Customer Reviews

The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Second Edition

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Don't purchase this book if you're looking for technical info or a step by step manual. It's a series of interviews with prominent music engineers. It is interesting to read the interviews of engineers but doesn't attempt to explain a process. Definitely not helpful for a newbie but maybe a good read for a seasoned pro.

The second half of the book is basically a repetition of the first half. After reading the first half of the book, you have to re-read through most of what you already read just to acquire maybe an additional 10% of content in the second half. The author could better written the content into a singular, continuous read.

Secondly, while reading the book I could not help but feel that the author was lacking personal knowledge in mixing and was merely regurgitating the information acquired from the interviews.

This book has some good info that I will use about the basics of mixing. The author interviewed a wide variety of well-known, professional mix engineers and compiled the responses by topic--therefore it showcases a variety of approaches and points of view. However, the other half of the book contains the interviews in full, therefore half the information contained in this book is almost redundant. I still think I will benefit from it in my library, just don't be disappointed when you find out you really need only half of the pages in this book. I have a general disdain for using filler material in music as well as in books.

This book is a definite must have if you are getting started in audio recording. I produce hip-hop & R&B beats on a Protools set up. This book has helped me turn hollow sounding music into a full sounding production. The question and answer section of the book gets some of todays best mixing engineers thoughts behind mixing. If your mixes dont sound the way they should and your seriously interested in making professional sounding music then read this book.

If you are not already a reasonably skilled mixing professional, I seriously doubt you will get much practical use from this book.
This is NOT a HANDBOOK as the title says. This is an ADVANCED commentary for polishing up an already good mix, assuming you have enough experience to make one. It is a series of interviews of various mixing professionals, giving a few hints about individual ways of going about things. A good portion of the book is CHIT CHAT that isn't all that helpful. Notice that the title says "Mixing ENGINEER'S handbook" It is accurate to assume you are an engineer if you're going to benifit from this book. Otherwise it will sit on your shelf collecting dust and make you look cool to your friends for having it there. So make sure you have enough traffic thru your music book library to justify the price tag (if you're paying full price):) I gave it 2 stars for the deceptive title (I don't like deceptive titles), but it might be worth 3 if your girlfriend is really impressed that you asked for it for Christmas.

I have a home studio and make electronic music. This book was well worth the money. Good stuff on delays, reverb, compression, eq characteristics, where to put these things in the effect chain, headroom, monitoring, surround sound.

If you're making music at home with digital technology this book is a solid reference guide. Very practical and to the point.

Alright, so, after a while of mixing things on my own, I figured that I had a pretty good idea of what mixing entails. Well, I was in for a surprise. I had heard good things about this book, and I thought to myself, "Hmm...might be a cool book to just further my learning." The book arrived and I dove in, hoping to find a few tips and some insight from several acclaimed mixers and producers. Little did I know, I was in the middle of a gold mine.

This book is awesome! It has virtually everything you ever wanted to know about mixing. Tons of thoughts and SPECIFICS on EQs, Compression, balance, panning, and all kinds of great information. Owsinski gives specific ideas and settings for frequency slotting and balance. For example, on page 33 there is a chart that has "magic frequencies", or "sweet spots" in the frequency spectrum for different instruments, i.e, "Horns: Fullness at 120Hz, Piercing at 5kHz" or "Conga: Ring at 200Hz, slap at 5kHz".

MANY times you will get books that have a bunch of mediocre information and their key point is "you just have to play around with it until you find that sweet spot" or "it's all up to you". What's great about this book is that it gives you a STARTING POINT plus is has a TON of thoughts on specific subjects by some (some...try 22!) of the most renowned mixers in the business including Allen Sides, Don Hahn, Bruce Swedien, Elliot Scheiner, John X, and Ed Seay. In the later chapters of the book, he has strictly the interviews of mixers in their entirety. The interviews are mostly about their philosophies and methods on mixing as a WHOLE. The specifics are left embedding into the chapters.

So, if you think you know it all, get this book! If you think you don't know where to start, get this book! It will rock your world and change your entire way of thinking, at least, it did for me! 5 stars!

This book includes some basics but the core of the book in my opinion are the dedicated sections with the engineers. Reading what is written and what is not, looking between the lines you can pick up a lot of information.

This book is full of the kind of stuff that can help you improve your own technique and allow you to quickly apply the tidbits that are learned over years of combined experience of the top people in the field. I wish I had access to some of the really stellar equipment that is used by these people...but most of the information can be applied to whatever level of gear you use.

The book is well written, an easy read that you can come back to time and again. I am a note taker and have about 10 typed pages of notes and tips from this book. Far more than I ever get from a single book!
This book is a must have.

This book is talking about the 80's age where they were using ANALOG equipments. It is good to remember old days techniques because it will shows us the concepts of today's equipments. It also brings some new ideas for the novices and intermediates in mixing; which will improve their mixes indeed.

I'm giving it 4/5 because it could be better. An audio CD demo representing the audible media would be a plus if included.

I had a hard time finding useful information in this book. It's full of information ABOUT audio and audio engineers, as opposed to ACTUAL information. I'm a seasoned musician who is new to the audio side of things, so I needed to the bare bones, basic numbers and math and techniques of how this side of the glass works. The author spends as much time talking about song arrangement (which to me falls under producing, arranging and composition) than actual mixing and audio skills. As well, there's no "step 1, step 2, step 3" ways for getting started. Instead he interviews famous engineers who say things like "sometimes I start with the kick. Sometimes I start with the snare." I don't find this kind of info particularly helpful. But that's just me.