Customer Reviews

The S.M.A.R.T. Guide to Mixing and Mastering Audio Recordings

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book, the SMART guide to Mixing and Mastering Audio Recordings turned out to be a very good book about mixing. There is somewhat less information than I expected about the mastering process, but I realize that mastering is probably best handled in a book of it's own. The DVD accompanying the book is extremely comprehensive and very helpful. Sometimes it is better to watch someone tweak in a particular sound or hear the effects of a mixing technique than simply to read about it. A very good book for music production, highly recommended!

Very disappointing. The author skims over processors, hardware, techniques and meaningful, real world advice, and offers pages of trite advice that can be easily found, for free, online. Many pages are devoted to setting up tape machines, creating charts for mix sessions, demagnetization and cleaning of tape heads and other dated information that probably wouldn't be relevant to most project studio engineers using DAWs.

Finally, the audio and video examples contained on the companion DVD just don't sound very good. If a book and DVD purports to advise fledgling engineers on mixing techniques, at least use material that sounds well mixed and creative rather than stale retreads of 80's MOR.

I love the filtering tips in this book which involves layering and eq. great tips and easy to follow not dry reading at all holds your attention very well. The students in my recording classes enjoy this series alot.

Duane Gibson
Sally Studios
Memphis, TN

Yo, I'm a rapper from DC and decided I want to learn how to produce a song from begining to end. In the end, its amazing how intuitive mixing SHOULD be. This book lays it out so you actually start to THINK like a professional sound engineer. I'm looking forward to other SMART/Gibson books already!

I learned a lot from reading this book and have re-read it a number of times (i.e., it's a good investment). The author walks you through many steps, especially up until Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, where you are going to learn about "Pulling it All Together", the step-by-step approach goes away which is too bad, especially since he recommends a number of ways not to pull it together at the end of Chapter 3. He emphasizes blending parts but (for me) most of this material seems more aligned with previous chapters on shaping one part at a time (i.e., how to shape the vocal). The remaining discussion is more toward high-level comments (find the melody) or gear talk. The good news is that there is so much walk-through prior to this that if you have gotten to this point in your mix you have made a lot of progress.

The book compares favorably (at least for beginners) to Oswinski's Mixing Engineer's Handbook which is almost all high-level comments and/or describing how an engineer's $10,000 microphone sounds great. My opinion is either you have that $10,000 microphone and you don't need the Oswinski book, or you don't and you still don't need that book.

If you have Gibson's book, you will be on your way. Hopefully in later editions Gibson will expand Chapter 7 to be more concrete.

i actually haven't even finished the book yet. but the first 200 pages have expanded my concepts of mixing dimensions, effects, and equalization in a big way. analog and digital recording set ups are both addressed throughout. this book gives good tips and techniques without a lot of heavy reading. its written plainly and is very easy to understand. the included dvd supports articles in the readings with audio and visual examples. but don't let that be a huge influence on your purchase. the actual text itself is where the bulk of the information is so don't expect too much from the dvd. i am fairly new to the recording world, and even though this won't be the last book you'll ever have to buy on the subject, i would highly recommend it for beginner-intermediate level.

This series of books is the best I've seen in this category. I am am amateur musician and someone at my job had got some money together, hired a producer and was making music. I thought well I should try this and then I heard about how excellent and affordable alot of the digital audio gear is now. I set up a home studio with SONAR 6, monitors, keyboard a great guitar, some excellent mics and preamps, sample libraries and then.... this series of books taught we how to make all really shine. Easy to understand, practical. A must have.

This book is a great reference for the novice recording engineer. Take time to reach the chapter pertaining to each step in your recording project and your recordings will improve greatly with your understanding of what's going on.

This book covers the basics and then some... offering great tips for the novice audio recording technician. Well worth the cost of the book. I look forward to other volumes in this series.

Philip Whitehead

This book dont teach only Mix/Mastering.
Basic types to works with pro audio, to learn Mix/Mastering this book is not the best choice. You will need more books.