Journal
Notes From the Studio
Articles on recording, production, mixing, mastering, voice, and the craft of making records, written between sessions.
Acoustic Treatment vs Soundproofing
These two terms get used interchangeably in home studio forums and gear discussions constantly, and that confusion costs people real money. Acoustic treatment and soundproofing are fundamentally different things, they solve different problems, and buying one when you need the ...
29 May 2025 · Read →Remote Mixing and Mastering: How It Works
Remote mixing and mastering has become the standard working method for a large portion of professional audio production globally, and that includes how we work with artists here at Animus Studios. Whether you're a Brisbane band who tracked at a rehearsal space, a rapper in Mel...
12 May 2025Vocal Tuning and Comping Explained
Most listeners can't explain why a vocal sounds professional, but they can immediately feel when it doesn't. The answer is almost always in the editing. Transparent vocal tuning and careful comping are the invisible backbone of nearly every commercial release, from Brisbane in...
14 April 2025Recording Drums: A Practical Studio Guide
Getting a usable drum sound starts before a single microphone goes up. The kit itself has to sound good in the room, the drummer has to be playing consistently, and the session has to be set up so that phase relationships between microphones work for you rather than against yo...
10 March 2025Writing and Arranging a Song in the Studio
Most songs that struggle in the mix were actually broken at the arrangement stage. The notes were fine, the performances were decent, but nobody had made the hard decisions about what goes where, what gets cut, and how the song moves from start to finish. Arrangement is the di...
10 February 2025Voiceover Recording: What to Expect in the Booth
Voiceover recording is a precise craft, and walking into a professional voice over studio for the first time can feel disorienting if you don't know what the session actually involves. The mic is live, the room is quiet in a way that feels unnatural, and someone is talking to ...
13 January 2025Audiobook Narration: Meeting ACX Standards
Getting audiobook audio accepted by ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange), the production and distribution platform behind Audible and Amazon, comes down to meeting a specific set of technical requirements. Those requirements exist for good reason: listeners expect consistent volu...
9 December 2024How to Record a Podcast That Sounds Professional
The gap between a podcast that sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom and one that sounds like a broadcast production comes down to four things: the room, the microphone, the gain structure, and what happens in post. None of these require a massive budget, but all of them r...
22 November 2024Mastering for Spotify and Streaming: LUFS Explained
Loudness has been one of the most misunderstood targets in mastering for the better part of three decades. The loudness wars of the 1990s and 2000s pushed engineers and labels to crush dynamics out of records in pursuit of sheer volume, and the results were often fatiguing, di...
25 October 2024How to Prepare and Label Stems for Mixing
Sending your project to a mix engineer is one of the most consequential steps in the production process, and it is also one of the most commonly mishandled. Poorly exported stems, inconsistent naming, and missing session information cost everyone time and money. When we receiv...
20 September 2024Condenser vs Dynamic Microphones for Recording
Choosing the wrong microphone for a session costs you more than you might think. It is not just about tone. It is about how much correction work ends up in the mix, whether the performance translates honestly, and whether the final recording holds up against professional relea...
23 August 2024How Much Does It Cost to Record a Song in Australia?
The cost to record a song in Australia varies more than most musicians expect, and that variation is almost never random. Studio pricing reflects the rooms, the gear, the engineers, and the workflow behind every session. Understanding what drives the price at each stage, from ...
26 July 2024What Does a Music Producer Actually Do?
The role of a music producer is one of the most misunderstood in the industry. Most artists assume a producer sits behind a computer making beats, or that the title is interchangeable with "beatmaker" or "sound engineer." In reality, a producer's job spans the entire creative ...
2 July 2024Dry Hire vs Engineered Studio Sessions
Booking studio time comes down to two fundamentally different arrangements: you hire the room and operate it yourself, or you hire the room with an engineer who runs the session for you. Both options are available at Animus Studios, and the right choice depends on your experie...
4 June 2024How to Choose a Recording Studio in Brisbane
Choosing a recording studio in Brisbane is not a decision you should make based on Instagram aesthetics or whoever comes up first in a Google search. The room you record in, the engineer behind the console, and the gear in the signal chain will all leave a permanent mark on yo...
7 May 2024How to Record Vocals That Sit in the Mix
Getting vocals to sit naturally in a finished mix starts well before you open a plugin. The decisions you make at the recording stage, mic choice, placement, gain structure, room acoustics, and performance capture, determine how much work the mix engineer has to do later, and ...
2 April 2024Mixing vs Mastering: What Is the Difference?
Mixing and mastering are two distinct stages of post-production, and confusing them is one of the most common mistakes artists make when planning a release. They are not interchangeable, they are not the same job done twice, and collapsing them into a single step almost always...
5 March 2024How to Prepare for Your First Recording Session
Most artists waste the first hour of their studio session figuring out things they should have sorted at home. That hour costs money, burns energy, and often produces nothing usable. The difference between a productive first session and a frustrating one almost always comes do...
6 February 2024Ready to Create Something?
Tell us about your project and we will recommend the right room, engineer, and approach.