Gray Spark Audio Academy's Blog

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

Blog Banner
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

Blog Banner
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

Lecture
Industry Updates

Must watch TED talks for Aspiring Audio Engineers

The internet has gotten a lot of criticism reducing attention span. Despite that, there is so much that the Internet has done in terms of bringing amazing content and information to people that they would have never had the opportunity of experiencing and learning. TED talks are one such resource. Today through this blog we

Audio Engineer
From The Live Room

Faculty Interview – Johnston Dsouza (Live Sound)

No. 1 When did you know that you’re going to become an Audio Engineer for live sound? Tell us a bit about your journey? I got interested in audio back in 2004, the first time I ever attended a concert. It was 5 years later that I actually got into audio engineering. During that time

Audio Engineer
From The Live Room

Faculty Interview – Malay Vadalkar (Film Sound)

No. 1 When did you know that you’re going to become an Audio Engineer? Tell us a bit about your journey? I always had an interest towards Sound, be it live engineering or sound design. I was into DJing in my 8th standard and probably one of the youngest DJs here in Pune/Mumbai. This is

Software
Software and equipment

5 FREEWARE that every budding Audio Engineer should try out

In this blog post, I’m going to list down a few Freeware that you can browse through or try if you’re an Audio Enthusiast with some time on your hands.This software is pretty simple and basic and can start you off in the right direction towards your goal of audio engineering. The more time you

Prime Diffuser
Industry Updates

Gray Spark Audio – Studio Tour

Since our academy is primarily a recording studio, this blog will take you guys around our studio and show you a typical day at the studio. Welcome to our Studio Tour! Having such a varied roster of musicians walk through our doors, we find ourselves, more often than not, having two studios simultaneously occupied with

Recording Studio
Software and equipment

4 Things to Consider Before Building your Home Studio

Are you Building your Home Studio? Here are the 4 things that you should consider! No. 1 Room Dimension The dimensions of your room will be the biggest influence on what your room and eventually your work will sound like. In a closed room, sound bounces off the 6 surfaces and creates various points in

voice recording
Miscellaneous

Why our recorded voice sounds different when we hear it

So in order for us to completely understand the answer to this question, we need to first understand how the ear works. Let’s breakdown how the ear works in an extremely simple way. We won’t dive too much into the intricacies of the individual parts of the ear, but just how they function and what

Bose AR
Industry Updates

The Next Big Thing(s) in Audio

Like any other technology, the audio industry has gone through some massive breakthroughs in the past few years. This blog post is dedicated to discuss some of these breakthroughs and take a look at what the future of Audio would be from an Audio Engineers perspective. Let’s check these 3 Next Big Things in Audio.

Live studio session
Tutorials / Masterclass

5 Tips for Live Recordings

I’ve been blessed to have a Studio that is capable of doing Live Recording Sessions, something that has always been the best way to record a Band.In this blog, I will discuss some tips and general things to keep a lookout for when doing live sessions.The key to a good recording can be broken down

Headphone mixes
Software and equipment

What should you use to Mix – Headphones or Speakers? – Part 2

In the last blog post, we spoke about the pros of using speakers against headphones for mixing and what Headphones can and should be used for in mixing. As a continuation of our last discussion let’s also go through certain things that we as engineers should take care of when we are working on a