Studio Gear

Black Friday - Studio Gear

What is meant by Studio Gear? 

Studio Gear refers to any equipment that can be found in a recording or broadcasting studio such as audio interfaces, headphone amplifiers, compressors, converters and more. 

What is an Audio Interface? 

An audio interface converts microphone and instrument signals into a format that can be easily recognised by your computer and the DAW you are using; they are usually connected to your computer by a USB cable. It routes this audio to your headphones and studio monitors allowing you to control the gain of your inputs and the volume of your outputs. 

What is a Headphone Amplifier? 

A headphone amplifier is low powered amplifier that increases the low-voltage audio of a sound source such as your computer to a level that can be converted into sound waves by the speakers inside your headphones. 

What is an Audio Compressor? 

An audio compressor reduces the dynamic range of your recording, lowering the loudest parts to be in line with the quieter parts, levelling out the natural variations between them. Once this is done the overall level of the compressed recording can be increased for a monitor or headphone mix.  

An audio compressor has various controls; input gain which controls the signal going into the processor, threshold sets the level that the compressor starts to work with anything louder than the threshold being compressed, ratio which controls how much compression will be used, attack which is the time the compressor takes to act on the input once the level is over the threshold, release is the time it takes for the compressor to allow the signal to return to normal, output gain increases the level coming from the compressor so the volume can be more easily matched to the levels of the rest of your mix, knee refers to the smoothness of the compression with soft knee being smooth and hard knee being more immediate and obvious. 

What is a Converter? 

A converter also known as an AD converter is usually included in most audio interfaces and is made to turn an analog audio signal such as a microphone, guitar amp or keyboard into an uncompressed digital audio signal with a DA converter converting it the other way, sending audio to your headphones or monitors.