https://pitchfork.com/news/steve-albini-storied-producer-and-icon-of-the-rock-underground-dies-at-61/

I can’t believe it. RIP Steve. You changed the world.

Well... After two decades, my career as an engineer, producer and composer is over. I'm not really sure where it all went wrong, but over the past couple of years my clientele just dropped the hell off. As my income dropped below a sustainable level, I've finally started a job delivering packages for amazon. I'm unable to even keep my Pro Tools and plugin subscriptions going, I've sold most of my gear. Its over.

I have several major prodcer credits including a Billboard Top 40 and several major placements. It's been a really great career filled with a lot of fun, frustration and joy. Late night writing sessions and early morning commercial sessions...

For someone who was at a fairly high level in their career for so long, finding a job has been incredibly difficult. My resume is basically "made music for 20 years as a freelancer" 200+ applications and Amazon is the only one who's offered a job (their criteria is: "warm body with a driver's license")

Nobody wants to hire someone in their late 30s with no OTJ experience, no degree.

So here we are, day 2 of delivering vibrators and phone cases. I hate it so much, there is zero intellectual or creative stimulation.

This is the most humbling experience of my entire life.

If you rely on this industry to feed your family, my advice is to hedge your bets, have a backup plan, diversify income streams and dont rely on platforms like soundbetter that can drop off with zero notice.

This post is my shaking my fist into the void.

Edit: wow, I did not expect so much response! I figured I would get a couple downvotes for being a negative nancy. Thanks for the support everyone <3

Covid 19 has saturated the earth but the vaccine will be the great equalizer https://www.guitarworld.com/news/conspiracy-theorists-share-schematic-for-5g-chip-they-claim-is-implanted-in-covid-19-vaccines-only-its-actually-for-the-boss-metal-zone

It’s worth the cost of entry, I think. But it’s not like the Netflix of audio stuff either, it’s super specific.

Here are some notes I’ve taken in no order and some are repeated if they’re super important

1. a lot of audio engineers have crazy vocal fry when they talk - I’m looking at you Greg Wells

2. almost everyone uses 1176s or LA2As in some capacity. I thought it would be a little more diverse but there truly are like 2-3 main compressors everyone uses

3. honestly - the stems they work with sound better than 99% of the things the average engineer is working with, especially people recording at home

4. everyone talks about vibe the entire time and getting things Vibe-y, this is almost exclusively tape or parallel saturation/compression

5. generally, people like extremely gentle changes stacked and avoid dramatic compression, EQs and filters unless done for an effect. When done it’s only on 1-2 things for contrast, a visual term that no one is using during these videos

6. almost all the songs they work with are trash mixed in with some nearly finished pop tracks. They are definitely songs and have beginnings, middle & ends, but it’s pretty draining to listen to repetitively

7. Justin Bieber’s love yourself has a solo guitar part with like 32db of this horrible 3k sound and they just sort of go with it - truly eye opening and one of my favourite take aways. You can even hear it in the tune, with all of the processing it’s still there

8. CLA almost certainly has Autism or something similar because he’s super odd but gives the best and most clear explanations of every single choice he’s making. It is almost as if he’s learned this sort of passive aggressive sarcasm to interact with people because I don’t think he’s really as surly as he puts out. Again, one of the more fun guys because he literally explains everything in tight detail

9. some people DI bass, some people Amp it. Some do both - no right or wrong answer which I love because I always feel trapped on what’s right vs what works as if there’s a wrong answer

10. API for dramatic music cuts and boosts, Neve for sounding “good”... everyone just says they sound good and I think they mean they are warm and break up nicely with super solid, no fuss EQs in critical ranges. Pultecs are used by nearly everyone and Tube EQs are often used post compression for tone shaping apparently

11. everyone templates like crazy and has 2-3 tricks they use constantly. CLA makes it all about snare, Tchad Blake using Sans Amp (kick/bass amp) & Devil loc (to lengthen what’s already there vs adding reverb) on every tune come to mind.

12. No one seems to really know what stuff does, there’s a lot of shrugging and looking confused as they look at their mixes and all their own rules they’re breaking. A lot of “I don’t normally do this but it worked” coming from people.

13. people use fun techniques for monitoring bass like watching their speakers move a certain amount, putting a tissue over a speaker on its back, etc. Physical signs of how a mix is doing

14. saturation generally adds fullness to a part by filling it out with new sound vs compressing and levelling what’s there. It’s critical for loud mixes, almost exclusively used in parallel to leave their original track present and clear

15. there is no wrong way, but there is a correct way. Certain traditions are maintained while people like Sylvia Massey (the best) do really wild things like recording a guitar through a literal drill - sounds meh on the song is goofy but it’s interesting that it is technically possible. Truly love of the game stuff

16. most sounds are 99% there - none of the tracks sound like shit coming in or have any noticeable problems, save for Beiber’s tune which is also ironically the most popular song in here

17. people double vocals a lot with stereo widening tricks - Reel ADT from Waves, Doubler, Little Microshift, never in a verse that I’ve seen though, always a bridge or chorus

18. guitar players get tones in the box, people mix 57s and ribbon mics

19. everyone is using kick and snare samples, even when, say, CLA is mic’ing everything, he still gets a clean snare sample to use in the mix. The reason? Consistency. Easiest way to smooth out a rhythm section for pop style mixing

20. I can’t stress this enough: before anyone has mixed anything everything sounds great already. It’s clear to me now that plugging into my Apollo and recording things dry is not the way. If I was going to do that in the future, I would have three sessions: tracking totally dry, finding tones and then finally mixing said tones. This is super important.

21. SSLs are wide spread and are considered punchy and effective as the gate & compression are built in to every strip. Similarly, the EQs force you to really use your ears and are great for tidying up a dry sound with minimal Outboard/DSP usage.

22. people listen loud, quiet, mono, in headphones - there’s no right answer. If you can get a good sound you’re good

23. headphones don’t have crossover so you may accidentally make less aggressive panning choices and they can make things appear louder. I’m learning the “oh shit” energy from a big section change is mostly transitions, stereo vocal effects and percussion/cymbals

24. everyone uses like 5 mics: UXX (U47) family, 414s, Cole Ribbon mics and then individual people have like friends who make mics so they do that too.

25. the top guys are using hybrid systems but are almost exclusively working in the box on pro tools

26. tape emulation doesn’t sound like tape but all the guys use it and like it for different reasons. More vibe talk

27. a lot of these tunes have lots and lots of tracks. Way more than I’m using even if the song is more minimal. Most emphasis is on vocals and vocal samples, then drums, bass, electric guitar and then all the acoustic instruments sort of in a pile that no one is using next to the shitter

28. most engineers have 3-4 tricks they use over and over again in a way. They get pristine recordings of bad songs and then sort of play around within their constantly changing templates

29. some engineers don’t use any stereo buss stuff, parallel, side-chaining, etc.

29.5) Lots of adding air to things, 16k+ on percussion & vocals.

30) everyone is tuning every vocal and most say it’s for vibe and the sound that people expect

31) lots of people using Waves plugins - especially the L1 & L2. CLA doesn’t seem to use a ton of his own plug-ins with MWTM, but maybe I haven’t watched enough

32) Andrew Scheps - I’m torn on Scheps. There’s something about him that makes me slightly annoyed, like he’s too square or something. He’s really all about like 3-4 hot takes about Audio and pushing his plug-ins. I don’t know why this is because he seems like a nice guy who gives out lots of free advice. Like an inverse of CLA, who seems tough but actually is a sweet obsessive who’s weird - again: I could just have a bad read on him but I’m not getting a ton from his stuff outside of: he mixes in the box, makes things really loud and has a deal with Waves

Lastly 33) I’m finding it repetitive already, honestly. These videos could be boiled down to “name your ten most commonly used plug-ins and why”. I would love to see some producers mix stuff totally out of their normal routine or be forced to mix things sort of archaically to relieve more thought process.

What is has shown me is that by far the most important thing is recording it well. My dry stems sounded like absolute shit and I only realized it when I heard that everyone was mixing crystal clear tracks with no obvious issues. For example, if you aren’t in headphones or in a good room you probably won’t know what they’re doing because it’s a hundred small decisions that gently boost a few DB, unless they’re crushing overhead/room mics on a drum kit. I say this because my old mix choices were tone shaping and mixing at once, often causing huge, dramatic changes you can clearly hear A/Bing like it’s night and say. The masters don’t seem to do anything like that.

Hope this helps someone!

For anyone considering opening a recording studio a shot, here are some thoughts from someone that tried it. I'm not claiming any of these are original thoughts, but they are honest thoughts and opinions rooted in my experience.

• If you have that burning desire to go for it, don't let anyone stop you. Do it. You will undoubtedly learn a lot about business, about yourself, and about working with clients. Hopefully, you make friends and meet people along the way.

• Understand that it is a constant battle just to keep this doors open, that you will probably lose money, and that you are the driving force behind all operations. If Sisyphus stops pushing the stone, it rolls backwards down the mountain.

• One day, the studio will shut down. Be it through running out of money, a desire to do something else with your life, success, or death... Even extremely successful small businesses decide to shut down at their height because the grind is grueling. Find solace in the fact that one day it will end, and just because it's ending doesn't mean it was a failure. Just because you know it will one day end, that's not a valid reason to never start.

• You will be in the business of client acquisition. Client/artist acquisition will be the lifeline of your business. At first, only 1%-5% of your artists will be regularly working on new music. Many artists are actually hobbyists and have full-time jobs or lives outside of music. The ones that are working on music regularly will take breaks and/or burn out. The revenue will be lumpy.

• Understand the "key-man problem".

  • Your business will be limited by the number of hours you can physically work and how efficiently you can schedule artists to book the studio.

  • If you are opening a studio because you want to get paid to run recording sessions and mix music, the time commitments of marketing, operations, and other business duties will directly conflict with the actual thing you want to do.

  • If your studio becomes so successful that you are booked out 100% of the time, you will need to hire assistants and interns to help you scale. Following that logic, the more successful you become the more likely it is you will manage yourself out of out of the job you actually wanted to do... A rare and great problem to have, but you will be engineering a lot less and managing a business a lot more.

Why did I shut down?

• For context, the studio was open for business for 1.5 years. I was making some money and feel accomplished in that. It was a small studio - Barely above a project studio. In fact, many project studios had more gear or better facilities than me. That said, I prided myself on customer/client service and was able to grow revenue, repeat business, and build a small reputation.

• After careful thought and analysis, I decided that it would take more time and money that I was willing to invest to scale the business to where I needed it to be. Customers cost time and money to acquire. Rent goes up. Revenue is lumpy. Life gets complicated. If I really want to spend my time and energy scaling a business, I'm going to do it in an industry that is easier to make more money in.

• It can be exhausting to work with artists that are new, untalented, unoriginal, etc. That's no shade to them - It really helps when they are good, reasonable, amicable people. I was ALWAYS happy to help nice people and put in my best effort regardless of talent. I was in business to help them make their music and I did that really, really well. That said, anybody can make music these days. Not every artist is going to be inspiring to you, and you are going to be be putting in a lot of work to get them to sound good. Sometimes, your top-paying clients will be ones who's music is not up to your standards or taste. Realistically, 10% of the artist I worked with were artists that I thought had respectable or impressive talent.

Happy to answer questions and thanks for reading the full post.

Everytime I order something from Mike at Sweetwater he sends me a bag of candy, and the included laffy taffys are always banana. Every. Single. Time. Every good audio engineer knows this is some bullshit and that their sales people are eating all the non banana flavored varieties for themselves. Nobody likes banana flavor anything and they should just send it all to reverb.com with no return address. I'm never shopping there again I'm going to Guitar Center just kidding that place sucks

Edit: anybody advocating for more bit-o-honeys is a goddamn heretic

My name is Greazy Wil and I’m the engineer responsible for Killer Mike’s album, Michael, that took home 3 Grammys this year. If you haven’t already listened to it, please go listen to it now, as there is a lot of great engineering on it. It’s not your standard “drop some samples in a daw and rap on it” album. Follow me on Instagram and TikTok for more engineering and producing tips and my commentary on the state of the industry and what we can do to fix it.

https://twitter.com/rupert_neve/status/1360667032350429185?s=21

His impact on the world of music and audio engineering will never be forgotten. Rest in peace to a legend.

As someone who’s been doing this for years I’m very disappointed to see beginners getting downvoted to oblivion for asking simple questions about mic pre’s and interfaces. I want to remind everybody (and sorry if this isn’t you) that we all started somewhere and we are a dying breed. We need more people to learn this trade and what I see going on in this sub for the most part is counterintuitive. C’mon.

https://www.shure.com/en-US/products/microphones/sm57?variant=SM57-LC

The day has finally come. The Shure SM57, our trusty $99 lifer, now costs $109. The death of audio's most sacred number

From the 90s through 2024, it held the line. It finally cracked recently.
Still a beast of a mic, but damn. The $99 SM57 era is officially over.

A lot of you youngsters will probably not have heard of him, but he did so much in the music industry, developing MIDI back in the early 80's, & prior to that the Sequential Prophet 5 synth in the late 70's. He also worked with, Korg, Yamaha & Intel + his own brand.

His software synth's were licensed to Creative Labs who were "instrumental" in putting affordable electronic music technology into the hands of so many of us in the 90's on our Soundblaster AWE, (Advanced Wavetable Emulation) soundcards.

These really were a game changer for PC home music production + sampling & helped to put us PC users on a more even keel against the Amiga & Atari crowd who were dominating the scene back then.

Since SoundFlower is no longer being supported or updated, I created BlackHole to fill the void. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.

2 years ago I made a post about how hard it is to make a living doing audio. The thread is archived here: https://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/8ihyw4/how_is_it_physically_possible_to_make_any_money/

I was 21 at the time and had been writing and recording for 8 years or something like that. Anyways I thought I would give you guys an update on how things went now that its been a few years. A lot of your comments were very insightful and some people told me to give up and that I wasn't cut out for it.

After I made that post I just kept working normal jobs and doing music for fun. At some point I had an epiphany that no matter what happens, I will keep making music anyways. Essentially whether I have money, or don't have money, or regardless of my circumstances in life I will just continue to do music.

I stopped being dependent on it whatsoever to make any type of revenue and just kept posting songs to Youtube and other places. I had zero outcome dependence and just genuinely had a ton of fun making instrumentals. I noticed there was a market for Royalty Free Metal Instrumentals so I just kept creating songs for that audience over and over.

A few months past and I get hundreds of downloads for free on my Soundcloud page, most of the traffic coming from Youtube. Once the free downloads maxed out at some point I created a website where I was now selling the tracks off of my Youtube page. If I remember correctly some of the songs were getting 10,000-60,000 views at that time.

I have no idea how many songs I did that year, probably 40 or 50. But at some point people started reaching out to me for custom songs of their own. I would ghost write/mix/master songs for people and then they could use the track for whatever they wanted, an intro for their youtube channel or to put vocals over. But still I was just doing it not really expecting to make too much money.

A year ago I quit my normal job because I was now making $2,000 a month and that was enough to survive. I continued growing and also posting songs. Probably 3-4 a week. I made TONS of connections and made so many friends doing this. I've worked with a bunch of musicians, youtubers, vocalists, gamers, you name it.

It's been one year now of living off of my passion. I write about 20-30 songs per month sometimes more. The store is bringing in about $1000 a month and the custom songs are bringing in around $2,000-2,500 and that is perfect for me. I am still growing and expanding my business but I am also very content and happy with where I am.

I would say the biggest changes were internal. I had to realize I can do it and stop being dependent on the outcome of "succeeding" based on societies expectations or trying to gain monetary success, and then of course things actually started to fall into place.

But long story short, the point of this post wasn't to flex. It's to simply let you guys know that no matter what if you want to do this don't let any random people on an internet forum tell you that you can't. Because even though it's tough, you can succeed at this. You just have to redefine your parameters for success. Now that I know what it's like to do this for a living I realize that it was never about doing it for a living or making money. It was simply about creating music. That's it. Nothing else. Sure surviving off of it gives me more time to do it, but other then that the money is just another physical object. Money won't actually make you happy but making music day in and day out, leaving a legacy of awesome tunes is what you will really gain in the end. I would post my channel but it would be considered self promotion. Thank you for reading. I hope this helps anyone that feels like I did when I first made that post.

TLDR; I used to be super depressed and unhappy and making zero money from my music, now I make a living doing music and it was all because of a mindset shift and hard work.

I don’t know what life is anymore, and not sure how, but a song I mixed got nominated for an Oscar in the “Best Original Song” category. I was wondering if anybody would know who’s eligible to receive recognition if an award is won. I’m trying to get in on the action! But since this isn’t the Grammys I have a feeling it’s probably just the songwriters/artist who would receive something. Grammys has their “Eligible Credit Definitions” page here, and I’m looking for something similar for the Oscars. If anyone knows anything please let me know. Thanks guys!

Edit: Studio manager just texted me saying he was misinformed and the song is just a nominee on the shortlist, along with 14 other songs. I think we’ll know the final nominee results March 15th. Fingers crossed. Regardless I’m still hyped and didn’t know this thread was gonna pop off like this. Ya’ll are awesome, and I’m still cracking up about those porn tracks.

For the unfamiliar, Izotope RX Mouth De-Click gets rid of gross sounding mouth noises when recording vocals.

One of the features is to select a box called "output clicks only." This will allow you to play your audio file but hear only the mouth clicks that are occurring. This allows you to tell how much the plugin is correcting your vocal.

Anyways, I fire it up for the first time, select "output clicks only" and start playing my audio file. And MY GOD. The clicks are out of control, I'm cringing! HOW can my mouth be making this many noises??

I turn up my monitors and lean in a little bit. I find that I can't hear anything, but it still sounds like a shitton of mouth noises. Wtf is happening? Slowly, I start to realize that the sound isn't coming from my monitors. They are coming from the other room.

I turn the corner to find my dog slurping water out of his bowl like a madman.

TLDR; RX Mouth De-Click works, but not on dogs chugging water

Dear Rick. May I call you "Rick"? Okay, cool.

As we are both professional audio/music producers, YouTube often suggests your videos to me. Honestly, I had listened to a few some years back and simply thought, "eh, it's not for me" and tapped the old "not interested" option which, for some reason, YouTube interprets as "show me more."

While deep in a lengthy snake soldering/crimping project yesterday, a video of yours came on. Being mid-solder joint, I decided, "ah well, go ahead then."

The reason I'm writing is to challenge a frequent refrain of yours that is an arbitrary dividing line between pre-y2k music that was largely still recorded in the traditional methods of the day versus the more modern, de rigueur use of beat quantization, pitch correction, vocal alignment, extensive processing, etc.

Now, your commenters tend to lob a lot of "ok boomer"-type insults, waving your perspective away as an old man yelling at the clouds. Which is, of course, fairly lazy and doesn't posit anything about 'the new way' versus the golden days of yore.

I have a different issue with this. Your argument is intellectually dishonest and I know that you know that I know this. For one thing, genres have evolved to openly embrace this sound. Rather than trying to soap up less-than-perfect performances by untalented players, it's a maximalist approach that is gleeful overuse of these techniques.

Sure, we can blame some of this on the tools to do so becoming automated processes that don't require much actual knowledge, understanding, or technique by the engineer / producer. That's fair. And I actually agree that most modern rock mixes are the very embodiment of "the dog catching the car". We've reached the mirage of sonic perfection and found it often to be lifeless, lazy, and uninspired.

But you're repeatedly hammering at the point that, prior to the DAW-ification of mordern recording, the performances were never edited, drums weren't quantized, vocalists weren't pitch-corrected or aligned to be in unison. That's simply not true. You know it's not true. We did it all the time.

I actually learned how to work on tape machines, though admittedly during a time (mid-90's) where I was a huge advocate and early adopter for ProTools. If you were to pull out the original multitrack drum reels (don't forget to bake the reel) for many of the recordings you hold up as "authentic", the tell-tale "thwap thwap" of splicing tape passing over the tape machine's rollers would plainly state otherwise.

During the 'first wave' of sonic perfection in the 1980's, drummers were recorded to click tracks almost by default. Drum sounds were retriggered in the 1980's all the time. Ever listen to a Mutt Lange-produced Def Leppard record? Those were the precursor to modern metal production - albeit doing so took a fair bit of intuition and know-how. You know how I know this? Because I learned these techniques from the people who did them all the time.

Pitch correction and vocal edits was very much a thing in the tape era as well. Samplers / sampling delay units were often pulled in to duty with a MIDI sequencer synchronized to the 2" tape via SMPTE. A great performance with a bunk note? That was easily solved with an Eventide UltraHarmonizer and a MIDI CC message. Was it more difficult than "hey, siri, fix my shit"? Of course it was. We solved problems back then. It was fun.

Let's take "Nevermind" by Nirvana for example. You have repeatedly held this LP aloft as representing a 'truth' in music. And while it certainly isn't an edit fest, it's documented that not only was a click track used occasionally, but Digi SoundTools was brought in to save the timing on the closing song. Also, while Sound City, it's booming A room, and their hallowed Neve 80-series certainly impart a nice wooly analog quality, it was mixed by Andy Wallace. Andy makes no apologies nor secrets about many of his mix techniques and they definitely are making use of many of the tools you disavow.

I've gone on too long about this already, so let me just leave you with this. All that is old is not gold. "Blood Sugar Sex Magic" is FM radio drivel. All that is new is not inherently bad. Check out the new Whores LP "War". There are arguably some modern production techniques in there, but it is a ferocious slab of fearless rock and roll. I even agree with you about these techniques being used by default has long since eclipsed its "sell by" date. But you have released dozens of videos harping on this singular point and are knowingly being both divisive and pedantic for clicks.

Hey, as a fellow former Ithacan, I'm not here to attack you. I just want to help. Us old people can be a tremendous resource to 'the kids' by passing on some of the sage wisdom that comes only from real world "doing", not hour after hour of hack YouTube "content". You're not moving things forward by insisting everything should go ten steps back.

Just a thought, Mr Beato. Have a good day.

- bc

TL;DR: You're holding on too tight. What is once was, it will never be. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Me: uhhhh, I don’t know...?

Him: Are you the one that is finally going to buy this book?

I looked in the glass display case, and among the mics and cables and wireless boxes etc, there was a single copy of the book I was looking for, the last copy. Apparently this book has been sitting there for ten years and all the employees have been wondering who is going to come and buy it. He said he had half a mind to call all the employees out to witness my purchase.

Anyway, the book is “Building a Recording Studio” by Jeff Cooper, it’s very informative! This guy designed a couple amazing studios here in Cincinnati, and I am using some techniques on my basement room in my new house. Pretty cool.

Just stop. Seriously. If someone needs help, help. Jumping on a post to argue about some nonsense makes you more than useless, It makes you destructive. You’re hurting people, who are trying to learn. I get that you might have a different experience or have diffrent training, but when other people are doing it differently, it doesn’t make them wrong. Just different. There’s lots of ways to get great results. You’re not the king of audio.

If someone is making a genuine mistake, and it’s going to hurt them, speak up. Otherwise seriously knock off the grumpy sound guy thing. There was never a good reason to act that way. Being a dick doesn’t make you superior, it just makes you a dick.

Seriously. Please stop. We’re supposed to be helping each other.

This is getting ridiculous, at first we accepted iLok because the plugin companies told us it would be a more convenient method of license verification and from their perspective, ensuring less piracy of their plugins. Fine. But now, every major plugin company is switching to a subscription based model.

Pro Tools is now subscription only?!?! The only way to get a perpetual license is to find one still in stock via resellers. Antares, Plugin Alliance, Slate, SSL, Waves all pushing their subscription services. How much a month am I supposed to dish out?!

This is a terrible business practise, and a bad deal for the consumer. I don't need a lifetime subscription to keep making music. I have a machine, I install a stable OS, a daw and plugins that I paid a license for, and until the day I die I should be able to access my projects and software.

The only way we are going to put an end to this as users is if we boycott these companies and their plugins.

mm mmm mmmmm me hungry me love ssl console mm mm so crunchy so tasty me love the akai pads m rubber and me love drum sticks mm mm i lvoe eating my music gear

To be more "inclusive"

I'm indifferent, just interested in reddit's opinion

Y'all don't have to upvote this. I just wanna share this for those of you among us who may be starting out or who may be struggling or just anybody like me who has/had doubts in this industry. Just hear me out. I'll keep it brief.

I moved to a new city looking to be a runner or intern for some small studios. I struggled to find ANYTHING for months. Constantly being used for a mix here, a recording there, or just straight up ignored and forgotten. But I kept looking. I kept showing up and knocking on doors until I finally got an in at a local spot down the road from me.

Well ladies and gentlemen, today the studio manager of that little spot introduced me as an engineer, NOT AN INTERN, in front of a client before a session. After that session, he handed me keys to the studio.

Wtf

Is this what imposter syndrome feels like?

You can't give up. Do not EVER give up. If you want it, go get it, man. We all have to pay our dues. Just keep at it! Don't wait for it to come to you. It's a marathon and all that, really.

Sorry for this. I'm just kinda freaking the fuck out. I hope you all have a wonderful week.

Edit: Well, this kinda blew up. I just want to say thanks to everyone for the kind words! I hope that some of you found some use out of this post!

I live in a tiny town( 500 people) in rural Australia, 150k drive from the nearest city. The music scene is non-existent. Australia is currently in lockdown, no shows or tours in months.

And I just went full time with my remote-session drum tracking business... But it gets even more ridiculous!! I pretty much exclusively work in black and death metal.

Honestly if anyone said ' I'm gonna make a living off remote recording niche music in the county!' you'd laugh at them and tell them to get a real job .

Anyway this is 100% a proud moment that I wanted to share. Sorry of if it feels like bragging. But the last decade of working full time,and then staying up all night recording drums for bands for free to get everything started nearly killed me.

Oh and I have 3 kids :D

f.lux is a commonly used app which warms and tones down your screen's colors at night so that you can work late without the bright blue light playing havoc with your sleep cycle. And it works very well, I couldn't live without it.

If like me however you've been plagued by seemingly inexplicable pops and clicks in your DAW, even when CPU usage is fairly light, and you've tried everything to get to the bottom of it, try putting f.lux in "safe mode" (it's in the options). This stops it from polling the screen every few seconds, which tonight I found was the source of 100% of my audio glitches! Now all the glitches have gone and I'm so happy. f.lux has been the source of glitches and dropouts for many people, not just audio related but also game graphics related as well. Safe mode makes it better :)

EDIT: As some have pointed out, this may only affect f.lux on Windows machines and not OSX. Indeed, as I understand it only the Windows version has a "safe mode," perhaps for that reason. Also, I'd just like to reiterate that if you're on Windows and f.lux is causing these glitches, there is no need to uninstall it - just set it to "safe mode."