#194 - 22nd October 2024 - StudioSzene Day 1

I‘m on a short trip. StudioSzene is calling. Like last year, it‘s in Hamburg and in a tandem with the Live, Entertainment and Technology Convention.

I have visited StudioSzene before. 2022 in Mannheim. Tickets were a bit cheaper and the atmosphere was more cozy, less trade show.

Anyway, the schedule was quite packed:

My highlights were the last two Master Classes of the day.

a) Zino Mikorey on his routing for Mastering, how he checks mid/side, checks against the original mix, checks against a producer master, and manages gain compensation.
My personal key takeaways: Set the limiter first and add master EQ, imaging etc. afterwards but obvs into the limiter. Also, make more use of side EQing, e.g. to get vocals out of a muddy reverb and add energy. The example Zino used was a brilliant drum&bass/jungle/atmospheric acoustic track by Solomun and Novaa called Feels Like A Jungle. Oh and Zino is funny as fuck. Really hilarious guy.

b) Warren Huart, the man himself. His topic was „how to improve your mixing skills“. This can be about everything and nothing. Interestingly, his spin on it was about „getting it right at the source“. With tons of new plugins coming out every month, it seems like the YT mainstream view on mixing became a lot about fixing broken things. So how about making sure you don‘t need to fix anything from the start? … by having great recordings, thoughtful sound design and production. Needless to say this resonates with my current view and how I‘m adjusting my process a bit for my new project. So we went through a very nicely recorded project that Warren brought with him and laughed about anecdotes. Nice man.

Full day ahead. I might come out of it with a DIY built reamping box 💪🏼