As we wind our way through the crazy world of recording music and learn more, sometimes we look back and suddenly realize just how great some records we'd taken for granted actually sound. One day...
A few years back I was turned onto a book, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. This excellent tome undertook explaining music, how we perceive it, where it comes from and...
The audio business is deeply personal for me, as it is for many of us. When I first met Leslie Ann Jones in 1991, I was thrilled to finally meet a female engineer. To see a woman in the boys'...
Going into the studio as an artist, there's nothing I look for more than magic. When producing someone else's music I get deep into the mechanics of "how", but when it's my own tune, voice and guitar,...
Ken Hirsch has had a varied career in live sound, studio recording, product support and electronics. These days he and Josie, his wife and partner, head up their original company, Orphan Audio, along...
Over the last few years I've gotten back into cooking at home. Partly this is because we moved from Portland, Oregon to a small town in the desert with few restaurants, but also it's a great "hobby"...
Cascade Microphones (cascademicrophones.com) sent Tape Op a number of ribbon mics to evaluate, so when JB and his crew at The Hangar were asked to set up a remote studio for Devendra Banhart's new...
One might think that Cakewalk's latest hardware collaboration with Roland is the little brother of the V-Studio 700 (Tape Op #72). After all, it comes with a new, "light" version of Cakewalk's...
A good pop filter for cutting vocals is one of those easily overlooked tools in the studio. Often an afterthought, a good one makes a great mic even better -and an average mic sound okay. A crappy pop...
Over the years, there have been a variety of tried-and-true compressor/limiter circuit types. For example, VCA was used in the classic dbx 160, FET in the UREI 1176, electro-optical in the Teletronix...
TASCAM has a new entry into the increasingly crowded handheld recorder market -the DR-100. This new unit has a number of clear advantages over TASCAM's less expensive (and slightly less bulky) DR-07...
Germany-based Vertigo Sound's first product to market is the VSC-2 Quad Discrete Compressor. The quad part relates to the four VCAs within the VSC-2 and not the number of channels it can process, as...
When people come to me to record, I always have guitars and amps that I know sound great mic'ed up and ready to go. Guitars have to have great tone, playability, solid intonation and -if I can achieve...
ART's Pro VLA (Tape Op #37) is one of the best compressors ever made at its price point. You can pick one up new for under $400. It's an electro-optical compressor with a 12AX7 tube gain stage. You...
Dana Gumbiner and I both took on Logic Studio for this issue. Dana's opinion follows mine. -AH When Apple unveiled Logic Pro 8 (Tape Op #63), the high-performance audio engine that was the highlight...
I don't think I've ever started a mic review by introducing the accessories first. But given the innovative design of the shockmount included with the sE4400a, I can't help but get that out of the way...
Akai Professional and Ableton have co-developed a new comprehensive MIDI performance controller for use with Live versions 7 or 8 (Tape Op #72). The APC40 introduces a new breed of USB-MIDI devices...
I received my copies of the new remasters of The Beatles' catalog in the midst of the media frenzy that was 9/9/09. After all the hubbub died down and I'd had time to think about it, I realized there...
Every year Jeff Carroll at Bluefield Mastering sends me a really cool comp CD of Christmas music from Raleigh NC area artists that usually gets to me about three days after our Nov/Dec issue has...
I was fortunate to work with The Mumlers on their last album, Thickets and Stitches, doing some pinch-hit vocal overdubs before frequent Tape Op contributor Thom Monahan mixed the record at The...
