"The Heart of Rock & Roll" Certain bands are meant for certain times, and arguably no band better captured the "Hip to Be Square" culture of the roaring 1980s than Huey Lewis and the News. From...
In Dave Grohl's documentary, Sound City, viewers were treated to stories from the vivacious, smart, and funny Paula Salvatore — the manager of Sound City Studios for nine years. But what one...
When one thinks of the great recording engineers who have indelibly shaped the recorded history of jazz music, names like Rudy Van Gelder [Tape Op #43] or Fred Plaut might readily come to mind. But if...
I've been a fan of The Low Anthem since hearing their 2007 album, What the Crow Brings. Each subsequent release has found Ben Knox Miller, Jeffrey Prystowsky, and the rest of the band evolving and...
The Middle Hudson Valley of New York State has long been a bastion of creativity, counterculture, the arts, and especially music. While Woodstock is the hippie hamlet famous for lending its name to...
Randall Dunn is creating what might be Seattle's next chapter in the dark and loud tradition of Northwest music. From the Sonics and Jimi Hendrix, to the U-Men and grunge, the Pacific Northwest has a...
Patrick, how did you end up in this position? Patrick Kraus: Well, when I was in high school I worked in record stores, like Licorice Pizza. I had enough exposure to label people from that that I...
I remember a session, 17 years ago, with the band Quasi, for the album Field Studies. We'd tracked a song, "Birds." I thought the initial take was fine, and I believe we'd started overdubbing on it....
The nascence of my music-technology career goes back to high school, when I wrote a 1-bit sampling drum-machine program for my Apple ][+, utilizing the computer's cassette-tape storage port as the A/D...
I think a lot of Tape Op readers have been waiting years for a book like this. Howard Massey is the author of the Behind the Glass series and co-author of Geoff Emerick's Here, There and Everywhere...
Last year, I was recording the upcoming album from Exit Verse (ex-members of Karate, Chisel, Brokeback) at MINBAL in Chicago. Most of the time, the band wanted to keep the lights off in the live room....
I love reverb — all types and on all sorts of instruments. Over the past few years, I've enjoyed using spring reverbs on my mixes. They bring a unique and sometimes unpredictable flavor to a...
Name me any boutique, high-end, tube preamp that has been on the market for over 30 years. That's right, Demeter's VTMP is the only one that's been around that long. I remember using one in a local...
In my review of the Blue Mo-Fi headphone [Tape Op #105] last year, I stated that it was the most innovative headphone I'd ever seen. Lola is the new, younger sibling of Mo-Fi. It shares the same...
I don't know how many unicorns PSI Audio had to milk to fill up this 20'' tall box full of magic. Actually, it's not really a milk box; it's more like a wedge of Swiss cheese. Coincidentally, its...
Carl Tatz is an award-winning studio designer best known for his PhantomFocus System [Tape Op #82], a wholistic approach to optimizing all aspects of a monitoring system in order to achieve the best...
Contributing writer Eric Tischler reviewed the original StudioLive 16.4.2 digital mixer and interface for us in 2010 [Tape Op #80]. Eric loved the mixer enough that he swapped out his analog Harrison...
Soon after longtime Tape Op writer Garrett Haines, owner of Treelady Studios, sent me a detailed review of the SPL IRON compressor, Jessica Thompson, former Chief Mastering Engineer at The Magic Shop,...
When I interviewed Sylvia Massy almost a decade ago [Tape Op #63], I had no inkling I'd eventually end up in a book of hers, especially alongside much more famous folks like Hans Zimmer, Al Schmitt,...
There are many important components of an audio chain. You save your pennies to get a nice mic, a new preamp, perhaps some different flavors of outboard gear; or if you work in-the-box, maybe you...
Primacoustic has been making high-quality sound-control products since 2000. I have owned a pair of Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer speaker-isolation platforms [Tape Op #62] for many years now, and I...
ZAOR was founded in 2014 by Italian master piano-builder Michele Zullo. His company's product line of stylish, modular, studio furniture came to my attention just this year via Simon Côté...
The API 535-LA is a line-amp module based on the company's venerable 325 booster card. It utilizes the same AP2503 transformer, 2510 differential amp, and 2520 op-amp that have been the DNA building...
