Maskil Audio

In a previous post, we had a general discussion about how to set levels, mostly around what one source should be relative to another. This time, I’ll look at the primary way we measure how loud something is when we hear it, its Sound Pressure Level or SPL. SPL is how we objectively know how loud sound is, if you know how to use these units. Metering Minutiae To measure the SPL of music or speech in a space, you’re going to need an SPL meter. These can vary in price from a free app on your phone to over… Read more: SPL for Fun and Profit

How do you know how loud something should be? That seems like a really easy answer, but at the same time it’s incredibly subjective. How loud should a kick drum be? How about the background music while someone is speaking? Here we’ll try and give some basic, objective ways to know how to get your audio levels just right. A Little Bit of Theory So, without getting into too much detail, there are a few things we need to know before we get started. Most importantly is a unit called a “decibel” or dB. A lot goes into what this… Read more: Levels of Interest

Terrible pun aside, microphones are incredibly important to live and recorded sound. They’re so important, it leads to a whole lot of specialization. With so many microphones out there, how in the world do we know what to use? The Only Mic You’ll Ever Need There’s a long-standing adage in audio, “If you can’t do it with an SM57 you shouldn’t be doing it.” This isn’t because the Shure SM57 mic is the best mic ever, but it is the closest thing to an industry standard microphone there is. It is durable; it sounds good enough; and, most importantly, it… Read more: Step Up 2 the Microphones

One of the most common experiences in churches and other medium-sized venues is mixing monitors from the front of house position. In smaller venues, musicians won’t have monitors at all; they can hear themselves fine either acoustically or through the front of house sound system. In larger venues, there’s often another technician whose sole job is to mix monitors for the musicians. But in what seems like most venues, there’s only one person — and that person is likely you. What’s the Scenario? There’s really no way for this to cover every possible combination of musicians, venues, and equipment, so… Read more: Mixing Monitors from Front of House