jesganaud.dev — audio engineering field notes

jesganaud.devaudio engineering field notes

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2026

Re-mic’ing the NS-10s for the third time

Four weeks of A/B/X with three small-diaphragm condensers, two ribbons, and a $42 measurement mic. The measurement mic won.

#monitoring#measurement#studio-a#ribbons

Tom Erbe on the actual history of granular synthesis

Worth reading for the bit on the GRM’s tape splicing rigs — closer to physical sample rate conversion than what we now call granular. Also reframes Roads’ 1988 paper as documentation, not invention.

jackd 1.9.22 cold-boot xrun trace

Three rooms, same kit, different hi-hat

Tracking the same Gretsch in three spaces in one week. The hi-hat lied every time — and the lie was the recording.

A bestiary of compressors I have actually used

What each one is good at, what it lies about, and what I reach for at 2am.

DPA 4061 vs 4062 capsule comparison thread

Matches what I measured last September. Adding to the lavalier map.

Why I stopped trusting my SPL meter at 35Hz

A class-1 meter is class-1 in the band it was specified for. The room below 40Hz is not in that band.

Phase coherence at 8kHz in cardioid pairs

X/Y, ORTF, and Blumlein on the same cymbal, run through a 2k–6k complex coherence analysis. ORTF wins, but not for the reason in the textbooks.

#stereo#phase#cymbals#measurement

.envrc for headless reaper render farm

AES papers worth reading, 2019–2025

34 papers, grouped by what they actually answer rather than what they claim to.

pipewire 1.4 latency math, finally written down

Listening fatigue on day six of a mix

On the difference between hearing and noticing, and why my reference tracks stopped working on Thursday.

Convolution IRs from a concrete stairwell

Sine sweeps in a 7-flight stairwell at 03:00. The early reflections are the interesting part — the tail is everywhere.

#convolution#reverb#field-recording#IRs

Native Instruments quietly shipped Reaktor 7

The GPU fallback is the interesting bit — deterministic across machines or not? The release notes are ambiguous and the forum threads are speculation.

native-instruments.com

Cheap converters that aren’t transparent (and why I keep buying them)

rsync stems backup, version 7

Tape hiss as a compositional element, not a flaw

Removing the hiss removes the room. I keep forgetting this and re-learning it.

Eurorack utility modules I keep re-buying

Gain staging in IEEE 1394 chains, ten years late

Firewire is dead and I am still tracking gain through three Presonus boxes daisy-chained off a thunderbolt adapter. Here is the math.

#gain-staging#firewire#digital

AES e-Library on perceptual audio coding, 1990s vintage

I keep coming back to this. The codecs we still use today were tuned on one room’s worth of ears.

Audio-over-IP jitter on a $40 unmanaged switch

Dante on consumer-grade switching gear. The packets arrive. The order is creative.

#dante#networking#jitter

The SM57 presence peak is at 6.3kHz, not 5kHz

Half the EQ advice on the internet is corrected by reading the actual response curve.