has never been to Starbucks. Everyone, in fact, lives a decade behind the times and needs hundreds of impressions and lots of direct experience before they realize something is going on.

You don’t want everyone. You want the right someone. [read]

Sure, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without Pro Tools for recording and mixing; Peak to batch convert WAV files into mp3s; Dreamweaver to post them to a custom website I create for the artist; and Mac Mail to let them know the mixes are posted. And iChat quickly connects me to a missing session file, sends out a mix, or circumvents FTP altogether. I use Toast to compile the mastered mixes and create a Red Book CD, and the iTunes to check the burn. The iTunes Store provides unlimited sonic references in 30-second chunks.

But get ready for a cliché: The most important piece of software operates between your ears. Think about this elementary example: We were born with the same ears we have now, yet those ears learn over time to make totally different decisions than they would have years before. I’m not just talking about mix decisions.

During a recent tracking session at Odds On Recording in Las Vegas [for PAR's inaugural "Facility Review" in our upcoming November issue — Ed.] I walked in on what I thought was a familiar “analog vs digital” debate. But Sean O’Dwyer, a house engineer with a deep discography, altered the slant.

To paraphrase Sean, the problem with digital has nothing to do with inherent sound quality, but that it is easier; everybody’s gotten lazy. All the records I like, the ones that stand the test of time, were made decades ago when there were no quick fixes — no grid, no elastic time, no Auto-Tune — all techniques which create musical blandness. A producer/engineer was forced to engage the artist and their music on some personal, intimate level and learn what he or she needed to perform and make it a memorable piece of work that someone somewhere will love . . . [read]

Recently I’ve been working on some songs that were recorded by another engineer. I’ve been hired to mix the songs but before I can mix I need to spend some time getting the songs ready to mix.

Mixing is a creative process, but there are any aspects of a multi-track recording that are more technical in nature and it can be very difficult to jump back and forth between technical editing and creative mixing actions.

A song that is ready to mix will have much of the technical concerns already taken care of, there’s nothing worse than having to stop mixing to tighten up percussion parts or line up backing vocals.

Some of these technical things would be: correcting the timing of instruments, trimming the audio, vocal comping and tuning, removing extra tracks and unused takes, organizing the session, and creating buses and groups.
Before you start, make a copy of the session and name it “songname_mix_prep”

Correcting Timing– Ideally this is all done way before you start thinking of mixing. The drum performance should be made as tight as required before adding any additional instruments. If you’re not quantizing the performance completely, at least make sure the start of each section has all the instruments hitting at the same time. I like beat detective for correcting drums, and elastic audio for everything else.

Trimming The Audio – This is a really simple editing task that makes a big difference. Go through all the tracks and chop out all the bits of the regions where the instrument isn’t played and put in fades in and out.

Vocal Comping And Tuning – Vocal comping is going through all the vocal takes and choosing the best parts to combine into a best of the best composite vocal . . . [read]

Kevin Becka October 30th, 2009

Pro Tools: Love it or hate it? You be the judge after reading about these Pro Tools 8 bugs begging for a fix in the pending 8.0.3 update. Leave a comment with your own experiences.

• Performing any of the following tasks WILL ERASE YOUR UNDO HISTORY.

1. Duplicating a track
2. Removing a send
3. Using either select unused regions command
4. Splitting a stereo track to mono
5. Deleting a track (even an empty track)

[read: MixBlog]

Intelligence is your capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding and mastery. It’s your aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts and meanings.

Knowing a great deal is not the same as being intelligent; intelligence is not information “alone,” but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used. -Dr. Carl Sagan

This article will offer you five ways to increase your intelligence by showing you how to enhance your capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding and mastery. [read]

Seth Godin – Mark points us to this great set of stats.

Basically, all of the clicks for all the ads online come from only 16% of the surfers, and most of them come from just 4% of all internet users.

So, if you optimize your ads for clicks, it means you’re ignoring a huge population.

If your business is built around the kind of person who clicks, you win. If it isn’t, you either need to not buy ads online or buy ads optimized for attention and familiarity, not clicks.

Imagine that only left-handed people clicked on ads (it’s about the same percent). What are you going to do if you make a product for the right-handed portion of the population?

It’s okay to make an ad that isn’t easy to measure. If it works, that’s enough.

Seth Godin

I typically shoot landscape photography.  And when I’m shooting a landscape, I’m looking at the big picture – where the horizon is, where the sun is at, the reflection on the water – everything.  However, textures aren’t about the big picture, though, they’re about the detail.  And we’re not always used to looking at the details.  A wall for us is usually the background – or something that’s just in the wall. But walls can make for some great textures, like this:
The walls in my house are old plaster walls, so mine might have a bit more texture than yours (and a bit more peeling paint, apparently, too – that’s artistic, though, right?), so try looking up and down instead.  The ceilings in my house range from subtle textures…

On the heels of Ken Blocks insane Gymkhana videos and the groundbreaking snowboarding/rally part to close out DCs MTN.LAB 1.5 video, the DC Co-Founder and Rally Team Driver has joined with Subaru to make the worlds fastest cat track operation automobile for backcountry access for snowboarding. Dubbed the TRAX STI, this is a new teaser video from the test session for the highly-modified, snow-ready (to say the least) car. Full specs and the full story at dcshoes.com/auto.

Heard of a Swiss Army Knife that features a 2″ blade, mini scissors, and nail file with a nail cleaner? Off course you have! Heard of a Swiss Army Knife with a MP3 Player with LCD display, 1 GB memory capacity, FM radio, 15 preset stations and 6 equalizer modes? We don’t think so… the Swiss Beat MP3 Army Knife includes all the above and is one more USB based device that is simple plug-n-play. Finally aSwiss Army Knife that you really use often! The Swiss Beat MP3 Army Knife is available for a price of $150. [more]