WHEN producing music, one of the most essential tools is a good system to reference your tracks on.

Without an accurate way to monitor how your track sounds, you will be mixing to a reference that is not reflective of how the music should actually be.

This is the main reason why studios are very expensively sound-treated. If the speakers or room has too much bass, the mixing engineer will turn down the lows in the studio, resulting in a track that has less bass than is ideal.

Likewise, if a reference monitor doesn’t reflect the highs very well, the mixing engineer will turn them up – resulting in an overly shrill-sounding mix elsewhere.

Ideally, as you will see from the analysis below, the best route to go is to have both headphones and speakers, but let’s say you are just getting into the game, what do you buy first?

This guide will weigh up the pros and cons of the budget choice between good headphones and good monitors.

Pros for buying good headphones

THE main advantage of headphones (from a budget standpoint) is their versatility. If you are a producer with limited cash, then headphones will offer many advantages to speakers.

Firstly, I am going to assume you don’t live in a mansion with no neighbours to worry about.

Headphones allow you to mix whenever you like and at any volume without disturbing people next door or in your house.

They also offer the portability advantage so you can work on tracks anywhere – provided you have a laptop – and the “mixing environment” will be the same.

Unlike speakers, they don’t have the restraints of the surrounding room’s acoustics and so you are free to mix in any sized room without worrying about resonances and echoes.

Headphones are also generally cheaper than speakers with much less hassle to set up. Speakers require the correct placement as well as room treatment to get the best out of them (by best I mean most accurate frequency response).

They also offer the advantage of much deeper basses with the more expensive brands able to accurately replicate all the way down to 20Hz – the lowest frequency we can hear – which is something an expensive subwoofer is normally required for.

Going back to the room ambiences, headphones will allow you to hear sounds as-they-are without any additional reverb. This can lead to mixes sounding sterile or clinical, especially for songs destined for large clubs or venues.

The upside of this is you get a more accurate reference of timings for vocals and transient sounds.

Pros of buying good speakers

A major advantage of good speakers for monitoring is their “natural” sound.

With speakers, the sound is played out into the room in a way that it would be heard live. This means that the stereo field in correctly placed monitors will highlight issues that aren’t obvious on headphones because they inject the sound directly into your ears.

Trust me when I say the best stereo mixes shine, not on headphones, but perfectly placed studio monitors.

While this may not be the highest priority for some people, I’m going to make it so. Headphones are likely to damage your hearing in long bouts of mixing and producing.

Volume creep is a real thing and having the sound in such close proximity to your ears is really bad for you. As a musician, you want to protect your favourite tools.

While you can still damage your hearing with speakers, there are generally cues that tell you it is too loud. Things on your desk will rattle with the kicks and bass – perhaps a warning that you’re listening too loudly.

The other benefit to speakers is that smaller track elements are easily lost. This may sound like a bad thing, but if you mix exclusively with headphones, you may find your backing vocals or secondary elements lost in the mix as soon as the track is played into a room.

I always find that when I mix on headphones, the hi-hats are way too quiet. The sound great in the headphones, but as soon as I reference them on speakers they are lost in the mix.

This has led to some embarrassing cases where I show someone a track on their good speakers and the mix sounds muddy and thick.

One of the scary terms for beginners is phase. This is hard to detect in headphones. When sounds are out of phase, they cancel each other out. For it to be a problem, the sound waves need to be meeting together in the air.

If your headphones have elements with phasing issues it will be harder to detect than if the phasing happens from speakers.

With speakers, it can be pretty obvious as you walk around the room or even just lean forward as the bass can pop out or totally disappear. If elements are completely out of phase it can kind of sound like they are turning inside out in your head.

Try testing it out yourself with good speakers and flip the phase of a channel. as you move your head, the sound will “twist” as elements and frequencies comb in and out.

If I buy both, what should I cheap out on?

Of course, the best thing to do, even if you are on a budget is to get both. I recommend spending around £70-£100 for headphones and between £100-£300 for speakers – more if possible.

This will actually give you better sound via the headphones despite the cheaper price (think how much less material and electronics they need).

In buying a good, accurate pair of headphones, and having a medium-level pair of speakers, you can get most of the tough and precise work done in the headphones and constantly reference against the speakers.

This will mean you must make some compromises. Most £100-£300 speakers will be pretty poor for the deepest bass sounds. If you are new to mixing any music you will likely be impressed with the bass, but trust me it isn’t accurate enough to go by alone, particularly if you are in a room without any sound treatment.

For the low-frequency work, trust the headphones. In fact, for most of the work, trust the headphones, but then make sure the stereo width and higher frequencies, in particular, translate well on the monitors.

The final word

If you are starting with around £100 then the best thing to get is headphones. They will offer you a lot more versatility and are great for students and young people especially because of small flats/dorms/family houses.

Once you have good headphones, one of the next investments should be good speakers. The added detail that speakers offer is important but if you are totally fresh to production then your ears might not be tuned well enough yet to pick them out – that’s OK!

I always recommend you ask around, and if possible, test out good speakers yourself. Booking a session in a studio is expensive, but worth it to hear how music should sound on good-quality gear. When you start off, it’s easy to recognise what sounds bad, but until you hear just how good music can sound on the right system, it is hard to make the right decision.

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YOU don’t need to buy lots of expensive hardware to get a wide range of sounds. Many DAWs come bundled with a wide range of instruments and effects.

Ableton, for example, offers several tiers of Live 10 depending on how much bundled instruments and sounds you want. Logic too has a great selection of instruments.

But here’s the thing, they are often limited within that DAW and don’t work cross-platform. This is one of the reasons people buy plugins.

In addition, plugins offer a much broader range of sounds as there is a whole global market to choose from. You only need to buy the ones you need, as opposed to having a large selection of bundled sounds designed to suit everyone.

So, with all my raving about how great third-party plugins can be, why am I writing about making the most of stock sounds? It’s simple – they are essentially free (or at least covered in the price of the DAW).

So here are my suggestions for getting the best out of what you already have:

1. Read the manual

This one is really simple and for good reason. Stock instruments and effects are well documented, normally all in the same chapter, of your DAW’s manual.

This makes them very easy to learn, and you often get a good understanding of how they were designed too!

While they may not always be the prettiest synths or effects, they will be optimised for the software and work very well.

2. Favourite and classify the stock presets you like

In Ableton, you can tag sounds, samples, instruments, and effects with coloured tags.

This is a great way to make life easier in the long run. As an Ableton user myself, I am not a huge fan of 70% of all the instruments presets built-in. To get around this, I tag the sounds that I like and add them into a favourites category.

This makes it a lot easier to filter through the good options that relate to your sound, and as time progresses, you may find certain presets are your go-to options and start becoming part of your style.

In other stock plugins that load more like the normal VSTs, just save the presets you like into a folder set aside for you. Make sure you know which ones are made by someone else so you don’t sell them as artist presets when you get big and famous.

3. Track templates

Do you find that you have the stock EQ plugin followed by a compressor on every track? Try setting it up as a track template so it is immediately available and you don’t have to sort through lots of different options each time.

In DAWs like Reaper, which I use for podcast creation, I use Reaper’s stock plugins for editing the voices. Reaper allows you to save an FX chain, which means you can have a default setting for each person’s voice saved to their name.

Ableton also allows this feature, with the convenient placement of macro-mapping.

4. Watch YouTube Tutorials

I didn’t rank this as high up as other suggestions for the reasons that many YouTubers won’t spend as much time on stock instruments, but nevertheless, it is a good way to learn them.

Ableton especially has a lot of coverage for its stock instruments on YouTube. Search up video guides to find tips and tricks for how to use them. Match what the guides are doing and save the presets to expand your preset library.

5. Model a genre

Generally, stock instruments fit into an era. I have found a lot of stock instruments work great for the sounds of old UK Garage tracks for example. This is because many were used when these genres were kicking off.

The simplicity of stock instruments leads to some rather generic sounds, but that is usually because they were well used in the past.

If you are making a track based on a certain genre, there’s a good chance you can create those sounds really easily from stock instruments.

6. Drafting sounds for a low spec computer

I am not a big fan of the sound quality of stock instrument libraries, as a general rule.

Ableton’s pianos, for example, aren’t the nicest sounding and can leave the song sounding a bit dull. What they do offer though is a low hit on performance.

Sometimes if you just want to quickly jam out ideas, stock sounds are fine and then you can replace them later at the mixing stage.

One of my favourite piano instruments is Una Corda by Native Instruments in their Komplete bundle. I don’t have Komplete installed on my laptop, but do have it on my main PC so using stock instruments until I can get things replaced is a really convenient option.

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PIONEER DJ has launched a new mixer, the DJM-V10. Describing it as “a new breed of mixer”, the six-channel unit has an assortment of features that set it aside from Pioneer’s previous flagship models.

Featuring four-band EQs with full kills for the highs and lows, the mixer is set to allow DJs precise control over their mixes. Each channel features a dedicated filter knob – something Pioneer has really been behind on previously.

The DJM-V10 features an expanded send/return section and you can route audio to one of four built-in FX and up to two pieces of external equipment.

This allows you to assemble a custom setup by plugging in FX units, guitar pedals, and more to further personalize your performance before routing the audio back to the original channel or mix it straight into the master output.

You can also choose to return it to a separate channel and tweak it further with the filter. And you can even use selected smartphone apps in your performances by connecting your device via MULTI I/O.

A key feature built into this unit is a compressor. If you want to play old or unmastered tracks but you’re worried they’ll be overwhelmed by the loudness of music made with modern production techniques, the DJM-V10 has the solution. Turn the compressor knob on the relevant channel and the mixer will “beef up” the audio in real time. The quieter the track, the more pressure is added, boosting the sound of “weaker” tracks and having a minimal effect on mastered music. It is the first of its kind on a Pioneer mixer.

The beat FX section includes a brand new effect called Shimmer as well as some of the more familiar ones seen on older models.

The DJM-V10 will be available from early February 2020. To use it with rekordbox dj/dvs, connect the mixer to a computer running the latest version of the software (rekordbox dj/dvs license(s) required, available separately).

The DJM-V10 is also Serato DVS-ready (Serato DJ Club Kit license required, available separately – Serato DJ Pro compatibility is coming soon) and TRAKTOR DVS-ready (requires TRAKTOR PRO 3, available separately).

Pioneer has adopted studio-quality 96-kHz/64-bit mixing and dithering processing within the DSP, as well as 32-bit high-quality A/D and D/A converters.

The built-in send/return FX are Short Delay, Long Delay, Dub Echo, and Reverb. With parameter knobs at your fingertips, you can further tweak the FX as follows:

• Size/Feedback: changes the room size when using a reverb, and the feedback amount when using delays and echoes.
• Time: adjusts the decay time of the reverb and the delay time for delays and echoes.
• Tone: changes the hue of the effected sound, making it deep and heavy or light and crisp.
• Master Mix Level: acts as the overall volume of the effected sound when Master Mix is turned on.

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The winner was picked through a random name generator and I am pleased to announce that Gareth Wynne-McHardy is the winner! He will get a hoodie send to his door shortly.

Here is his track that he submitted in the comments! Gareth goes by the artist name of MisterGareth and his electronic pop style has some wonderful low-slung grooves! Definitely give his channel a follow!

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For those of you lamenting at the high costs of analogue synths, you may be glad to hear that there is a new affordable synth in town. Surprisingly, IK Multimedia has jumped into the spotlight today, announcing their Uno synth. A “True Analogue”, monophonic synth and sequencer, with delay and 5 performance buttons (including a “wah” and an intriguing “scoop” button). This all comes for €243.99 (including VAT) and is available for pre-order now, with the release expected in July.

The look of the synth is actually rather appealing for something in its price range, while it does lack the “clicky” buttons, it does have touch buttons which look quite cool. The bottom showcases the combined keyboard and sequencer, while the upper section displays all the performance and programming controls, 7 knobs. These are complemented with LEDs, where appropriate, to aid the use.

From the video, this synth sounds like it will be a beast, it has a 2-pole OTA-based resonant multimode filter, and IK Multimedia says it has HPF, BP, and LPF. It also outdoes any competitor in its range with the 5 performance effects, which are unusual even on more pricey synths.

“This highly flexible synthesis engine not only excels in producing the rich, warm, punchy, deep bass sounds that are the core of a high-quality monophonic synth, it’s also perfectly designed to bring a wide sonic palette of leads, drones, arps, sequences, sweeps and effects.”

While monophonic, the Uno has 2 oscillators meaning that it has a good breadth of sound at its disposal, and with arp and sequence modes there is sure to be plenty of opportunities. There are 100 presets built in with the opportunity to reprogram 80 of them so this is a generous synth that will suit the needs of most people.

The synth can be both usb and battery powered, providing flexibility for the user, and the presence of a MIDI in and out option will suit many users wanting to make it a bit more playable with their own MIDI keyboards and controllers.

For people who have paid attention to budget analogue devices for a few years, you may remember the tuning issues with the Akai Rhythm Wolf. The industry must have learned a valuable lesson from that mess because I’m pleased to see that the Uno has “self-tuning and auto-tune calibration” on board.

“And thanks to its precision controlled self-tuning circuit, UNO Synth will always be ready for any performance, avoiding the hassle of manual tuning.”

This surely will be a successful synth as it is both cheap and a lot better looking than it’s alternatives. It doesn’t currently have much to compete against, perhaps with the exception of the Korg Volca Bass and Monologue, but IK Multimedia really have managed to make a tactical move jumping into the budget analogue synth market now.

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Arduino is an open source hardware project based on single board microprocessors. It is cheap and easily found online, this means that it is a favourite of DIYers and home inventors for projects ranging from simple motion sensors, all the way up to drones and robotics. A question, which I’ve been investigating for the past few months, has been whether the Arduino can be used to build your own synthesiser. The short answer is that it can, but my investigation continued when I discovered that it can be quite hard, and inaccessible to a complete novice, this feature is my best attempt at providing answers to people wanting to get started with Arduino and build a synth for themselves.

A word of warning here, a lot of what is to come is still fairly complicated, and so I recommend you familiarise yourself with how synths work, and some audio basics before you dive in. As such, many of the resources which I link to, are chosen because they give a lot of background understanding, I recommend you read through all of the links to get a working grasp of the projects, and use this article as a guide on where to look, as much as a tutorial in itself.

1. DAC

The very first thing you’ll need to consider is that the Arduino doesn’t have a headphone jack. This means that it cannot send audio straight away. What we need is a DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) I have found two methods of outputting audio from an Arduino: PWM, and an R2R resistor ladder. Both of these require a knowledge of soldering and basic electronics. A third option, not in the spirit of the project, yet still available, would be to use an Audio Shield for Arduino, a device which you place on the pins to do it for you.

The simpler method is to use one of the Arduino’s PWM output pins fed into a low pass filter. This is by far the simplest method, yet it only outputs 1-Bit audio, and so is perhaps not the best for sound quality.

The better method which I have found is to use a Resistor Ladder (R2R) as a voltage divider to make a much better sounding 8-Bit DAC.

Image from Hackaday.

Amanda Ghassaei‘s Instructable on building an R2R Arduino DAC is an extremely valuable guide here, but to sum up:

• Each pin outputs 0-5V.
• The Arduino is programmed to send the digital signal via 8 of the pins.
• The pins can either be 0V (binary 0), or 5V (Binary 1) so there are two positions.
• With 8 pins with an option of 2 values each, you have 2⁸  = 256 options/levels. 
• These use a Resistor Ladder to divide the voltage such that 0-5V has 256 increments on the output.

Big Note for Consideration: Not all Arduinos run on 5V, some have progressed to 3.3V and it is, therefore, paramount to check which voltage your device runs on.

The output of the Resistor Ladder can then be attached to the signal pin of an audio jack, and the grounds connected.

2. Mozzi

The second thing you’ll need is the code for the Arduino to actually make a sound. Mozzi is a sound synthesis library designed to be used in the Arduino IDE – the development environment which you create the code in.

Mozzi is a valuable tool as it contains much of the code prewritten, so for the complete novice, it is ideal. The coding part is certainly more difficult than the hardware part, and so I recommend you get familiar with it over several days. There are plenty of tutorials online for this depending on your personal level of Arduino experience.

3. Inputs

The Arduino can be controlled with various inputs. The most simple way of doing this would be to incorporate push buttons such as the arcade push buttons to control the frequency of the notes. All of this will require basic Arduino coding and is easy enough to do with small Arduino kits which include the needed buttons in addition to guides on programming them in as inputs.

Image from this helpful tutorial.

More complicated control can be added, such as a MIDI input, which will require an understanding of how MIDI works. This has the payoff of much better control, and the ability to use a MIDI keyboard or sequencer to control the signal. 

I will link to the easiest guide which I have found to get this working, but the more complex circuitry is recommended, notably using an optocoupler, to isolate the grounds. For schematics and guides at this level, this link will come in handy.

4. Extra Considerations

The Arduino is certainly not the most powerful, or even most optimised component for building a synth, however, it is a great intermediate-level device for building up with. It will provide rudimentary sounds, up to basic wavetable synthesis and can be combined with other hardware components for better effects.

I recommend that you don’t try and use the Arduino as your sole processor for all of the synth’s parameters, the more processing power that is required, the more the sound can deteriorate, and the clock speed does become a major limitation.

This is where optimised coding can come in handy, instead of using the Arduino to calculate every discreet sample value in real time, it is normally better to include tables, such as those present in the Mozzi libraries, and other libraries.

Adding filters can be done in the Arduino, but with an understanding of components and schematics, you can create analogue filters with a bit of reading up, which will free up processing, and may well sound better.

5. Other Musical Applications

The Arduino can be made into a sequencer, with a recent video by Look Mum No Computer showing how easily it can be done.

Aside from this awesome piece of kit, the applications are pretty much endless depending on the coding ability and inspiration of the creator. I recommend you look up and play about with various people’s projects to try and get an understanding of what is possible, then when you come up with something new, make sure to write about it online so others can learn! 

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1. Unison

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The point of this plugin is simplicity, with only two tweak-able parameters and four “instrument types” to choose from. There is also a handy bypass button.

• Voice – to add clarity and detail, without compromising on harshness.
• Bass – brings punch to the low end 
• Instrument – preserves the timbre and natural sound while evening out the resonances
• Drums – adds transient details and prevents mud

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