Insider Audio: the missing columns

Now in bookstores everywhere in the real and virtual universe:
The Insider Audio Bathroom Reader
published by Thomson Course Technology PTR
11 years of essays* from magazine,
plus extended columns,
columns Mix couldn't print,
and 20 pages of jokes!

I started writing the Insider Audio column for Mix magazine in September 1995, and continued it monthly from January 1996 through June 2007, and semi-monthly until June 2008, when the column was dropped, a victim of the phenomenon known as the Incredible Shrinking Magazine.

Here are my archives. Titles with an asterisk (*) are now available only in The Insider Audio Bathroom Reader.

Enjoy! — Paul

CLICK TO ORDER

2008

June — You Light Up My Brain (one of my favorite columns, and I had no idea it would be my last)

April — The Emperor's New Sampling Rate—Are CDs Actually Good Enough? (hands-down, the most responded-to article I ever wrote)

February — Late for the Future: Sync or Swim in HD

2007

December — You and Me and HDTV

October — The Secrets of NIME 2007

August — Thanks for the Memoirs: Three Books from Inside the Biz

June — Designing a Concert Hall for Performing and Recording

May — The Healing Power of Music: Helping an Autistic Child Deal with His Aural Environment

April — Smart QuickTime Tricks: Neat Things to do with Apple's (Almost) Free Multimedia Technology

March — The Noise In the Box: Audio for Videogames, Part 2

February — The Joys and Woes of Audio for Videogames, Part 1

January — Virtual Instruments—Virtually There: What's Missing in Soft Synths

2006

December — All I Really, Really Want: Dear Santa, or To Whom it May Concern

November — Double Major: Is Teaching "Multimedia" a Good Idea?

October — Surrounding the Audience: How Sports HD Audio Gets Distributed (part 2)

September — The Surround Game: Sports Mixing in the Age of HD (part 1)

August — And the SCAB Goes To…: Award Winners from the Dawn of Modern Audio

July — Two Hearts: Do Musicians and Audiences Beat as One?

May — Can You Hear Me Now? The Wireless Crunch is Coming

April — False Sense of Security: How Not to Get Caught in the Web

March — One Sine Wave at a Time: Synful Builds an Orchestra from the Ground Up

*February — Marketing to Myself: The promise of the Web…the reality of the business

January — My Back Pages: T-Plus-Ten…and Counting

2005

December — The Masters Come Alive: Zenph Studios makes new recordings from very old musicians

November — Attack of the Pod People: Podcasting, Public Radio, and You

*October — To Preserve and Protect: The Library of Congress Gets Busy with Our Recorded Heritage

*September — Tomorrow's Musical Instruments and the NIME Conference

*August — Bikes, Harps & Yo-yos: Teaching Artists and Engineers to Talk to Each Other

July — Spring Cleaning: Odds and Sods from the Desktop

*June — Do You Hear What I Hear? Learning to Listen in a Mediated World

*May — On the Road With Kronos:Chamber Music that's Eclectic and Electric

April — How Come OSuX? An Open Letter to the Head Apple

*February / March — A Talk With John Chowning
part I: Extreme Vibrato and Other Accidental Flashes of Genius
part II: Making Electronics Sing

January — Just Around the Corner: My AES Highlights—and there were plenty!

2004

December — Virtual Stuff: Storage Issues in the Post-Tape Age

November — Looking Backwards: Four More Years

*October — Back to the Future: Ancient Tomb Reveals Low-Cost Audio of Tomorrow!

*September — Out of the Garden: One Man's Trip to Woodstock

*August — A Law Unto Itself: Misusing the Legal System Hurts Us All

*July — Alone Again, Virtually: The ups and downs of all-in-one production

June — Loud and Louder in London: How to Build an Audience for New and Newer Music

May — Ghosts in the Machine: Are Singers About to be Obsolete?

April — Presenting the Grumpys: Awards You May Not Have Heard About and for Good Reason

*March — In A Silent Way: Why is Everything So Loud?!?
and Julian Hirsch 1922-2003

February — A Producer That's All Thumbs: Meet Madplayer
and Remembering Michael Kamen

*January — Bungling In the Jungle: A Third-World Memoir

2003

December — The Doctor is in the House: a New Approach to Concert Sound from Bose

November — Shrinking The Classroom: Computers Invade Audio Education

*October — Audio Products Go Wild! What You Won't See at AES

*September — In the Shadows of Motown: You Know the Hits, Now See the Movie!

August — From The Ashes: Fire Safety—and You

July — The One-Eared Monster: In the World of Television, Stereo is Still a Myth

June — Ah Sweet Mysteries of Life: Musical Thrillers Make Great Summer Reading

*May — The Kids are Alright: Who's Going To Determine the Music Industry's Future?

*April — Posting and Beaming into the Future: Grumpmeier Builds His Dream Studio

*March — Hacking and Hijacking: What's He Building in There?

February — The OS X Files: A Talk With Apple's Audio Guy

*January — WAR STORIES: Readers' Reports from the Front Lines of the Industry

2002

December — The Video Revolution Will Not Be Taped: But Can We Get Along?

November — The Right Stuff: Teaching Recording Technology at the Hartt School

October — We Don't Need No Steenking Ethics…or Do We?

September — Studying Hard, Hoping to Pass: How to Choose an Audio Education Program

August — Kill Your Radio: If You Want to Hear Everything, it Pays to Go Analog

July — Dumbing Down the Dial: Why Your Radio Doesn’t Work Anymore, and Why You Should Care

*June — Like a Broken Record: The RIAA Tries to Outrun the Hackers plus A Tribute to Henry Kloss

*May — The World Above 20kHz: What Are We Missing?

*April — Insider Interview: Son of Grumpmeier

*March — I Ought to Have My Head Examined: Adventures in Ontological Existentialism

February — The Computer Synthesizers: Is it time to go soft?

*January — Hardware, Software, Wetware: Is one of these doomed?

2001

December — Strange Times, Other Voices

November — The Column That Wouldn't End about the Project That Wouldn't End (Part II)

October — The Project That Wouldn't End (Part I)

*September — Living on Borrowed Culture

*August — SMPTE-ed Off! Why we can't drop drop-frame plus Douglas Adams: So Long, and Thanks!

July — It's Still Rotten Sound to Me: The audio revolution will not be streamed

*June — Morons, Oxymorons, and Technology Patents

May — NAMM Bits: Cute stuff in Anaheim

*April — Ask Grump: Advice from the Dean of Curmudgeons

*March — Who Will Fix Our Stuff?

February — Bigger Bytes, and Faster Too: MIDI in the New Millennium, Part 2

January — Into the New Millennium with…MIDI? Keeping an Old Friend Young, Part 1

2000

December — A Different Kind of Roots: Revisiting the Dawn of Electronic Music

November — School's In! A Guide to Choosing a Recording Education

*October — Caught Napstering: Why We're Missing the Real Problem with Digital Downloading

• • • Web exclusive! — Response to this column by noted songwriter Wendy Waldman and others…

*August/September — Doctor, It Hurts When I Do This! Why You Should Be Worried About RSI, Parts 1 & 2

*July — How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Adventures in One of the World's Great Concert Spaces

June — Untangling the Web: How to Avoid Embarassing Yourself in Cyberspace

May — Keeping Up With Technology: A Panel Discussion, Part 2

April — Keeping Up With Technology: A Panel Discussion, Part 1

*March — A Couple of Audio Moments: Fidelity Isn't Always in the Specs

February — Support Yourself! Making Your Calls for Help Count

January — On Hold, Waiting for a Callback: Who's Afraid of Tech Support?

1999

December — I Came, I Saw, IRCAM: A Visit to France's Premier Music Technology Think Tank

*November — It's a Large and Confusing World, After All: Dealing With a Global Industry

October — The Play's The Thing -- If You Can Hear It: Some Thoughts on Theater Sound

September — Twenty Years of Writing -- and they Put You on the Day Shift

*August — Making the Most of Audio 101: An Address to the Incoming Class of 2003

*July — Perils of the Free Market: Grumpmeier Goes Looking for a Bargain / Spring Cleaning

June — Fuss and Bother over Internet Audio: The Day the Music Died?

*May — George Martin: Doing It on the Road

*April — 04/01/Y2K: What Really Happened

*March — Recalling a Legendary Playpen: A Revisit with Bell Labs

*February — The Last Word on Upgrades: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Darkness

January — Speaking Out on Upgrades: Notes from StudioPro98

1998

December — The Ups and Downs of Upgrades: Can You Afford to Leave Well Enough Alone?

*November — My Favorite Vintages: Good Old Gear Doesn't Have to Cost a Fortune

October — Future Docs, Part 2: Putting It On The Line

*September — In Memoriam: Three Pioneers of Electronics and Information

August — Future Docs, Part 1: How Many Trees Must a Manual Cut Down?

July — Do Not Collect 200...Pounds? When Monopoly Isn't a Game Any More

*June — I Had Nothing to Do with Titanic: But I've Had a Sync'ing Saga All My Own

May — Back to the Web: Can We Talk — Again?

*April — Course Catalog for the Real World: In This School, You'll Learn What Truly Matters

March — In Search of a Graceful Death: Today's Gear Means All or Nothing

February — Mars Needs Windscreens! Formats in Space

*January — A New York Minute: Grumpmeier Goes to AES

1997

*December — Revisiting Tom Lehrer

*Full text of my interview with Tom…

November — Hands on the Past: Teaching Technology in a Changing World

October — A Real Use for the Internet: Can We Talk?

September — Audio on the Internet

August — Retro this, Buddy! Part 2

July — Retro this, Buddy! Part 1

June — Summer Reading, Part 2

May — Summer Reading, Part 1

April — Next Year's Gear

*March — Careers from Hell

February — Shrinking the Synth

January — The Synth is Dead, Long Live the Synth!

1996

*December — Short Cycles: How Fast Can We Make People Buy Into New Technology?

*November — Vintage?? You Don't Know Vintage!

October — Audio Education: What We're Missing

September — The Rights Stuff: New Uses for Old Copyright Laws

*August — A Tale of Two Countries

July — The New Alchemists

June — Manual Labors: 12 Steps to Better Documentation

May — Sounding Off: What Happened to the FOH Mix?

April — Educating Tomorrow's Talent, Part 2

Mar ch — Educating Tomorrow's Talent: a Symposium, Part 1

February — When a Project Studio Is No Longer for Projects

*January — What We Do Makes a Difference — Whether We Believe it or Not

1995

September — Fear of Frying (my studio) — Let's Stop Progress Before it Stops Us