Posts

RF Interference with Monitor Speakers

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An ongoing issue in my area is RF getting into… pretty much everything. I’ve already written about how I dealt with it in my mic lines, but I was also hearing it through my monitor speakers. It doesn’t affect the final bounced files, but over time the high-pitched whine and random chirps started to really get on my nerves, so I decided to fix it. First step was redoing the wiring from interface to switcher to monitors with Canare 4-conductor balanced cable. That type of cable is great at rejecting interference, and while it did help, a bit of the noise was still there. Next experiment: I took some copper fabric I already had and simply draped it behind the speakers. Instant success, the noise disappeared. The copper fabric was essentially acting like a partial Faraday cage, blocking the RF before it hit the speakers. From there, the goal was to make a more permanent and controlled version of that idea. I also had to make sure I wasn’t block...
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Why Your Voice-Over or Audiobook Still Doesn’t Sound Professional (Even With a Good Mic)

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Hamilton & Toronto Voice Over & Audiobook Studio – Morph Productions If you’ve bought a decent microphone, treated your room a bit, and your voice-over or audiobook recordings still don’t sound professional, you’re not alone. I work with a lot of authors, corporate clients and creators who’ve tried recording at home first. The gear is “good on paper,” but the results still feel noisy, boxy or fatiguing to listen to. Most of the time, it’s not that you’re doing everything wrong, it’s a handful of small issues that stack up. Here are some of the most common problems I hear when people come to me for voice over and audiobook recording and what actually fixes them. People find this hard to believe but having bad audio in a lot of cases is worse than bad video. If you want your message to resonate and come off as professional a good sound is a must for your project to be taken seriously. 1. The Room Still Sounds Like a Ro...
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Why Your Mix Still Doesn’t Sound Professional (Even After Mastering)

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5 Reasons Your Song Still Sounds Amateur — Even After Mixing & Mastering Hamilton & Toronto Mixing Engineer – Morph Productions If you’ve been mixing your own tracks and they still don’t sound clean, wide, or “finished,” you’re not alone. Most artists I work with know the basics, EQ, compression, a limiter on the master bus but the results still fall short of the pro sound they hear on Spotify. The truth? It’s rarely one big mistake. It’s usually a handful of small oversights that stack up and hold your mix back. Here are the issues I see most often when artists come to me for mixing and mastering and how to fix them. 1. The Low-End Is Fighting Itself You can know everything about EQ, but if the low-end foundation isn’t right, the whole mix collapses. Most common issues I see: Kick and bass occupying the same frequency range Sub-heavy bass that disappears on small speakers No high-pass filtering on ...
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Noise floor comparison between Apollo Twin MkII, Apollo Twin X Gen 2 and Great River ME-1NV

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I recently upgraded my portable rig that I use for voice overs and audio books.  We're at the point now with gear that sound quality isn't so much an issue but I'm always looking for opportunities to lower my noise floor.  To that end I had a UAD Twin mk2 that I ended up pairing with a Great River ME-1NV because it was a quieter setup.   Fast forward to now and I recently upgraded to a UAD Twin X gen 2 (the stupidest name in equipment history) and I wanted to see if the Great River preamp was still necessary.  If I can make the setup quicker and easier all the better.  Anyway I recorded some room tone all matched between the different preamps and then had ChatGPT analyze them and this is what it came up with: Apollo Twin MkII:           –51.9 dBFS (noisiest)   Great River:                          –53.9 dBFS   Apollo Twin X Gen 2:    ...
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How to Make Your Suno AI Music Sound Professional: Vocals, Mixing, and Personal Touches

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I’m starting to get clients coming to me with music they’ve made using Suno and other AI music generators, so I figured I’d write a quick post on how I can help people get more out of those tools. I’ll skip the arguments for or against AI in music because, honestly, that debate feels pointless. These tools are here, they’re powerful, and it makes sense to use them to your advantage. For this post, I’ll just stick to Suno.com since that’s the one I’ve been experimenting with. After playing around with Suno , I have to admit I was impressed. I threw in some of my old songs and asked for remixes and I have to say some of them turned out fantastic. Then I tried using,  beats I’ve struggled to write to, dropped in a few lines for lyric ideas, and it came back with some surprisingly solid results. It’s clear that the more you feed it, the more you get out of it. I can definitely see myself tossing in new ideas, even just to spark inspiration.  I came to think of it as having a rea...
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Chasing a Quieter Studio: What I Learned About Power Bars, Noise, and Grounding

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Over the past year, I ran into a weird problem in my studio that taught me something I probably should have known already. Like most people running a small studio, I have a mountain of gear and all of it needs power. So naturally, I’ve always had a bunch of power bars plugged into the wall, often daisy-chained or hooked up through a rack-mounted surge protector like a Furman. When I moved my setup back into my house, I wired things up the way I always do but I started noticing issues. I was getting some nasty RF interference and ground hum on certain pieces of gear. I got it down to a workable level eventually, but I couldn’t shake the question:  why was it happening in the first place? I asked my good buddy, Chat GPT what the problem could be and it brought up something I hadn't considered. Using  multiple surge protectors  with different pieces of gear can actually  create grounding issues  and inject noise into your audio chain. Turns out, almost every power ...
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Navigating the New Social Media Music Rules: What You Need to Know About Content Ownership

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Lately, I’ve been hearing from a lot of artists who are struggling with getting their music heard on social media platforms, thanks to some new rules about content ownership. Meta (Instagram, Facebook) and TikTok have decided to crack down on songs that contain non-exclusive content. This means any music featuring loops from sound libraries or non-exclusive beats that were leased could now be flagged or removed. It’s frustrating, especially when so much time and love go into crafting a track, even if the loop or beat isn’t 100% exclusive. In fact, one of my all-time favorite hip-hop tracks was created with a longstanding client using a leased beat (check it out:  Took You For Granted ). While these new rules can be discouraging, I might just be able to help you work around them! As a musician, I’ve been creating custom guitar loops for my own hip-hop beats, and recently, I’ve collaborated with Deep House producers. In fact, some of these tracks have racked up over  50 million ...
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