Gray Spark Audio Academy's Blog

monitors
Software and equipment

How to Calibrate and Set Up your Monitors

Good monitoring and monitor calibration is without a doubt one of the most important aspects of Audio engineering, be it recording or Mixing or even Mastering. The lack of decent monitoring can make your life as an engineer hell. In this blog post we will talk about a few ways that we can set up

Plugins
Industry Updates

7 Saturation Plugins you MUST try out

We’ve all been at that stage during a recording session or in a mix where we want a little more drive, a bit of that aggression and forwardness, brightness to the sound you’re working with. Saturation comes in many forms today, as plugins as physical hardware units but in this blog post, I’ll list down

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Software and equipment

Mastering in the Age of Streaming – Part 2

In the last series of this blog, we discussed how loudness normalization impacts how music is mastered in this day and age. What happens when you try to make a master loud vs play something that is not as limited as a loud master. Today let’s try to go through a few tools that will

Software and equipment

Mastering in the Age of Streaming – Part 1

Over the past few weeks, everyone at the studio has been involved in this constant discussion about what the right approach to mastering a streaming service should be. Should we still aim to sound sonically loud or upfront as people call it? Or should we aim to sound the most dynamic of the batch? How

Industry Updates

5 Plugins you MUST buy

In this blog series I will try to answer the most commonly asked question to me, which Plugins should I buy first if I wanna start mixing. Let me clarify you don’t “NEED” them, one can very easily build a good mix with just the stock plugins that are at your disposal in most DAWS,

Industry Updates

5 Must-Read books about the biggest Music producers

In this blog, you can check out 5 books about the Biggest Music Producers of all time No. 1 Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Eric Clapton, the Faces. . . by Glyn Johns A memoir of a remarkable rock-and-roll career from Glyn Johns, a

Industry Updates

The Studio Business Pt 9 – Advertising and Marketing your Studio Business

Once you’ve gone ahead and got yourself a nice studio setup, the next goal is to get a constant flow of Musicians, Producers, and Composers to keep working out of your space. We spoke briefly in the last blog about building long-lasting business connections and how to go about actually getting and building new clientele.

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business- Part eight: The Art of Scheduling

A Studio manager’s primary task is to ensure the smooth flow of booking and clients through the day and to keep the daily activities running. In this blog post, I will talk about a few things you can look at from a recording studio perspective that will help set in place processes like Scheduling that will

Industry Updates

The recording Studio Business : Part Seven

In any business, success is based on communication and building and fostering long term relationships with your customers and clientele. In this blog, we will talk about a few important aspects of developing connections. No. 1 Building Connections: It goes without saying that in the recording studio business, connections play an important role in finding

Recording Studio
Industry Updates

More Creative Ways to Generate Income: Part Six

This blog will be a continuation of the last blog in this series about generating Income through the Recording Studio Business. Today we shall discuss a few more ideas that business owners, engineers, producers, and musicians can think about. No. 1 Music/Dialogue Editing and Sound Design: With the sudden explosion of OTT platforms like Hotstar,

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business : Part 3 – What does it cost and how do I budget?

In continuation of our last few blogs in today’s blog, we will discuss the importance of budgeting and lay down detailed steps, and list down some of the key components and building blocks of a recording studio. Here we will take into consideration various budgets from small scale to Midrange studios and how to go

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business in India Part 2

In the previous blog of this series, we discussed how to go about sourcing funding and what things one should be looking for when trying to build a recording studio business. Today we will discuss a few other important aspects of this business mainly from the human resource point of view as well as budgeting

Software and equipment

What equipment does an Audio Engineer starting out need to buy?

A lot of Audio Engineers who are starting out are faced with the question of what Equipment they should Invest in before enrolling for a course. Today in this blog post we will cover a list of essential equipment that budding engineers should consider investing in so that they can make the most of their

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business Part 1

Starting a Professional Recording Studio? In this blog series I will share with you a few of my learnings as an Engineer and Business owner as well give you enough actionable points and lessons to get you started. In my experience, sometimes it is great to go with your gut and start a business, but

From The Live Room

Mastering Celestial Teapot-Ellipsis

In this series of Blogs I will be walking through the Mastering Process of some of the songs that we have worked on in the recent past. This specific song has majority rock elements with some surprises thrown in between.This is what the mix looks like MIX:https://drive.google.com/a/gray-spark.com/file/d/1_qVYsNawe40TodLwoLlxl_eEtlBHA1dm/view?usp=gmail The song has some very distinctive heavy sections

Software and equipment

5 Amazing Limiters you must try in your Mastering Chain

Limiters are the sexiest/coolest thing in a mastering chain. They are the one plugin that can have a big impact on how loud your final mixes can get. In this post, I’ll talk about a few plugins that I use in my mastering chain, which are my go-to plugins for achieving a specific sound.Let’s dive

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Software and equipment

7 Free Audio Plugins to Get Started

So you’ve installed your DAW and are ready to start recordings and work on mixes only to realize that you don’t have any Plugins to really work with? Today in this post I’ll show you guys some must have Free Audio Plugins for any DAW and get started working or recordings/mixes. No. 1 TDR KOTELNIKOV

Industry Updates

Artist Releases during the COVID-19 Lockdown

Rolling into Month 5 of the Lockdown in India and we can see a ton of musicians taking this pause to release even more of their music. At a time when resources are limited, income has practically come to a standstill, musicians have still come through, recorded and released their tracks. And for that, we

Monitors
Software and equipment

Best Budget Monitors 2020

I personally believe that purchasing or deciding to go with a specific piece of equipment is a very personal choice and depends on the taste and sensibilities of the person buying them. Every engineer at some point in time is faced with this question of, whether I should buy monitors or if I should work

AB Testing
Tutorials / Masterclass

How to find and correctly test and reference two sources using A|B Assist

Comparing and deciding between two options or versions of processing is an integral part of the Mastering and Mixing workflow. How often do you find yourself at a point where you have two different signal chains lined up but you can’t decide between which one of the two compressors on your master buss sound good

Mastering Chain
Industry Updates

What’s an Ideal Mastering Chain? My Mastering Chain

A Mastering Chain is a set of linear processing done to a track in the mastering stage. These Audio Processing Units can vary from EQ to Compression to even reverb. Today, in this blog post I will talk to you about what a Mastering Chain should have and what I personally use in my Mastering

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Industry Updates

5 Ways to win over clients

“How do I get more clients? “, “How do I build more clientele working as an engineer?” I get asked this question a lot, as a Studio Owner/Manager and as an Engineer starting out, so I thought I would share some knowledge from my experience of working with and building new clientele over the years.

Lockdown Blog
Tutorials / Masterclass

How to continue working remotely as freelance Audio Engineer and Producer

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and almost all workplaces shut down, all of us are in limbo. Over the last few weeks I have figured out a couple of ways in which I, an audio engineer in quarantine, can interact with my clients and students remotely and from my home studio and continue

Industry Updates

FAQs about Sound Engineering Courses in Pune

As a course coordinator, over the last few years, I’ve encountered a number of questions and queries that people have about getting into this field. Today as a part of this blog post I will try to answer some of the questions that people have asked me personally and some questions taken from the internet.You

Sound Engineer
Industry Updates

Gray Spark Faculty Interview of Nitin (Studio Engineer)

No. 1 When did you know that you’re going to become an Audio Engineer? Very early in school, 11th Std! No. 2 Tell us a bit about your journey? I started playing keys at the age of 5. My interest slowly shifted to production shortly after that. Then through programming and production came the discovery

Recording Studio
Industry Updates

Faculty Interview – Ronak Runwal (Studio Engineer)

No. 1 When did you know that you’re going to become an Audio Engineer? Tell us a bit about your journey? Like most other engineers on our Faculty, I also started out as a Musician. At the time, I wanted to record some of our music, but Pune had only 2-3 studios, and the good

Documentary
Industry Updates

Amazing Music Documentaries to catch up on!

This new year ditch whatever show you’re binging and spend some time watching these amazing music documentaries about the Recording and the Music Industry. These Music documentaries will not only give you a lot of knowledge but also inspire you to look and learn beyond what you know. Discover how some of these legendary albums

Sound Engineer
From The Live Room

Faculty Interview – Hozaifa Sayed (Studio Engineer)

No. 1 When did you know that you’re going to become an Audio Engineer? Well to be honest, I am still trying to do justice to the title of being an audio engineer and educator on a daily basis, by trying to bring the best ineducation and audio over all the teaching and mastering projects