The Art of Digital Audio Recording: A Practical Guide for Home and Studio

I like all the books of Steve Savage on recording techniques. They are clear, well written, and do offer some valuable advice for those of us attempting home recording. I bought both this book, The Art of Digital Audio Recording, and also his Mixing and Mastering. They are both so similar in recording advice that I would not recommend you buy both, incidentally.My main problem with these books is that he spends too much print on the very obvious issues of what technological tools are available in a high-end DAW (digital audio workstation), which he will take up a great chunk of his books on, but not enough in my view on how to make use of those tools creatively, which is typically why a novice or middle-level home recordist would want to turn to an expert. I wish he would tell us many more of the secrets of his trade, with examples of how he saved worrisome mixes. The advice that he considers the most important are in such areas as, in his view, the undervalued use of EQ, when compression is critical and overutilized; and what he feels is a lack among recordists in valuing panning.Just saying those words in the book was helpful in highlighting what most to focus on to improve. For example, I found his writings on panning extremely helpful. In fact, in recent home recordings I started to pan guitars, drums and onboard instrumentation of audio clips using a midi controller maybe a quarter or halfway to the left or right, leaving my vocal and bass tracks spot in the middle to great improvement in opening up the auditory experience more spectacularly, and allowing for quite a few tracks (say 12 or so) to fit better. So obviously this advice was worth the price of the book.I also benefited a lot from his advice on how to use EQ creatively, a topic that is very difficult to follow immediately, clearly a lifelong goal that presumably professionals are better at and the amateurs like me will in time approach better as our ears get better tuned. In a recent mix which I found completely muddy, I noticed many hours in that the problem was that my voice was naturally bassy and I was assuming that with a bass guitar and bassy drum components in the mix I would need to "treble" that voice a bit. But I kept remembering Steve's advice to figure out what sounds best and is best for the overall mix, and I actually emphasized, increased, the bass tones of my voice, which are deep and silky, but lowered the mids a bit - that one intervention did make my voice stand out enough to save that mix. So that advice too was worth the price of the book.Having said that, I would love Mr. Savage to spend more time on these variables that he considers the most important, as he normally will only give them 2-3 pages in books over 250 pages. So the little he spends on those major topics would be a weakness of the book.Nonetheless, I would say that overall this book, but even more so his other one on mixing and mastering, is worth buying (you don't need both in my view, although this book does spend some time on how to mic instruments which would be an area not covered in the mixing book). Presumably those of us on a quest to produce as high a quality of music as we can in our homes will need to continually learn from the professionals, and of course from our own day in, day out, hard work at it, the only way to get better at anything. In that quest, I would say that overall Mr. Savage's books are very valuable companions.

I was struggling with Pro Tool and about ready to give up on it when I purchased Steve Savage's "The Art of Digital Audio Recording." The book turned out to be exactly what I needed to understand what Pro Tools could do for me and how to get the most from my recordings. There is also a wealth of practical information about the required gear and environmental requirements for getting the best recordings. For a new recordist like me, the recommendations regarding where to invest in equipment were invaluable. The emphasis on the recording process as a combination of many factors-all of them important-has changed my understanding of what is required to get me the best possible results.The clarity of Mr. Savage's presentation was much appreciated. I keep his book close at hand when I am editing and mixing. I highly recommend it for anyone working within the digital audio medium.

Book while some good information leaves out exactly how to get correct gains on condenser microphones as they all do. They assume we all know how. They do give information on what to achieve but fail to tell you how, always using the out which they say ,"depending on what equipment we have " and that just leaves you again in limbo. Some one maybe one day will tell you how to set levels on your board and interface and stop telling us to use the board or DAW meters which do not show clipping before when there is digital clipping right at the mic. Levels for me are almost impossible to reach the quality needed. Compressors help but here again Garbage in Garbage out. I have purchased so many books and magazines that all when it comes time to help you achieve correct levels state the old Depending on your equipment line...time to just go to school.......

Very well written, extremely clear, and maintains a lightness to it which is an accomplishment with anything technical and potentially esoteric. I especially found interesting (and demystifying) the section on How to Walk into a Commercial Studio and Be the Engineer--something I look forward to doing someday! There's also lots of material in there that helps me "fill in the cracks" with my grasp on digital recording--since most everything I know is via forums, help menus, manuals or working with other engineers over the years on my own stuff. Best practices for Virtual Tracks (especially when comping together an entire arrangement), Panning Spectrum, and Auto-Input sections are some favorites.

I've been recording for about a year and found the book to be a great help. It is well organized, easy to read and understand, and provided a lot of information for DAW recording. The concepts presented are helpful regardless of the DAW platform you use. The only drawback is that illustrations and pictures could have been of a better quality.

I got this book out of our library and after renewing it to the limit decided I couldn't live without it.Dealing with the basic things I needed to know without being tempted into the labyrinth of detail that would make the book 10 times the size, and much harder to navigate.The obvious practical experience and years of actually doing the stuff really shine out of the pages of this book, and Steve has the ability to communicate his knowledge to the reader.

Honestly I bought this as a textbook for a class I was taking so I never read it all the way through. So don't go by my review as it is based on incomplete info. But of what I did read it was interesting and useful.

I liked that all information in the textbook is self explanatory, and easy for the beginning audio student to learn.

Great book for DAW users, especially those who are getting started in the field. Lots of other books are extensive at recording basics (room treatment, mic placement, etc), and Steve Savage does cover some of this. But, he focuses on what you NEED to know . . . how to specifically get everything up and running with your DAW and all the associated hardware. Of course, he can't possibly cover every combination of hardware and software (no-one can), but this is THE book that targets the DAW process first and foremost. Anyone getting started, or even already involved, in DAW recording should get this book first. You can grab other books about recording basics, but you'll always need a reference like Savage's to put the pieces together.

very informative