Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
Joel Edinberg is a staff engineer at Q Division qdivisionstudios.com, one of the nicest studios in the Boston Area. He's also a gigging saxophonist, a music instructor, and the leader of gypsy-punk...
Gear Geeking
Sporadic and regular articles from our contributors.
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
It's timely that you'll find a review of the Yamaha TF1 digital mixer in this issue. The TF1 is a 32-channel console featuring 16+1 motorized faders, with 16 fader and “OMNI Out” channels...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
If you've been making music for as long as I have, I bet that some of the headphones relegated to your "box of broken cans" are in there not because they stopped working, but because their earpads are...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
Years ago, I reviewed the Eclipse Tools 900-005 Cable Tie Gun [Tape Op #29]. If you’ve ever used a tool like this to tension and cut cable ties, you’ll never go back to using your fingers...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
Until recently, I’d been relying on my headphone system to talk to the band in the live room, or sometimes a PA speaker I’d place on the floor, instead of a permanent set of talkback...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
As consumers of audio gear, we tend to dissertate ad nauseam on the subtle sonic differences between thing x and thing y. Meanwhile, many of us are working in suboptimal listening...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
Over the years, I've replaced most of the incandescent bulbs in my home and in my studio with LEDs. The incandescents ranged from 35 W low-voltage halogens, to 60 W standard "Edisons", to 75 W...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
by Andy Hong
My laptop is a mid-2014 Toshiba Portégé Z30t touchscreen "ultrabook" with an Intel Core i7 processor and a 512 GB SSD. It's plenty powerful enough to run Pro Tools and Cubase; but these...
Software Utilities When Installing Windows
by Andy Hong
JB's End Rant and RADAR studio review in this issue inspired me to share with you a few of the software utilities I install whenever I set up a new Windows computer. If you're a DAW user moving...
Windows 10
by Andy Hong
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...
Tone Control Circuit Scavenger Hunt
by Andy Hong
In the previous issue, I discussed how I had successfully employed a $25 car-audio EQ as a sidechain EQ for stereo bus compression. It was a cheap and highly effective solution, but it had its...
A Good Sidechain EQ Might Be Cheaper Than You Think
by Andy Hong
The band E was in my studio recently. Thalia Zedek (Come), Jason Sanford (Neptune), and Gavin McCarthy (Karate) are all extremely dynamic performers, but even during quiet moments, their instruments...