The Basics of Home Audio SpeakersWritten by Ross MacIver
There are great many home audio speakers on market today ranging in price from a few dollars to thousands of dollars. Buying a set of speakers can be a confusing endeavor, but with a little bit of knowledge you should be able to make a wise choice.Most home audio speakers are made up of several components in one enclosure. The simplest speaker is simply one speaker driver housed in a box with no other electronics involved. These speakers will not sound very good because single speaker driver is not capable of reproducing entire frequency range. To provide better sound over a wider frequency range, several speaker components are combined together to make home audio speakers. The low frequencies are reproduced by woofer and high frequencies are reproduced by tweeter. There is a crossover housed in speaker enclosure which divides audio frequency into highs and lows and sends it to appropriate driver. Some home audio speakers may have a third or even fourth speaker driver installed in enclosure. The most common of these is for reproducing midrange frequencies, and is used in so-called three-way speaker.
| | The Basics of CD MasteringWritten by Ross MacIver
Recording a CD is a complicated process which calls on skills of a great many people. The musicians must prepare initial musical material before heading into recording studio to lay down tracks. The recording engineer is responsible for capturing sounds and mixing them together. The mixing stage may be followed by an editing and processing stage, at which point recording is ready for audio CD mastering.Audio CD mastering is a specialized field requiring musical knowledge, a technical background, and excellent ears. The mastering engineer has to be familiar with a broad range of musical styles and able to produce a final recording that sounds good on a variety of sound systems. He has to consider requirements of artist and producer and present a final recording that is satisfying to everyone involved. Music is often recorded on multitrack tape, and after tracks have been recorded, they need to be mixed down to stereo. Each song can take anywhere from several hours to several days to mix down before beginning on next song. Various songs may be mixed down at different time of day and with different people giving their opinions. This can result in an uneven sound between songs. The purpose of audio CD mastering is to give a consistent overall sound to entire CD project.
|
