What does it take to make a hit record? Is it just the song, or do other aspects, such as the arrangement, sound quality, or production matter as well? It isn’t a mystery why top international releases “stun” us the way they do (regardless if they in fact have “song value” or none at all!). It has much to do with having the right equipment, the clever engineering skills, and a mature musical production sensibility and approach, all combined to enhance the artist’s vision of the song. It’s all about the craft of capturing the purest and most pristine audio from an inspired magical performance. It’s a delicate balance of science and art.

Nyquist offers a comprehensive set of audio services which include tracking, mixing and mastering, in both stereo and multichannel surround. We also do sample-precision digital editing, audio restoration, noise reduction, remixing, and remastering services. For high-resolution, multichannel applications we provide 5.1 surround mixing and mastering, using Dolby Digital, DTS encoding, or lossless MLP, with audio up to the DVD-Audio specification. We also produce, sequence, arrange, and edit MIDI multitracks. Our engineering Staff have all the skills necessary to realize your music and projects as creative works of art and potential commercial successes.

We also design professional CD and DVD cover artwork, ready for commercial printing, courtesy of our sister company Infinite Creations. Go check them out!

Core Studio Services

Tracking

“When an engineer gets past the notion of tracking as a mechanical exercise in mic placement, room/instrument tuning and gain staging, careful listening on critical performance aspects such as timing and pitch, and healthy, thoughtful social interaction, then it is elevated into a form of high art, producing bare tracks with impeccable sonics, emotion and potential, and making the bare mix sound like the definitive, final mix master, one that in sonic terms becomes very difficult to beat…”

Aji Coronel

Tracking is the initial step to a recording. It involves capturing a sound source and putting it to tape. It may sound so simple but this is the critical first step. There are a lot of things to consider to get it done right. Certainly a lot of engineering is involved too. A badly-recorded track will be very difficult if not impossible to fix later on in the mix.

The Studio is capable of recording up to 16 simultaneous audio tracks and an almost unlimited number of MIDI tracks. All audio goes through careful gain staging using pristine analog preamplification and processing before it goes through A/D conversion using AKM converters. We record all audio in 24-bits at up to 96kHz sampling rate. We always strive to record digital audio with that characteristic warm analog sound in mind.

We have a huge cabinet of world-class microphones, both vintage and modern, each one carefully chosen, for all your instrument and vocal needs. This includes top names like AKG, Audio-Technica, Neumann, Rode, Sennheiser and Shure. We are confident that there is at least one mic in our collection that would match your voice or instrument perfectly.

Our console is based primarily on a modified Mackie analog desk equipped with XDR/VLZ Pro preamps. We also have a variety of discrete Class A* (and otherwise) tube and solid-state preamplification options which include FMR, Joemeek, Presonus and Vintech/Neve. Several outboard gear such as compressors and limiters are available with name brands such as ART, DigiTech, FMR Audio and Roland.

Inside the live room is a custom drum kit based on the Pearl Masters series, fitted with Remo heads and Zildjian cymbals. The kit can easily be altered to suit the musical genre and player’s style. We also have a variety of snare drums and kick pedals. Using this kit, we have tracked so many drummers playing different styles of music, attesting to its flexibility. We believe that our recorded drum sound is easily one of the best anywhere in the country.

We also have many standard and exotic percussion instruments at your disposal.

For guitars, we have a Kaifei and a Takamine steel-string acoustic, a Yamaha classical, a Lumanog mini classical, a heavily-modified, Floyd-equipped Fender Squier and an Ibanez SA. We have an Aria Pro 4-string and a Washburn 6-string bass guitar, both with active electronics. We use Marshall and Fender amps for the guitar and a Hartke amp for the bass.

The live room is equipped with a full PA system for sound checks and demo recordings.

Of course we encourage you to bring in your own instruments and gear.

*The term “Class A” is a technical term that does not denote “impressive” or “stylish”, but rather, a certain operation mode of the preamplifier circuit, something that is inherent to its design topology. Having said this, Class A designs are perhaps the most revered for audio applications.

Mixing

“Among other things, a mix engineer has got to be the ultimate diplomat, dealing with ten or more different (often clashing) opinions, sometimes to the point of sacrificing a well-balanced sound or standard acceptable balance (and ultimately leading to sonic self-destruction), all the while considering euphonics, the client’s running studio time, and of course trying to avoid the mix turn into a communal cluster f*ck…”

Mixerman

Mixing is the next stage of the process, where the individually-recorded tracks are all combined to produce a single stereo track. It may be considered the most creative stage of the recording process (and the most technically demanding!), because there’s just an unlimited number of ways to combine and process each track, and each engineer will have a different approach and vision of the final mix. The end-result will always be unique.

Here at Nyquist, all audio and MIDI data are mixed inside a DAW (short for digital audio workstation). This DAW is based on an Intel Pentium 4 PC with 1GB of RAM running Windows XP. All projects are archived to removable HDs and/or DVD+Rs.

What’s so great about this approach is its flexibility and total recall. Every aspect of the project can be automated down to the smallest detail. All settings are kept intact, and instantly recalled, with NO setup time required. There’s no EQ’s to dial, no patch bays to connect, nothing to take note of. it’s all there just like you left it last time. Remixes are a cinch!

The Studio features some of the best digital processing tools currently available. We have a plethora of choices for standard processors like EQ, compression, gates, de-essers, chorus, delays, and reverbs. There are also a few things you might not be aware of, like analog tape saturation, vacuum tube emulation, bass (sub harmonic) synthesis, stereo image expansion, or pitch correction, which are readily available to provide your mixes sonic options you never thought possible.

Liloy (the Producer) and Myko (the Engineer) at Mushroom 5’s mix session. When this picture was taken, however, they were actually beta testing a new game for Electronic Arts. There’s nothing like a pair of cranked-up studio reference monitors on an EA game, right? But is the audio too much for the subwoofer, eh dudes?

You have the choice of working in either the Samplitude or Sonar environments. Many software plug-ins are available, such as Sonnox Oxford, TC Works and Waves. Various software synths and samplers are also available, like GigaSampler, Native Instruments and Waldorf. We have a huge bank of samples of every standard, orchestral, and exotic instrument there is at your disposal.

It is possible to generate multiple mixes for the same song, for instance, vocal ups/downs, acapellas, TV mixes, alternate mixes for specialty purposes, e.g., radio-edit or extended song versions, TV broadcast, MTV format, or remixes. We can also print to mastering stems, submixes and multi-mixes at your request.

Mastering

“It’s not how loud you make it, it’s how you make it loud…“

Bob Katz

Mastering, while an essential and crucial phase in today’s recording process, is often neglected in our part of the audio world. It is also often the most mysterious and least understood. Very simply, mastering is the science and art of taking the final mix, tweaking and polishing its tonal and phase aspects and its loudness, making it clearer, punchier, more focused and coherent. Songs are also sequenced and made to sound consistently and coherently, not as separate entities on a CD. It is the final stage in audio production, making the album ready for commercial release.

Many people think that mastering involves some kind of voodoo, where mastering engineers starting their ritual by reciting chants from the Aleister Crowley’s Magick, but in fact it is a very scientific process. It’s just that the equipment used in mastering are not the typical stuff everybody else uses. While a mixing engineer uses gardener tools, a mastering engineer uses a surgeon’s scalpel!

High-end DSP gear are available, like linear-phase EQs, multiband compressors, adaptive noise reduction tools, limiters, loudness maximizers and finalizers. These are high-precision tools that are very processor-intensive and thus are almost never used as channel or buss inserts during mixing. For instance, our mastering EQ introduces zero phase distortion to the input signal, and can have as many as 8,192 frequency bands! Do you realize how much resolution per octave such EQ can have?

The final master will be a CD-R, which may either be a Red Book CD audio, an MLP, Dolby Digital or DTS-encoded surround master, or any of the various multimedia formats, including MP3, MP3Pro, AAC (MP4), RealAudio, and WMA. For high-resolution formats, we provide you with audio masters up to the DVD-Audio specification (i.e., at 24-bits, 192kHz). We provide complete PQ documentation and a technical summary analysis with every disk that we master at your request. This document could be useful for the replication plant later on.

Our mastering platform is a DAW based on Steinberg Wavelab. For processing we use brand names like Algorithmix, Voxengo, and Waves. We use several world-class dithering and noise shaping algorithms for word-length reduction, like the Apogee UV22/HR, Waves-Gerzon, MBIT+, and the acclaimed POW-r. We also have various commercial and proprietary techniques for transparent, artifact-free SRC (sample rate conversion).

Any of the Red Book parameters can be configured, e.g., track offsets and index codes. We can burn the CD masters with copy protection (using the industry-standard Cactus Data Shield (CDS) 100/200)) at your request. We can also generate embedded sync/timing codes via SMPTE or MIDI, e.g., for video post-production.

For mastering and remastering services, we accept stereo and multichannel files in the following digital formats: AIFF, AU, or WAV, in all standard word lengths (16- and 24-bits integer, and 32-bits integer and float) and sampling rates (44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, and 192kHz), on DVD-R, DVD+R/W and CD-R/W media. We’re sorry but we will not accept mastering work from an MP3 source (or any other lossy (lousy?) format for that matter). Having said that though, we do provide mastering to the iTunes-ready MP3 format.

All mastering work is checked against several reference monitor systems to ensure that the masters translate correctly across the widest range of consumer playback systems, i.e., from huge techno houses with pounding subwoofers, to the ubiquitous iPods. We have the skills and experience to ensure the master’s radio-friendliness on FM radio.

We use the bi-amped Event 20/20bas as our primary monitor pair.

Other Audio Services

MIDI Construction/Composition

Do you have a song idea and you wish to record it, but you (a) cannot play any/many instruments, (b) don’t have a band, or (c) don’t have any idea how to create a backing track (or, in non-studio lingo, a “minus-one” ok karaoke) to sing to?

We are now capable of realizing your song by constructing a MIDI multitrack of a complete backing track. We can render MIDI tracks through our samplers for some very realistic tones (read further below). Anything is possible: The backing track could be anything, from a stripped-down accompaniment, to a complete elaborate orchestral score. Imagine the possibilities!

MIDI Sequence Programming

We are able to construct MIDI multitracks based on your requirements. We are capable of realizing simple beats, click/guide tracks, or actual synthesized drum tracks to the most complicated and elaborate orchestral or techno music sequence you can imagine. We primarily use GigaSampler and a huge assortment of professional sample CDs to realistically emulate any instrument, from violins and grand pianos to sitars and djembes.

We will also accept your MIDI files and run it through our samplers and software synths for a more realistic sound. We can also “humanize” MIDI tracks using special software.

Audio Restoration

We can remove practically any type of noise (e.g., 60Hz hum/buzz, analog tape hiss/rumble, vinyl crackle artifacts, background ambient noise) using several state-of-the-art tools and proprietary techniques without any unwanted side-effects. We can remove specific transient noises (such as a musician’s cough, a chair squeak, or a motorcycle passing by) without introducing artifacts, similar to the CEDAR Audio Retouch process.

It is possible to restore vintage vinyl recording or demo takes of songs on cassette tape to produce high-quality audio masters, similar to the process done on bebop jazz remasters that are available as re-releases today (check out the John Coltrane and Miles Davis catalogs on Verve and Rhino Records).

Time Compression/Expansion

There are certain applications wherein you would want to change the speed of a recording to fit a certain specific time, like when you are sequencing the music as background against video. Normally, if you want to make things go faster, the pitch rises as well, and vice versa.

We have the tools to make changes in speed without affecting the pitch of the recording, and also change the pitch without altering the speed. We can even varispeed in a flexible way on any part of the track (similar to the capabilities of the Roland VP9000), which can be useful for remixes and special effects.

Pitch/Time Tuning and Digital Editing

Imagine having been able to record such an inspired vocal take, except for one sour note. Or having captured the perfect drum track, except for a few off-beat snare hits. What do you do? Do you retake it entirely and waste some more precious studio time? Don’t throw it away, let’s just fix it!

We can seamlessly edit off-time drum hits and correct off-key pitches be it vocals or any instrument for that matter, without the slightest of artifacts. We can also beat quantize entire drum passages to make their timing tighter, avoiding multiple takes and punch-ins.

Is it magic? Well, pretty close maybe…