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DVD Review: ASKVideo's Studio Concepts, Gear and the Physics of Sound

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Comprehensive instructional videos on recording techniques can be hard to love. They can be extremely dry, offer an overabundance of information, and can generally be difficult to navigate though in order to find the answers you are looking for.

But Studio Concepts, Gear and the Physics of Sound, the first installment of ASKVideo's The Studio Edge: Pro Audio Audio Recording Series, while still slightly on the dry side, manages to successfully surmount other two aforementioned issues.

Throughout Studio Concepts, Jim Pavett, an engineer and owner of Allusion Studios in Tuscon, AZ, makes it abundantly clear that he possesses a wealth of knowledge concerning recording and the science of sound.

The sheer depth of his knowledge could make this DVD seem like a dry or intimidating commitment. But perhaps the greatest advantage this series has over other recording video tutorials, or over enrolling in a class on the subject, is the freedom granted to the user to pick and choose what information to take in. When run on a computer, the DVD opens in its own player with an extremely user-friendly interface. The player's list of chapters enables the viewer to easily skip around to segments that are relevant, making Studio Concepts more interactive reference tool than instructional video series. For someone like me, cursed with both limited attention span and time, this is extremely appealing.

It's an encouraging sign for video tutorial that the folks at ASKVideo have realized the importance of allowing users the freedom to navigate through information and zero-in on what they wish to learn. This is the way people have grown accustomed to learning things in the digital age; when we have a specific question, we do an Internet search. Additionally, an old-fashioned, easy to use chapter index incorporates a reference book feel to the DVD.

As for the content, Mr. Pavett offers extremely useful, if not invaluable, advice for anyone setting up a studio. From a solid grounding in the physics of sound, he covers topic such as where to place monitors, how to set up mics, and tricks for thickening recorded sound. It's everything that would be (or at least should be) covered in Audio Production 101.

Throughout the video, Pavett explains the rudimentary science behind a recording challenge before offering ways to handle it in the studio. While he does not provide the video equivalent of a physics or acoustical engineering lessons, it's refreshing to get beyond instructions like, “Push this button on the board, then change these preferences in your recording software."

It's a nice balance between science class and practical audio engineering advice. Looking at sine wave examples, viewers learn how phase occurs, and are then shown how to use sample files to create it in an audio editor. As Pavett puts it, “a hologram, but with your ears instead of your eyes." There are five chapters on mic placement, but before Pavett gets to them, he makes certain we know all the different types of mics and how they function. The video is packed with different audio activities of this sort, and is clearly more useful if the viewer engages in them.

Most of the activities presented do assume a certain level of time and financial commitment on the part of the viewer, meaning you will need to buy some gear of you want to carry them out; you've gotta buy those monitors before you can figure out where to place them, right. Because of this, Studio Concepts is most useful for folks who are actually setting up a recording studio. While there's information in there valuable to musicians looking to gain some understanding before they enter the studio, that's not the primary focus.

If you're starting your own studio and don't know a ton about audio engineering and sound science, I would highly recommend checking out Studio Concepts and keeping it on hand as a reference tool. It beats searching the web for helpful tips on recording, and offers the knowledge available in an audio production class at a fraction of the cost.

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