Prepare equipment and material for recording sessions
Overview
This standard is about preparing equipment and material for multitrack recording sessions. It is important to make sure that equipment is set up and any previously archived content is available to enable adjustments or new work to be carried out. On completion of sessions recorded material must be correctly archived and details of settings and layout recorded for any related future recording sessions.
This includes checking equipment set up, carrying out basic repairs and ordering spares, retrieving archived materials, replicating and recording equipment and instrument layout and settings, making stereo mix-downs using archived material and handing assets and deliverables over to or from other studio engineers.
This standard is for recording engineers, editing engineers, mastering engineers, mix engineers and programmers who prepare equipment and material for recording sessions.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- check instrument and equipment layout and settings comply with those of previous related sessions
- identify faults with equipment prior to use
- repair faulty items within your area of expertise and within recording session timescales
- label and replace faulty items which cannot be repaired in line with procedures
- order required spares in line with organisational procedures
- record, report and manage faults in line with procedures
- provide full details of archived material when required for recording sessions
- manage archived information in line with organisational procedures
- produce and monitor stereo mix-downs of recalled sessions at appropriate times
- produce detailed records of recording session media and content which requires archiving
- record accurate details of equipment and instrument layout and settings using accepted industry labelling techniques
- archive relevant settings of desk and associated equipment during mix-down process
- store details of equipment and instrument layout and settings in locations that can be accessed by others when required
- label and record stereo mix-downs of recalled sessions in line with organisational procedures
- hand over full details of assets and deliverables to or from other studio engineers as recording sessions progress
- reset and tidy studio environment on completion of sessions
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
- the audio-related information of multitrack recording sessions
- how to identify synchronisation information
- the full dated records of media and content used in recording sessions
- the importance of reporting faults with equipment to team members
- the importance of fault recording procedures
- the clear labelling of faulty items
- procedures for ordering spares
- the information required to recall multitrack recording sessions
- how to assess synchronisation information to fully recall multitrack recording sessions
- how to make different formats of stereo mix-downs using archived material
- the importance of accurately recording and labelling stereo mix-downs produced from archived material
- methods for recording equipment and instruments layout and settings including photographs and diagrams
- the reasons for recording equipment and instrument layout and settings and when it is appropriate to do so
- how to use AES/SPARS labelling systems
- how to complete a track sheet for multitrack audio recording
- suitable locations to archive electronic recall data and reference from track sheet.
- information required to hand over assets and deliverables to or from other studio engineers