1. Requests
As a DJ, you could take in requests from your crowd, but remember, the people who requests songs at you isn’t always the representative of the crowd. A DJ should know how to gauge a crowd’s energy and mood, and he or she would play the right kind of songs. You have no obligation to play crowd goer requests; it is your obligation to pay attention to the rest of the people not making any requests.

2. Mixing
Audio mixing is an integral part of DJing, but it doesn’t mean you have to perfect your mix in every gig. As long as your mix sounds fine, you should always enjoy the night. Spending at least three minutes in your mixing rig is going to cost you your attention to your crowd and giving them what they need.

3. Energy Levels
Any DJ wants to see people dancing on the floor as soon as they go inside, but in reality, this is not the case. Sometimes, rookie DJ’s would throw in the freshest tunes on the floor but they only get a handful of people to dance. As a professional DJ, you would first want to build up the energy; not all people, probably including you, would want to dance at once when you arrive at the venue. You’d want to chill out first and feel the vibe before you go dancing.

1. Slip, Trip and Fall
When the maintenance team forgets to put a “wet floor” sign, anybody could get injured if they slip past the wet floor. Slipping is a simple accident that could cost employees their backs with fractures or bone dislocations. You could get an accident compensation claim for the injures you get because of these accidents.

2. Faulty Equipment
Most offices have electronic equipment that comes in different shapes and sizes. If the equipment is not properly maintained, it does not only slow down work, it also puts your safety in jeopardy. An exposed outlet can lead to electric shock and injuries; a malfunctioning terminal could burn out and put you in harm’s way. Employers understand that if the equipment is faulty, they are liable for the employee’s accident compensation.

3. Manual Handling
If you’re not complaining about carrying heavy equipment or items around the office even if it is not in your job description, you could get compensation if you get injuries because of manual handling. Manual handling can cause shoulder joint injuries, frozen shoulders, strain injuries and other possible accidents.

Financial experts say that former Lloyds executive Eric Daniel’s statements should not be taken just lightly even if the Financial Ombudsman says that consumers should see it cynically; bogus PPI claims is one reason for the increase of most banks’ PPI compensation budgets. These include legislative costs and time-consuming investigation.

Currently, the entire compensation package is at £14 billion, with Lloyds leading the banks with £6.3 billion in compensation. Barclays comes in second with £2.3 billion, making Lloyds the biggest PPI mis seller in the United Kingdom.

The Financial Services Authority said that they know that the PPI claims scandal’s end is uncertain, but they made a decision that upholds consumer rights. The FSA’s consideration of the BBA’s PPI claims deadline was due to putting an end to bank responsibility for PPI and focusing rebuilding capital and funding the economy.

The Financial Ombudsman recently reported it receives 11,000 claims on a weekly basis, leading to a much needed increase in manpower. Most banks have also failed to address compound interests stressed in a customer’s PPI template letter, something that most claims management companies and legal professionals stress in most claims. This can increase the compensation package given the higher amounts due for PPI owners with over 10 years of holding the insurance.

1. False Response

Headphones are manufactured in a way that it delivers tone, sound and feel different from an audio speaker, yet can make it quite comfortable for your ears to hear. With a headphone you can hear all the instruments and their responses, but it doesn’t mean that when a certain instrument sound quite drowned, it is drowned. Naturally, you’ll raise this instrument’s volume, which, when played through speakers, will naturally sound louder than the other instruments in the mix, a result of false response and a lack of headroom in your ears.

2. No “Life”

When editing audio and mixing different tracks, it is important that you consider how the instruments sound when it goes through a speaker. Monitoring your audio using headsets sucks the “life” out of the instruments, meaning you cannot hear their full sound through small speakers attached next to your ears. Only speakers can give you the real live-sound they have and basically what they’ll sound like when played through almost every speaker.

3. Muddy

Speakers and headsets are manufactured with pre-set equalization, which is why most recording engineers would tell you to have a pair of flat-response equalization speakers. The pre-set equalization may make the mix muddy, causing you to use a mastering eq track that would make it sound nice on your speakers, but problematic with many speaker types. Headphones also achieve this certain muddiness, and even muddier than pre-eq’d speakers.

1. Review Your Billing Statements
If you have kept your billing statements from the first month you repaid your loan to the last time you did, you should review them. Look for any miscellaneous items, serial numbers or anything that you do not recall buying. They might be PPI and you could question these items to the bank for verification.

2. The Total Repayment Amount
The billing statements are essential in finding out the estimate of the money lost to PPI. Add up all the repayments you have made. If you find some increases, the compound interest rate is responsible for such. You could review your compound interests with your insurance’s interest rate table to see if the amount on the billing statement is precise.

3. Submitting a Claim
Secure a claims form from the Financial Ombudsman, Ministry of Justice, finance and consumer group websites, and even claims management company websites. You should fill up the PPI claims form as precise as possible. Ask help from a former claimant or a claims expert.

4. No Win No Fee Claims Service
Once the bank rejects your claim, you have two options. You could go for the Financial Ombudsman to process your claim free, or you could have a claims management company representative help you out. Claims experts work under a no win no fee basis of service, guaranteeing you quality legal work and results: see PPIReclaimCo.co.uk.

Audio headroom and audio layering is the first step an aspiring mixing engineer must learn. Here’s a simple explanation without much technical referencing.

Try these two things when mixing your audio. Have each drum mic track, guitar track and bass track in one DAW session and then try to mix them the best way you can. Once done, have another DAW session with the drum mics and bass track already pre-mastered, then mix the merged audio files with the two guitar sounds. You’ll find the second track more desirable to listen to, especially in the rock genre.

The second DAW session gives the drums and bass a wider headroom, which makes it sound as loud as your guitar tracks, but not exactly so loud as to overpower them. This gives them an “audio space” that their dynamics can move around to. The guitars can actually sound great with bigger dynamics, ensuring that clarity from all frequencies is achieved.

Audio headroom practices have been around since the time of classical music, but it was not done on DAWs. It was in the way architects designed opera and theater houses with focus on sound reflection and instrument positioning. Normally, bass and percussion instruments were placed at the back of violins while violin players were spread out to give them power. The bass frequencies get headroom via the ceiling of the opera house while the violin is spread enough to be heard loudly.

Prime Minister David Cameron, meeting with ABI and the Ministry of Justice, wants to ensure that insurance premiums for personal injuries get lowered for people who really need the insurance. The rising premiums were a result of fraudulent and exaggerated cases successfully getting approved by insurance companies, who find it costly to legally question the claim’s authenticity.

The new implementations on whiplash claim and insurance handling promised the provision that referral fees, the fees for circulating information between legal representatives, claims management companies and insurers, will be terminated. Legal options for insurers are to be expanded with a lower legal fee for insurance trial and the Small Claims Court can also handle minor to ignorable claims cases with its payout increased to at least £5000.

New claims guidelines and requirements may also be implemented by 2013, which includes cars having more in-car monitoring requirements, a 10km/h threshold for possibility of whiplash injuries and presenting two medical opinions to prove the validity of the whiplash injury.  Claims processes can be begun with www.whiplashclaimsco.org.

Consumers can possibly forget they own a payment protection insurance policy if they owned one over 10 years. Banks use codes in billing statements that appear to be ambiguous, usually with numbers or serial codes representing PPI. Claims management companies earn money by helping people submit their PPI claim and help find out if they were mis sold PPI.

However, Natalie Ceeney, chief ombudsman of the Financial Ombudsman, states that even if CMCs were there to help, their activity can be counter-productive. But she says that the case can be similar with many customers filing for PPI claims. Many can inquire about their insurance policies and try to find out if they have an existing one. However, people go to CMCs because they can provide professional support from banks who try to drive away consumers from making PPI claims by reducing payouts or claiming they only keep at least six years worth of financial records.

To date, the UK PPI claims compensation bill total is at £12.96bn.  More information is available at www.ppireclaimco.org.

1. Audacity

Audacity is actually a free-to-use DAW being an open-source program. It allows for external soundcard support and precise recording at a 24-bit sample rate WAV format. Its only downside is its incapability to support virtual instruments that play real time and midi playback. But later versions, as promised by its developers, may support these features.

2. Reaper

Reaper is a useful audio workstation because of its several automated features. You can automate panning and volume knob effects, use VSTs in real time, use grids to snap the cursor to “punch” yourself in when recording multiple tracks and ensure precision, and also supports MP3 audio exporting. Reaper also features a free shareware version that allows you to record at least seven tracks at once.

3. Cubase

The Cubase series is well-known in many recording studios because of its ease of use and precise controls. Cubase is also crash proof, although the SX series may have some trouble loading particular MIDI and digital instrument tracks in its earlier versions. Cubase is designed for both electronic and rock music and consumes less CPU power than Pro Tools.

Related:

Recording: Things You’ll Need to Record Music

Recording: Compressing Your Drum Tracks

1. The Tone Shape

If you play guitar, listen to a fuzz- driven guitar, then switch to a distorted or overdriven guitar sound. Each overdrive, amplifier and guitar delivers a distinct tone-shape, which the ears can distinguish to be thick or thin. If you’re using a fuzz-sounding guitar, make sure that the bass guitar goes high on the treble tone shape. In this way, both instruments sound distinct live.

2. Equalization

Once that you have the tone shape properly adjust between every instrument, apply equalization to your instruments. When equalizing, remember three things. The first one is that equalization is not too useful when boosting signals with overdriven instruments. Second, cutting off frequencies is a better use for EQ’s and last, you don’t have to make use of all its controls, just at least one or two knobs can already be useful.

3. Venue Ambiance

When playing, there is a natural effect in every room called reverb. The reverberation of audio differs from one venue to another. If you’ve finally made a good sounding set inside the studio, the sound will definitely be different when you’re playing live, especially in an open air setting. It is important to consider the venue’s ambiance by analyzing which walls will the sound bounce off from and if the band members can hear their instruments properly to ensure unison.

Related:

Working With an Audio Engineer

Recording: Compressing Your Drum Tracks