I’m Björgvin Benediktsson. I’m the author of the #1 Amazon best-seller, Step By Step Mixing: How to Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins, the creator of the Audio Issues EQ plug-in, and the founder of Audio Issues. I’m also a venture advisor for the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona.
I’m an audio engineer turned writer, and I’m on a mission to help musicians overcome their imposter syndrome, create great-sounding music, and release their work.
I’ve worked as a live sound engineer, a broadcast recording engineer, a professional touring musician, a freelance mixing and mastering engineer, and an audio educator in both Iceland and the United States.
Since 2009, I’ve been helping people like you turn your rough recordings into finished records you can be proud to release. If you want to create radio-ready and release-worthy music that jumps from the speakers, you’re in the right place. My dream is for you to email me out of the blue one day and tell me you won an award for your music because I helped you make it sound successful.
Thousands of home studio producers like yourself have learned from my training, and my work has been featured in publications such as MusicTech magazine, Audiotuts+, The Pro Audio Files, and Recording Revolution, to name a few.
I made a nice little discovery on finding the right microphone for the job the other day. You see, I record my singer a lot, and I’ve tried multiple different microphones on her. Everything from cheap dynamic mics to expensive ribbon microphones. I usually end up with some sort of condenser on her because I...
As you know, we’ve been rapping on about mastering this week because of Ian Shepherd’s Home Mastering Masterclass. If you didn’t see the video I posted with him helping me improve my mastering on Monday But that’s not all we’ve done together. When it opened up before I actually interviewed him a couple times. I...
In my video with Ian Shepherd, which you can see part of right here, he brought me down to earth with a few things. First of all, it’s not about the amount of plug-ins you slap on the master bus. It’s how you use them! He counted six plug-ins in my mastering chain and he only had...
In anticipation of Ian Shepherd’s Home Mastering Masterclass opening up again (affiliate link: http://www.audioissues.com/hmm) we did a little video together. In the first part of the video I go through the methods. I then sent this to Ian and in the video he gives me feedback on what he likes and what he thinks I...
As a mixing processor, EQ is pretty much one of the most important ones. You can think of it like you were a sculptor using a chisel. You have a block of marble and chisel away at it until something beautiful forms from your imagination. When you use filters and cuts you carve away at...
I wanted to show you some additional EQ tips that I’ve found very useful throughout the years. Some might be simple, but that’s just because they work and don’t have to be complicated. But others take a little more thinking. So let’s get started. 1. Know your frequencies Now, this might be a little confusing...
Ian Shepherd’s Perception mastering plug-in is real helpful when it comes to pseudo-mastering engineer like myself. If you’re anything like me you probably consider mastering to be a bit of voodoo magic. You might be a little scared about doing something wrong, like squashing your mixes or making your songs too loud! That’s why it’s nice...
If you’ve been reading my ramblings for any length of time you’ve probably noticed that I stretch the power of analogy pretty far. Here are some examples: What Doing the Dishes Can Teach You About Audio Editing How Mexican Salsa Holds the Secret to a Great Music Production I usually come up with these when...
There’s a common fear called low-mid-phobia. I bet you’re familiar with it. It’s this thing where you cut way too much low-mids from your mix because you’re terrified of muddying up your mix. It happened to me very recently. I was working on The Long Wait’s newest single (video below), and the first “final” mix I...
Oh man…have I got an analogy for you… So this weekend we had a party at our house to celebrate Eurovision. If you don’t know what Eurovision is you’re: a) Probably American Anyway, it’s every May where Europe goes to war with each over through song. The whole continent competes and every country votes for...