#Landr audio software

#Landr audio software

The software is 'adaptive,' but what does that mean? Does it adapt to a certain user's preferences? To specific projects? I mean, it used to take someone who worked in a record store and had encyclopedic music geekdom to tell you what that song was or what that DJ was playing. Fortunately for our project, these are the kinds of problems that machine learning, psychoacoustics and digital signal processing are getting really good at. Justin: The question is what is the 'good ear' doing? A lot of what that ear is doing is identifying and solving frequency or spectral problems, or understanding what's appropriate processing for the types of song that's being worked on. There's a lot of variables and serious science to contend with.ĭoesn't it depend heavily on having a good ear? How can you get software to have a 'good ear'?

Things like multi-band EQ's or multi-band compressors can do a lot of damage when used poorly. The gear used in mastering is quite complicated to learn.

On top of that, you need some serious sound engineering skills. Why? Because your room's shape and acoustics will change what you hear, which can easily lead to really big problems in your mastering. Justin: Mastering requires a few really difficult things - a good ear to hear and analyze things that need to be fixed, an incredible listening environment, very expensive speakers, and a acoustically balanced room, which very few people have. What is it about mastering that's so complicated, compared to other parts of the recording process? Since then, we've gained a brilliant CEO who's raised enough money, and has guided the strategy, for us to be able to transform this super bleeding-edge research into commercial reality. Then two years ago, a new Montreal technology incubator called TandemLaunch got the exclusive rights to that research, and gave us the funding and infrastructure to co-found the company, with me and one of the students from that program. Justin: LANDR's roots come out of a body of research done over the past 8 years by a research group of very smart graduate students at Queen Mary University of London's Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) (website: ) who were investigating intelligent audio processing. So what is this mysterious product, and what should musicians use it for? In order to get to the bottom of the matter, we spoke with Justin Evans from MixGenius, and Thomas Sontag, from MixGenius and Turbo Recordings, about how they developed LANDR and use it in the studio. 'Ryan Morey has brought tremendous life to both our albums, and I couldn't imagine a SUUNS album any other way.' 'To be honest, I'm not sure that's even the point,' Max said when asked. You also won't hear LANDR on the next SUUNS album. On their official website, they claim that 'the polish and balanced achieved through the subtle adjustments of a skilled mastering engineer is not something we would ever diminish,' adding that LANDR files can serve as a useful reference tool for engineers. 'It's hard to say no to that.'īut LANDR isn't trying to replace human mastering engineers altogether. But it wasn't until I started to get unusually positive feedback from my clients on the LANDR mastered tracks that I was completely sold.' The low budget and DIY nature of his work often means he can either mater with LANDR, or not master at all. It's an impressive feat, kind of scary how instantaneous it all was. 'So when the site went up I sent in a few to see what would come back. 'I'm always doing little tracks either for myself or contract work,' he said. Wait a few minutes, and out comes a mastered version of your home recording.Ī lot of artists are taking notice, not least Max Henry from SUUNS, who has incorporated LANDR into his own work. The results are top secret, but anyone can make use of the finished product by dragging and dropping a sound file onto LANDR's website. It developed out of research conducted at Queen Mary University of London that set out to demystify mastering and understanding it on a tangible, scientific level. The founders of LANDR, who also brought us MixGenius, claim that their software automates this process with an algorithm that emulates the human ear and adapts to users' tastes and preferences.