Archive for House Of Technology
08.14.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 9:25 pm by admin
Can you think back to the era when gaming notebooks were not so accessible? For the resellers they were hugely profitable despite not selling in many volumes. Despite that people probably wanted one. Everyone reckoned they were the best laptop computers and rightly so. Regardless of the excitement caused I doubt they were amazing sellers because I don’t believe buyers would buy laptop computers instead of desktops as they were so expensive. As of late it seems larger companies are all entering the sector very quickly and things are shifting.
Lowering prices are not usual is this sector so tier 1 companies would be scooping tons of markup. This would be one of the few margin producing lines they have as they make little on the majority of others because of the massive competition. Small retailers cannot compete with them in persuading potential buyers to buy laptop computers. Smaller companies certainly have an uphill battle now. In my opinion the multinational manufacturers will control the market trends. In my opinion if anybodies going to pay a lot of money the well known brand always comes out on top.
I reckon they surely are making some of the best laptop computers out today. I reckon that littler businesses may yet have an opportunity. Being able to get specifically what components they want is a big advantage for the majority people who are considering purchasing a gaming laptop. I reckon the guys that buy gaming notebooks typically know what they are looking for. For this sort of niche, the specs are generally more important than the appearance.
All purchasers agree that it is a positive change. As this pushes down the prices even further, top end technology will become even more obtainable to the market. I am not quite sure any of that would take place however. New products are continuously being introduced and that should keep prices constantly high. The big brands have already started in the gaming laptop computers division so we will have to look and see what happens I guess.
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07.14.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 9:45 am by admin
Love is like a tree. Imagine days, when you hear no word from your sweetheart. You start getting ideas. You get lonely and think of why? This why may bring many answers that may not be very conductive to romantic love.
Romantic love demands affirmation regularly. Every lover loves to hear from his or her daring - I Love You. That increases the passion of love and keeps the love flame alive.
As I said before love is like a tree. It needs care till it grows strong. How to use ecards to keep the love strong at all the times? Let me tell you.
Visit any good ecard/egreeting/greeting card website. Many are free and some charge money. Look for the free websites. Give a keen look at the cards. Look at three elements - Design, colors and text. All three combined should create a feeling of very strong love and longing. The ecard should be such that makes your darling desperate to meet you immediately. Are the cards evoking such emotions? What is the weight of the ecard? How much time does it take to open the card? Look at the site design. Send a card to yourself and see how it looks at the receiver’s end. It should create an atmosphere of passion and euphoric love. Does it do that?
After satisfying yourself, that the ecards are such that they will create a feeling of great romantic love, begin sending them. Send one a day. Don’t send a card on the day you are to meet. Send a card saying I Love You in different ways everyday. Express your love. Intentionally miss a day. That will increase your darling’s longing for you. Play the love game as an expert. It is not for amateurs.
Ecards will be of great help to you in playing the romance game. Learn the art of proper selection of a free ecard and begin. You will keep your love tree strong forever, with flowers coming every season and that tree will never have autumn.
Writing for greeting cards, screensavers and desktop wallpapers is the hobby of CD Mohatta. The websites, he writes for are screene.com and enjoy some quizzes on computer & internet. He writes messages on motivation, management, nature, spirituality, holidays and more.
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06.28.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 11:09 am by admin
O.K. Now you’ve finally purchased your beloved iPod and your ready to listen to some tunes. Unfortunately the headset that came with it are for crap! Who wants to waste their time listening to poor audio on an expensive iPod. You want gear that will match the quality of your iPod and offer the best sound quality possible. Good news is there is a HUGE selection of quality headphones. A wide range of styles, quality, and prices. Don’t waste your time with the crap missing out on what music should sound like. Don’t be afraid to try something new and know that mixing brands is o.k.. When it is time to shop for headphones consider the following.
Fit: Fit can make a huge difference in terms of sound quality believe it or not. Ear bud headphones fit into the ear canal but don’t enclose the ear as a result of this other sounds can interfere with what your listening to. In turn ear bud users turn up the volume which damages the ears. Ear buds can also be rather uncomfortable. This type of headphone is the kind that came with your iPod.
An excellent alternative to ear buds are the enclosed model of earphones with padding. This type of headphone contains what is called a dynamic transducer, and in my opinion offers the best type of audio listening experience. Another type of headphones is headsets that fit tightly on the head or wrap around the head DJ style.
Another alternative are the Canal Phones. These are designed to fit comfortably inside the ear canal and provide better sound with more isolation and good bass. Canal phones are considered to be more effective and safer than other headphones. They are able to eliminate most of the external noise. Which in turn means you won’t have to turn up the volume in order to hear it, reducing the possibility of hearing loss. The lesson here is find headphones that block external noise, then you won’t have to turn up your volume!
A nifty feature on some enclosed headphones is a noise cancellation feature. This is used when there is a hissing, or you can hear external noises which lessens your listening experience. All you have to do is flip a switch to take advantage of this feature. The background noise will be cancelled out and all you hear is sweet music to your ears!
Wireless headphones are also another great feature available for people on the go who don’t want to be “tied down”. The one draw back is wireless headphones usually have a small broadcasting range. Try and find one that offers a good range so you can wander far and wide!
Suzanne Allen is a lover of iPods and other nefarious gadgets. At her sister sites you can find iPod Headphones and iPod News.
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06.24.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 7:45 pm by admin
Laptop computers have more than likely been on the top of everyones must have list lately. In fact demand is so big that taiwanese manufactures are betting on part shortages proacitively. This is one business which I don’t think will be affected with all the financial peril that seems to be going on. Also with laptops now it seems like every couple of months or so the technology is already replaced with something new.
Notebooks are becoming more acceptable for gaming due to continuing speed increases. Prices are also falling because the rate at which technology becomes old has become so small for laptops. Gaming frame rates on notebooks is fairly good considering the factors at play so if you need mobilility they offer a good alternative. These days the vast amount of gaming notebooks aren’t even big, bulky and noisy. Despite all the positives of notebooks, desktops should always perform more rapidly than them. Gaming notebooks are always pushing the speed margins of laptops so its always a good measure of how far the technology has come in that relation.
There are always a couple of consumers that require a laptop custom built because they want to use it for a particular field of work. The idea of getting third party parts appeals to some customers in my opinion. You can usually save cash on parts you don’t require by specing the notebook to your requirements. Most of the notebooks found in retail shops are made to grab the greatest market share and not the small niche markets. This is the reason custom notebooks are around. Just like preconfigured notebooks there are a lot of resellers providing custom notebooks all with a different advantage or improved customer support. Because of this people will sacrifice the big brand name.
We’re seeing some fairly cool things at the moment and I wonder what will hit the market next. The portable $500 notebooks are going like crazy at the moment. I feel the inspiration for such a product came from the requirements of the 3rd world. I would like to see a bigger edition of these budget ultraportables. I feel it could be a giant success. I firgure forming an appealing price point is a principal barrier in all this. Certainly the technology is present. By Analysing the trends it seems like gaming notebooks will get slimmer and faster. All the brands are vying to introduce the next big product so it’ll be exciting to see.
For gaming laptops check http://www.rizeon.com/gaming_laptops/page.php
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06.14.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 10:59 am by admin
With the evolution of computerization and rapid growth of technology, we have not only seen new types of crimes, but the nature of these crimes has changed as a result of increasing technological capacities. Certainly there has been some empirical study of these computer crimes, most of which has been performed by private security companies largely along the lines of a risk assessment for particular industries. While these inquiries have provided new insights, they have normally been unpublished and narrowly focused.
Internet Crimes
The Internet has opened a number of opportunities for hackers and various new problems for law enforcement agencies. What is striking is the size of the Internet market and the relative ease, high speed and low cost with which a scam can flourish over the Internet. Victims may never have the chance to see or even speak to the attackers.
Credit Card Frauds
Credit card fraud is the most common Internet crime. Main reason is approximately 95% of Internet transactions originate from credit cards. Due to this, various different methods to perform credit card fraud on Internet have been created. The most popular methods for acquiring credit card information include stolen credit card numbers, and credit card number generators software. Although these are the most popular methods today, Internet crime is constantly increasing and fraud perpetrators are developing new advanced methods as merchants create new procedures to fight against fraud.
Stealing credit card numbers is the most common and the easiest way to perform Internet crimes. Majority of the stolen credit card numbers used on the Internet normally come from the physical shops. There are very few cases of credit card numbers being stolen over the Internet. Any person can pick up old statements or receipts, or can even be a waitress or waiter who processes your dinner bill. Apart from credit card numbers, a fraud perpetrator can also get personal information of any person. With this personal information and credit card number, fraud perpetrator can purchase expensive items over internet.
Credit card number generators are free softwares that are easily available on the Internet. These softwares are used by fraud perpetrators to create valid credit card numbers by brute force method or by stolen algorithm. These generated credit card numbers can easily pass the majority of online transaction. Combined with free or anonymous email accounts, these card numbers can also be used to make illegal purchase over Internet.
Online Auction Frauds
People may not deliver products, or their price may be overstated. In 1998, the National Consumers League (NCL) placed auction crimes at the top of its list of Internet crimes and warned all users to investigate any seller or auction site before placing a bid. The FBI, which received more than 15,000 complaints about Internet auction crimes in 1998 and 1999, has also issued similar warnings.
Email Fraud
Email fraud is related to spamming, online users are bombarded with unwanted fake commercial or personal email (called “spam”) advertising fraudulent products or investment schemes. Thousands of email messages can be sent out in a very short amount of time. Fraud perpetrators can easily purchase email address lists from other legal companies. They also can use widely available email address locator software to conduct nationwide or worldwide searches of chat rooms and Internet directories in a very short period of time. In this way, fraud perpetrators can easily collect millions of valid email addresses for individuals or companies likely to be vulnerable to certain types of fake schemes. “Nigerian 419 Fraud” is one of the popular email frauds.
Spammers can also get email addresses from online membership directories of any Internet service providers (ISP). Some spammers also use free software that randomly generates email addresses. Thus, online users can get spam even if they have never entered information in any directory or chat groups.
Web Police
Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) of FBI is dealing with majority of internet and other computer related crimes.
IFCC’s purpose is the following:
"To develop a national strategy to address Internet fraud;
To develop criminal Internet fraud cases and refer for criminal prosecutions companies and individuals responsible;
To reduce the amount of economic loss by Internet fraud throughout the United States;
To receive, analyze and refer all fraudulent activity identified on the Internet;
To identify current crime trends over the Internet;
To track fraud facilitated by the Internet and provide analytical support of Internet crime trends
Criminals have adapted the advanced computer technology to enhance their activities. Unfortunately, their actions have defeated the ability of web police to respond effectively. Rules must be developed for web police that address various categories of computer crime. They should know the materials to search and seize the electronic evidence to recover. Without question, web police must be better prepared to deal with the many aspects of computer related crimes. Government should train, increase and coordinate their resources. ISP should also help web police by maintaing their customer’s email and session record. Online vendors should be prohibited from storing information regarding customers without proper protection of privacy interests.
Ways to Protect Computer and Information
In this growing world of technology if we want to be safe and protect our personal information then we must consider some precautions like storing personal information in encrypted format, constantly checking activities performed in computer, using hard-to-guess passwords, monitoring credit card and bank account activities regularly, and monitoring activities of our children. Computer usage can also be restricted by using passwords on sensitive information like credit card number. Apart from these methods they are other commercial software, called “firewall”, to protect any computer from hackers. A firewall can monitor all activities performed on the computer; it can also restrict access to the computer.
There are many issues of computer crime such breaking in to computer systems just for fun, attacks by company employees, virus creators, illegal software distribution and internet frauds. Computer crime is still one of the main problems faced by law enforcement agencies.
FARAZ AKHTER
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05.24.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 6:45 pm by admin
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05.23.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 4:30 am by admin
Science has long speculated that the earth’s center rotates at a different speed from the crust. The big question really has been “What holds the earth’s crust in equilibrium with the center?” Visionary writer and inventor Carl Peterson may have discovered the answer. In looking for the reasons “magnetic north” lies far from the North Pole, Peterson has stumbled upon a scientific explanation that also fits with past polar shifts; and offers probable causes, timing, and local effects of the next shift. His theory complements and completes a Charles Hapgood theory endorsed by Albert Einstein, in which the poles, aided by massive ice build up, are eventually thrown by centrifugal force to the equator.
If the center rotates at a different speed from the crust, there is good reason to believe that this is the cause for the static electricity apparent on the earth’s surface. If that is true, then North Pole on the crust must have an opposite magnetic charge from north in the earth’s core.
The obvious conlusion is that “magnetic north” is not a specific designated point on the globe, but rather an “average” location determined by the confluence of the magnetic north of the massive earth center, and what must be in reality the weaker “magnetic south” of the earth’s crust, which in fact rests at the North Pole.
If the earth’s center has a pronounced “wobble” as it spins, slipping and sliding as it were beneath the crust, it is then the intense magnetic attraction between the two that defines the speed of the earth crust rotation. In other words, the crust spins at exactly the same speed as the wobble, or interior “precession”. This effect can be demonstrated with a gyroscope or simple child’s top. The top can have a high exterior spin rate, and at the same time a slowly wandering wobble.
The magnetic characteristics of the crust are then probably electromagnetic in nature, fully dependent upon the core for activation. If so, it will require a relatively weak catalyst to break this bond, sending the ice at the poles on a journey once again down (or up) to the equator.
Science knows that the ice on the polar land masses continues to build up rapidly. Warmer polar temperatures actually deposit more ice and snow, now more than two miles deep in some places.
A whole raft of prophesies and predictions (Cayce, Nostradamus, Hopi and Mayan Indians) point towards an event like this happening soon.
In his book “Earth Changes” Peterson goes one step further in actually detailing a step by step scenario of the next polar shift. Are there ways to avoid the next shift? Probably not. Are there ways to survive it? Undoubtably, being in the right place at the right time with the right gear can make a huge difference.
Carl Peterson is truly a man for all seasons. Carl has authored several books including his most recent, “The Zen of No Tax” revealing a simple alternative to the NWO tax conspiracy. Inventor and founder of the Peterson Portable Sawmill, Carl has done the corporate experience, lived in a remote British Columbian religious commune, lived on a Fijian jungle plantation for 13 years, and survived a brutal beating at the hands of armed Fijian soldiers following the ‘87 Fiji coup. At the moment Carl is focusing on a New Zealand tax revolution in order to restore freedom, abundance, sanity, and common sense to government leaders; and working on a new book promoting deeper relationships and connections between individuals. For more information about this article, Carl, or his work, go to http://www.truthaboutax.com
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04.26.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 1:37 am by admin
20 Ways To Increase Your Traffic And Sales Using Free Follow-Up Autoresponder Courses
An autoresponder course is a group of articles or information set up to be sent out separately over a set period of time by e-mail. People just e-mail your autoresponder to receive the free course and it is sent out automatically over time. You can find free follow-up autoresponders to use by typing it into any search engine. Below are twenty ways to use them to increase your traffic and sales.
1. Offer your course as a free bonus for purchasing one of your main products or services. People will
buy your products quicker when you offer a bonus.
2. When you write and give away a free course you will become known as an expert. This’ll gain people’s trust and they will buy your main product quicker.
3. Allow others to add your free course to their own product packages. Their customers will see your ad when they purchase.
4. People love to get freebies. A free autoresponder course is perfect. They will visit your web site to get the free valuable information.
5. Allow people to receive your course for free, if they give you the e-mail addresses of 3 to 5 friends or associates that would be interested.
6. Allow other people to give away your free course. This will increase the number of people that will see your ad in the course.
7. You could trade advertising space in your course for other forms of advertising. It could be banner ads,
e-zine ads, web site ads, etc.
8. Gain new leads by having people sign up and give you their contact info before they can receive your
autoresponder course.
9. Give away the autoresponder course as a free gift to your current customers as a way of letting them
know you appreciate their business.
10. Give away the course to people that join your affiliate program. This will increase the number of people that sign-up.
11. Make money selling advertising space in your course. You could charge for small classified ads or sponsor ads.
12. Get free advertising by submitting your course to freebie web sites. This will increase the number of people that will see your ads in the course.
13. Make money by selling the reprint rights to those people that would like to sell the course. You could make more money by selling the master rights.
14. Hold a contest on your web site so people could win your course. You will get free advertising when you submit your contest to free contest directories.
15. You’ll gain valuable referrals from people telling others about your course. Word of mouth advertising can be very effective.
16. Make money cross promoting your course with other people’s products or services. This technique will double your marketing effort.
17. Increase your e-zine subscribers by giving your course to people that subscribe to your e-zine. This’ll
give people an incentive to subscribe.
18. Allow your affiliates to use the free course as a promotional tool for your product. Each lesson could
include their affiliate link.
19. Promote other businesses affiliate programs you join with your free autoresponder course. Include a
different affiliate link on each lesson.
20. Advertise a different product or service on each lesson. If you only have one, use different emotional
response ads on each lesson.
About the Author
Visit DirectoryGold - Web Directory, for free email, article directory, and shopping and info links
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04.13.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 6:31 pm by admin
There are many advantages of VoIP broadband phone service. Over the next couple of years phone over Internet will be the norm for most homes and businesses.
Internet Phone Benefits. More than likely you receive many VoIP phone calls in the course of a week without realizing it. This is because the phone line quality for VoIP is the same as traditional phone services. If you are considering Internet phone service, you are making a good choice. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as it is called is quickly becoming the best value for telephone service. Most companies like Sprint and AT&T are already offering VoIP within their internal networks and are starting to offer it as a complete service offering.
How VoIP Phone Calls Work and Voice Quality.
The simple answer is that your voice is digitalized and transported over the Internet as well as over the phone company’s private network using Internet Protocol (IP) service. A broadband phone call happens in real time just like on a digital TV, except you are using your broadband Internet service (DSL, Cable, or Satellite). Traditional phone services use analog, circuit technology. Because of improvements in voice quality and throughput of VoIP, small idependent carriers have already started offering VoIP to residents and businesses. Now most phone companies are using Internet phone technology over their private networks. This means that most of your calls today go over, at least in part, VoIP networks. This change in technology is a major factor in the drop in long distance rates in recent years. Now that many phone companies are extending VoIP service to the homes and businesses, we can now enjoy additional savings, great voice quality, and great features.
Price.
Low Price. Prices for broadband phone services start at under $10 a month. VoIP service is available to anyone in the world who has an Internet broadband connection. International and in-country rates start at 1.1 cents a minute or even unlimited for some VoIP monthly plans.
Broadband Phone. When signing up with a carrier you will normally have the option of using your own broadband phone, buying a broadband phone from the carrier, or getting a special adapter to connect your existing phone to your broadband connection. You can also elect to make VoIP phone calls using your PC. PCs normally do not need any special equipment, but many people purchase a wired or wireless headset. Broadband phones start under $40 and phone adapters cost under $10 depending on the VoIP carrier. Broadband phones look much like regular phones, but usually have a full range of digital features. Watch for promotional offers and you may get your broadband phone or adapter free when you sign-up with an broadband phone carrier.
No Contract, It’s Prepaid. The other great pricing feature for most VoIP phone carriers is that there is no contract. You just pre-pay. This eliminates the risk of unexpected high phone bills.
No Regulatory Fees. Currently, there are no regulatory fees or special taxes with Internet phone call service. This can be a significant saving as many traditional phone plans have a 20% or more in fees and taxes added to the bill each month.
Features
Internet phone call service has many additional features over traditional phone services. Features include: most traditional add-on services (call waiting, voice mail, caller ID, etc) are standard, video phone option, travel with your phone number, service available worldwide (need high-speed Internet connection), your area code not tied to your geographic area, ultra-low International calling, more… Visit http://www.accessphoneservices.com/broadband-phone-service.html for our article on the Features of VoIP Broadband Phone Service.
About the Author
Randy McClure is a web site publisher of http://www.EasyAccessClub.com. EasyAccess Club is an eCommerce resource for discount shoppers, small businesses, and churches. We feature discount online store reviews, hundreds of discount stores, e-commerce news, and resources for doing business online. Visit our other sites: Small Business Online - http://biz.easyaccessclub.com and Church Online - http://www.access-jesus.com.
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04.06.08
Posted in House Of Technology at 5:32 pm by admin
As industry insiders, we sometimes forget that when discussing the recording process, the rest of the world really has no idea what we are talking about. Hopefully this will provide an explanation of the song formation process in layman’s terms so that there may be less disconnect between the professional and the consumer.
As with any creative process, there is no absolute hard and fast procedure that must be followed stringently, but there is a logical development that all recordings must go through, which includes:
Composition
Arrangement
Recording
Editing
Mixing
Mastering
That being said, this is an explanation of that general process and what takes place during each of these steps.
Composition
Composition is really where a song or piece is born. Preceding this step may be brainstorming and idea formation, but the song actually begins to take a real form and become an entity in itself during this stage.
This is what separates ideas and melodies floating around in the air from actual well-formed songs. There isn’t a whole lot to be said concerning Composition, other than it consists of forming a melody (and often basic accompaniment) that flows chronologically from a start to a finish. Lyrics (if applicable) will also likely be written at this time.
Arrangement
Arranging is taking the Composition that has been created and determining what instruments will be used for the recording, writing the parts that those instruments will play, and the tempo (speed, beats per minute) that the song will be played in.
To best illustrate this point, think of the song “What a Wonderful World.” The most famous version of this song is arguably the one sung by the great Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. Compare this to the Ramones version of the same song. Both are based on the same Composition, but with entirely different results based on the fact that they are Arranged differently using very contrasting instrumentation and are at vastly different tempos. (You can use any number of examples to illustrate this principle; “Yesterday”, “Happy Birthday”, etc.). Arrangement, as with Composition, may range anywhere from informally assigning parts to instruments to drafting the parts using musical notation, all dependent on the preferences of the arranger and the formality of the project.
Recording
Now we start to get a little more technical.
The term Recording is often used to refer to this and the following three steps as a whole, but for simplicity’s sake, the term Recording is used here to mean “putting performances to tape” (or as is the case now, a digital format). This is also referred to as Tracking, Cutting Tracks, etc.
Recording Studios have long been somewhat of a mystery to industry outsiders, but basically what takes place during Recording is microphones and various (expensive) sound altering equipment are used to capture a sound being produced in an acoustically tuned room or environment and storing that sound information onto some sort of media (be it magnetic tape, a computer hard drive, or, in the old days, acetate discs).
Generally, a process called Multi-Tracking is used for commercial recordings in which each microphone (and hence, each sound, be it vocals, guitar, or cello) is printed discretely to the storage media to be manipulated at a later time.
To simplify it a bit, the ‘normal’ stereo recording that a consumer would hear is comprised of two tracks or channels, the Right and the Left. During the Recording or Multi-Tracking stage, there are virtually innumerable quantities of tracks or channels that can each be controlled separately from the other tracks. For instance if you have recorded a vocal part on one track and a guitar part on another, because they were recorded discretely in a Multi-Track setting, the volume of the vocals can be increased or decreased without affecting the sound or volume of the guitar track whatsoever.
In a typical session, what you would be left with after completing the Recording stage is any number of discrete tracks each containing an instrument. An example of a track listing for a rock song might be:
Track 1: Kick Drum
Track 2: Snare Drum
Track 3: High Tom
Track 4: Low Tom
Track 5: Overhead Left
Track 6: Overhead Right
Track 7: Bass Guitar
Track 8: Electric Guitar
Track 9: Acoustic Guitar
Track 10: Keyboard Left
Track 11: Keyboard Right
Track 12: Lead Vocals
Track 13: Background Vocals
Meaning that each of these tracks had a microphone assigned to it for the specific purpose of recording the desired source. (Notice that tracks 1-6 are for various parts of a typical drum set).
Also (not to complicate things further, but…) these instruments need not be recorded at the same time. The bass guitar player could record his/her part on Thursday, and the vocalist might lay down tracks a week later. Basically, because they are on separate tracks, the musicians do not have to be playing at the same time or even in the same place to create a finished product that sounds like they were looking right at each other. This also enables a multi-instrumentalist to record all the instruments themselves and create their own ‘virtual’ band where they are the only member.
Editing
Had this exercise been written 15 years ago, I would not have included Editing as its own section as it generally takes place during Recording and Mixing on an ‘as needed’ basis. But with the evolution and general industry acceptance of digital and non-linear recording formats, Editing has become a much more important and functional stage in the creation of a musical work.
Simply put, Editing consists of changing the original recording by way of altering the timing, pitch, or speed of an individual track, or tracks to change the performance. One such common practice is referred to as “comping.” Comping is the idea of recording multiple takes of one instrument with the intent of compiling all of the takes into one cohesive take for the purpose of eliminating errors or creating a ‘perfect’ take.
For instance, a vocalist may sing the same part over and over again making mistakes in different parts on each take. Rather than continuing to search for a complete perfect take, or settling for the best take and having to live with the mistakes, the recording engineer (the guy turning all the knobs ) will choose the best take and then after identifying each mistake within that take, pull the line, phrase, word, or even syllable from another take where the mistake did not occur and paste that into the correct spot on the best take essentially eliminating the mistake and making it sound like it was performed and recorded without it.
Digitally, this process is simple and can be completed with just a couple of mouse clicks. Using analog tape, it becomes much more cumbersome and requires a series of meticulous tasks to record to a third track while muting and un-muting the source tracks, or pulling out the old razor blade and slicing away.
This is just one example of the use and purpose of Editing. To go into the virtually infinite uses would be long and redundant as the editing limits in the digital domain are nearly limitless.
Mixing
The Mixing stage is necessitated by the differences in the format that is used in the Recording stage and the format that the end consumer is able to use. If you recall, when we finished the Recording stage, we were left with (for example) 13 different tracks, each with it’s own instrument. Each of these tracks by now has been edited to contain the best possible performance during the Editing stage, but they are still individual tracks and not one cohesive song that a consumer can pop in the CD player. For argument’s sake, we will only discuss Mixing down to stereo and not touch upon surround sound, 5.1, 7.1, 9.1, or any other format as stereo is currently the most generally accepted format (for now…). Mixing is the process of taking all of these individual tracks (in our example, 13) and by way of using sound altering effects, changing volumes, and manipulating perceived position Left and Right (panning), creating a stereo (two track) recording. Think of it in terms of a funnel. The individual tracks are the wide end, and they must be brought together to form two tracks (the narrow end).
Again, we will not go into the intricacies of Mixing in practice, but in order for all of the tracks to sound good together (play nice kids…), they must be twisted, manipulated, affected, squashed, and combed so that they sound just right and like they are all playing together in one space just for the listener instead of all separately and in padded booths like they actually were.
Once this is accomplished, we are left with a stereo (two track) recording with all the instruments sounding great together and the song is nearly finished.
Mastering
This is the final and most often overlooked step in the song creation process. In fact, if you were to ask a group of musicians what mastering is, chances are a good portion would not be able to tell you what it is and why it is so important.
Essentially, Mastering is preparing the final stereo recording for commercial consumption by pumping it up to a usable volume and making sure that the song will sound good on any sound system it plays on, from a home theater system that costs thousands of dollars, to your little tiny, terrible laptop speakers.
Mastering is most important if you have multiple songs and are creating an album or if you are preparing your recording for commercial release. This is because when the Mixing stage is complete, the stereo recordings you are left with were mixed to sound good on the speakers that they were mixed on regardless of how that sound translates to other spaces and speakers. Also, in the case of making an album, you don’t want Song #1 to be a whole lot louder than Song #2 or even Song #15. Have you ever listened to a CD where you were constantly adjusting the volume just to maintain a consistent pleasant playback level? This is a CD that has not been mastered (or was mastered poorly). The same applies for making the songs sound like they belong together in that you don’t want one song to sound ‘tinny’ (a.k.a. too much high end equalization) and another ‘boomy’ (a.k.a. too much low end).
So that explains why Mastering is important for album, but what about commercial releases? Imagine if your un-mastered song were on the radio between two wonderfully mastered songs. You would get swallowed up. Your song may be too quiet, or have too much low end and basically just sound unprofessional by comparison.
As mentioned before, Mastering will also make sure the final product sounds good no matter where it is played or what system it is played on. When making a presentation of your final product to a client, record label, or even friend, you don’t want to say, “Sorry, I can only play this through Yamaha NS-10 speakers.” And you certainly don’t want to be taken by surprise and find out that it sounds bad everywhere but in the studio.
So there you have it. The real deal on how a song is created from Composition to Mastering and now the final product. No more mystery and technical jargon. So now that the cat is out of the bag, everyone can do it all on his/her own right? Wrong. Just knowing an automobile works on an internal combustion engine doesn’t mean you can start building your own cars. Audio professionals have spent years learning what to listen for and how to make things sound ‘right.’ Not information that can be gained in a four-page discourse. Contact your local audio professional to get your project started, but at least now, you’ll know what you’re in for.
About the Author
Ben Blakesley is the Chief Engineer for Philadelphia based Javboy Records, which specializes in creating custom music solutions for production. Visit them at www.javboyrecords.com
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