What do you recommend as a must-buy for music production?
The must-buy I would recommend to everyone is ARC STUDIO from IK Multimedia.
It is the best item, especially for people who make music in a typical residential room. Unless you are in a studio with acoustic correction, the low frequencies around 100 to 200 Hz often sound particularly loud, but this corrects that acoustics. It is not too expensive, and considering the effect, it is cheap.
There is a similar product called Sonarworks SoundID, but I recommend ARC STDIO because it sounds more natural and it is hardware that does not need to be launched in your DAW every time. (However, since there is a slight latency, it needs to be turned off when playing in real time using an amp simulator, etc.)
That's a good suggestion - start with the room correction and work from there. I use Genelec GLM which is a similar concept, and it's really helped. Something like a Trinnov at the high end is even better if you have the $$$.
I'd recommend that everyone should have an EQ plugin with a spectral analyzer and the ability to solo individual bands. FabFilter ProQ is the most popular example of this, but there are more. This is the best way to learn frequencies IMO. The visuals help, and as you get better they will matter less, but I still look. It's a great tool for beginners, but offers advanced features too. For example, a second instance of ProQ 4 has replaced Soothe 2 in my dialog chain due to it's spectral / dynamic EQ function.
I feel like I would have been way better at DB King back when I used to use Adobe Audition because one of the cool things it did was let you enter values like a calculator, so say you had a fader at -6.1, you put in -6.1+1.5 and it would enter -4.6. I was really good at knowing mathematical dB values back then, but I've since switched DAWs and gotten much more accustomed to pushing/pulling the faders until it sounds right and paying no attention to the numbers, so I'm really good at Balance Memory, but I kind of suck at DB King. 😂
Pavel, that's fantastic! Congrats on hitting Diamond! Plenty of things to strive for - my next goal is 2M sound points - even tho it's not an official ear level.
Wow - that was a marathon. I have been doing sound professionally for a long time, and yet I managed to learn some new things along the way getting the certification. HIGHLY recommended for new engineers and still somewhat recommend for experienced engineers. Some of the videos are showing their age, but the underlying techniques are sound (pun intended).
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