Knobs

You do not want to see the canvas under the Mona Lisa. So why do so many records let you hear the technology, the effort and the mix?

In Episode 19 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart chase one idea all the way through a production: hide the medium. Just as a painting disguises its canvas and a film makes you forget you are watching one, a great record disappears everything between the listener and the song.

They trace where the canvas shows through at every stage. In composition, writing to a grid and pre-made chords instead of letting a melody find its own odd bar or surprising chord. In performance, audible effort, the singer straining at you rather than with you, when the greats sound effortless at sixty percent. In the front end, a fizzy budget mic or cheap converters you then spend the whole mix trying to hide. And in the mix itself, tricks chosen for cleverness rather than emotion, and tuning so obvious it becomes the thing you notice.

Simon also shares news about the new Academy of Audio public platform, a community and free directory now open for founding members at academyofaudio.com.

Whether you write, record or mix, this one will change what you listen for.

Topics covered:

Hiding the medium, from painting to production. Writing organically vs writing to a grid. Predictability and surprise. Effortlessness and the sixty percent rule. The front end as a visible canvas. Why 80 percent of forum problems vanish in a real studio. Leaning into lo-fi instead of faking expensive. Letting things be out of tune. Emotion-first mixing and starting with the vocal.

Room correction software promises to fix your monitoring. So is it a genuine tool or a crutch that lies to you?

In Episode 18 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart get into monitor, room and headphone correction (Sonarworks, IK's ARC), coming at it from opposite corners: Simon has leaned on it for years, Terry has been the sceptic who just installed it.

They agree on the most useful part first: the correction curve is a brilliant diagnostic. Seeing the bass bump and the top-end roll-off in your room finally explains the failed car test, the mix that sounds great in the studio and thin and brittle everywhere else. Simon reframes that failure beautifully, if you can hear the difference room to room, you are not broken, you have good ears. From there they dig into the honest downsides: the headroom you lose when the software boosts a big dip, why the room itself still matters more than any plugin, and the reference-track discipline that keeps you honest whatever you use.

Plus headphones: calibration, the ARC on ear, and why the right pair changed what Simon can actually hear.

Whether you swear by correction or refuse to touch it, this is a fair, practical look at both sides.

Topics covered:

The correction curve as a diagnostic. Why the car test finally makes sense. You are not broken, it was the room. The headroom you lose to correction. Why the room matters more than the plugin. Reference tracks that keep you honest. Headphone calibration and the right pair. Treat the room first, then correct.

You have two speakers and a flat file. So how do you make a mix sound like a real three-dimensional space?

In Episode 17 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart take on the soundstage: the art of placing sounds in a believable room that lives in front of, between and beyond your speakers. Their tell for an amateur mix is simple, if you can hear the left and right speakers as speakers, the soundstage has failed.

They work through all three dimensions. Front to back, using pre-delay, brightness and reverb so a sound feels close or far, because low frequencies travel further, which is why you only hear the bass from the club down the street. Left to right with pan and a touch of ambience. And top to bottom, where lows ground a mix and highs lift it. Then width, which they argue is really about dimension and relationships: you need a mono anchor, like the drums or a narrow verse, before a wide chorus can feel wide at all.

Plus the traps: the hollow centre from hard-panned guitars, mono translation, and a very entertaining case against stereo wideners.

Whether your mixes sound flat, narrow or just a bit small, this will change how you hear space.

Topics covered:

What the soundstage actually is. Front to back: pre-delay, brightness, reverb. Why distance rolls off the highs. Left to right and jumping out of the speakers. Height: lows ground, highs lift. Width as relationship and the mono anchor. It's dimension, not width. The hollow centre and mono translation. Why stereo wideners wreck a mix.

It might be the most confusing job title in music. So what does a producer actually do?

In Episode 16 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart try to nail down a role that means five different things to five different people, and explain why getting the definition straight helps anyone hiring for a record.

They lay out three kinds of producer they see today: the traditional producer who oversees the whole project like a director, the beat maker who is really a composer, and the self-producing artist making everything on a laptop. All three are valid, and the confusion comes from lumping them together, or from the television meaning of the word, where "producer" just means the person who puts up the money. Simon tells the story of the TV producer who sat at the back of a session insisting he was the producer, and could not name the chord progression.

Along the way: why they almost never engineer and produce at once, the exhausting cost of context switching between the two, what real vocal production looks like versus just running takes, and how to interview a producer so you can tell the difference.

Whether you are an artist about to hire someone or a producer trying to explain your own value, this one brings some welcome clarity.

Topics covered:

The three types of producer. Why "producer" gets confused with funding. The producer as director. The self-producing artist and its caveats. Why not to engineer and produce at once. Vocal production versus vocal engineering. How to hire the right producer. An engineer captures, a producer fights.

What is actually on Simon and Terry's channels when they mix a drum kit and bass? This one is the guided tour.

In Episode 15 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart go through the mixer left to right, channel by channel, and talk through exactly how they treat the rhythm section: the kick, the snare, the toms, hi-hats, overheads, rooms, percussion and bass.

They start with the idea that holds it all together, the mix template: a rig of dormant, deactivated plugins that sit ready to click on the moment a sound needs them, so the boring decisions are already made and the time goes into the music. From there it is trick after trick. Samples blended under real drums for consistency, the Pultec-into-a-160 move for tight low end, ducking the bass with the kick, using transient decay to make a chorus feel faster, treating the snare like an actor with a character to play, the pink-noise reverb trick for a snare that cuts, why they expand toms instead of gating them, and why you should stop high-passing your overheads and rooms.

Then bass: one source of truth for the low end, splitting into bands, and spoon-feeding the speakers a clean sub because, as they put it, speakers just cannot move that much air.

Whether you mix in the box or on a console, this is a proper look under the bonnet of two working mixers.

Topics covered:

The mix template and dormant plugins. Kick: samples, Pultec into a 160, ducking the bass. Transient decay and perceived tempo. Snare as a character, the pink-noise reverb trick. Toms: expand, don't gate, audience perspective. Why you should not high-pass the rooms. Rooms make the kit sound like one thing. Riding faders on percussion. Bass: one source of truth and clean subs.

What if the thing we love about film and tape is not their fidelity, but exactly where they choose to lose it?

In Episode 14 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart chase a single idea sparked by seeing Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey on real film in IMAX: that analog puts detail where you want it and lets it slip away everywhere else, while digital spreads the same relentless detail across every part of the frame.

Simon walks through how film actually works, the silver crystallising where the light hits, so Matt Damon's face is packed with detail and the sky beside it has almost none. Then he maps it straight onto audio: tape, biased so that loud gets darker and soft gets brighter, quietly doing the mix moves we now chase with saturation and compressors. Digital, by contrast, is perfectly crisp everywhere, which can feel less like magic and more like a 7-Eleven under fluorescent lights.

From there they wander somewhere only an unscripted conversation goes: quantum physics and whether the universe is "digital" underneath, the brain's own frame rate, why too-detailed TVs and 3D break the illusion, and whether there could be a better, more focused kind of digital that loses fidelity on purpose, the way film and tape always did.

Whether you mix in the box, chase that analog feel, or just love a good rabbit hole, this one will change how you hear detail.

Topics covered:

Film, crystallisation and detail where you want it. Tape bias as automatic mixing. Why digital loses detail in a bad way. Is the universe analog or digital. The brain's frame rate. Mood lighting vs fluorescent. Too much detail on TVs and in 3D. Could there be a better digital.

Should a studio ever be an "unsafe" space if that is what the performance needs? And where exactly is the line?

In Episode 13 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart take on their most contentious topic yet: the tension between today's safe-space climate and the uninhibited, un-self-conscious energy that great records are so often built on.

Simon sets the scene with a two-week rock session where the artist brought the tequila, the humour ran locker-room, and the results were, he is convinced, a direct result of that totally free creative space. From there the conversation opens up: why sterile, clinical studios so rarely produce magic, why a producer has to be a chameleon who can move from a boys' locker room to a saged, sacred space, and the real job hiding behind the gear, which is reading and looking after the people in the room.

They do not dodge the hard parts. They work through the non-negotiables (never intentional harm, zero tolerance around minors, protecting anyone who is uncomfortable), the awkward unintended consequence of the Me Too era, why it has to cut both ways, and whether a bit of adversity actually makes us stronger.

Whether you run sessions yourself or just care about how creative work really gets made, this is an honest, uncomfortable, good-faith conversation.

Topics covered:

Consensual "unsafe" spaces and capturing energy. Why sterile studios kill the magic. The producer as chameleon. Controlling the personnel in the room. The real job is people, not gear. The unintended consequence of playing it safe. Anti-fragility and where the line sits. Non-negotiables: no intentional harm, minors, forgiveness.

Why does reverb sound huge and deep on real records, and either invisible or a swampy mess on yours?

In Episode 12 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart pull reverb apart: how the pros actually use it to create space, depth and emotion, and why amateur reverb almost always gives itself away.

They get into the multi-reverb approach, a short ambient reverb for width, a long one for size, a plate for mood and feature verbs for moments, and why the ear gets bored so fast that automation is not optional. Then the real secret: pre-delay for intelligibility and putting the vocal out in front, and using darkness to push sounds to the back of a soundstage.

Along the way: reverb as sonic world-building tied to emotion, the one-room-plus-pre-delay trick that makes a mix sound deep, panning reverb returns opposite the source, a dark reverb on the kick, snare reverb tricks for momentum, using 100% wet reverb as the sound itself, ducking the reverb with the vocal, and even reverb into a vocoder.

Whether your reverbs vanish or drown the mix, this episode will change how you hear space.

Topics covered:

• Short ambient reverb for width • Building a reverb palette • Why the ear gets bored • Pre-delay, intelligibility and depth • Darkness equals distance • Reverb as world-building • Reverb as sound design • Kick and snare reverb tricks • Ducking the reverb with the vocal

Everyone online says don't worry about the technical stuff, just be creative. They're wrong. And so is the opposite camp.

In Episode 11 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart take on one of the loudest debates in music production: technical knowledge versus pure creativity.

Their verdict is that it is 100% a grey area. Obsessing over technique early in your career is a rough creative time, but it builds a foundation you cannot skip. Technical "rules" really can block a brilliant experiment. And a genuine lack of understanding wastes just as much time, chasing hacks that miss the point entirely.

Along the way: the painting analogy that explains why professionals have no off days, the reverb an engineer said you "can't" turn up that sounded great, the viral crest-factor video that is a masterclass in missing the point, a coding analogy for how to actually learn production, and why "I won't learn theory so I sound unique" backfires every time.

Whether you lean technical, lean creative, or feel stuck in the middle, this episode reframes the whole argument.

Topics covered:

• Technical vs creative as a false binary • The early technical-obsession phase • When knowledge blocks an experiment • Why a lack of knowledge wastes time too • Learning the language, not just the framework • Knowing the rules to break them • Outsourcing your weaknesses • Understanding the why, not the gear

Why does your mix sound great in the studio and terrible in the car? And six more questions every producer ends up asking.

In Episode 10 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart run a rapid-fire round of the questions that come up again and again, with honest, road-tested answers.

They cover the car test and why translation, not talent, is usually the culprit, what actually makes a mix sound professional, whether expensive microphones are really worth it, why professional vocals sound so much bigger than yours, how loud you should record, whether to EQ before or after compression, and the biggest myth in audio production.

Along the way: why a great mix is one you don't notice, why it's less about mic price and more about the product, why the answer to bigger vocals is almost always the vocalist, how to think about gain structure and headroom, and why being the cheap option is the worst career move you can make.

Whether you're mixing in a bedroom or a commercial room, this is a fast, practical episode you'll want to keep coming back to.

Topics covered:

• The car test and translation • What makes a mix sound professional • Are expensive mics worth it • Why professional vocals are bigger • How loud to record and gain structure • EQ before or after compression • The biggest myth in audio production