Tried to search, didn’t really find what I was looking for.
Whether vinyl, cassette, mp3 etc – how am I able to discern multiple different instruments in music perfectly clear from a single audio signal? How does a single groove in an LP allow me to hear a baseline and full drum kit and vocals clearly? I can understand one at a time but?
In: 0
In the studio, imagine a guitar setup and a computer setup to record it.
The guitar creates a complex sound, with multiple frequencies of varying volume levels and directions.
The microphone converts the sound waves created from the guitar and turns them into electrical signal. That electrical signal is converted from an analogue current into a digital signal by an audio interface.
The way it does this is by sampling the audio at very rapid intervals. Imagine a Serrano Ham on a deli counter, this represents the electrical signal. The audio interface is the slicer. It takes 44100 slices per second, which are very thin indeed.
Once the slices have been complete, the computer analyses these slices and puts them back together in order, playing 1 slice after 1 slice very rapidly with almost no perceptible gap in between them. This is what you hear when you playback a song on a computer or device like a smartphone. The slices (samples) are organised in a file format such as MP3, WAV or FLAC and the device you want to play it back on decodes the digital information and then asks the computer to tell the audio interface or soundcard to convert it back into electrical signal and then the soundcard pushes that signal down some wires to your speakers or headphones.
Now imagine an entire band in a studio – 2 guitarists, a bassist a drummer and a vocalist and hey throw in a synth player for good measure. There are now multiple microphones setup to record their sound waves. These microphones go back to a mixer to help concentrate the electrical signal of multiple microphones into one, single current that can be analysed by the audio interface.
The next bit is where real human skill is required. If you just record the microphone inputs it will sound very sub par indeed. The instruments will sound muddy and one directional, and everything will be different volume levels. This is where a human needs to “mix” the sound signals to make them audibly clear to another human listening to them back on their personal device. This is a whole other rabbit hole that if you like, I can explain clearly if you want me to, just reply to this comment.
After the mixing engineer has finished, he can then “bounce” or compile each separate instrument into one digital file using software. The file contains digital information about each instrument, its position in the stereo field, volume, effects etc that has been hard baked in from exporting from the music software.
The file is then played back on an audio device like a stereo, radio or phone and the signal is analysed, then converted back into electrical signal etc.
Latest Answers