Gear Reviews

I have to confess that when I saw the early ads marketing Symphony I/O with its sleek Scandinavian hi-fi aesthetic and big rubber feet, it looked to me like something built for audiophiles or home recordists. Is Apogee abandoning the pro user I wondered? Were they dumbing down their converters? As...

As I mentioned in the previous issue's "Gear Geeking" (Tape Op #86), the Pegasus was one the most exciting products to be unveiled at the AES Convention. Unlike most tube mics on the market today, this one is not based on any classic designs. It utilizes unique, original...

Olympia, Washington's Cascade is probably best known for bringing affordable ribbon mics to the masses. Sure, they offer condensers too, but a quick scan of their website quickly reveals their niche. Shown are multiple short-ribbon (Gomez, C77, Knuckle Head, the popular Fat Heads) and...

It’s nice to see something at this price point showing up in the 500-Series world. The 581 is a Class AB, discrete preamp based on the venerable Neve 1081 mic preamp design. It has all your typical adjustments: two knobs for gain and output level; buttons for polarity, phantom power, and impedance...

The C716 is the long-awaited addition to Josephson Engineering’s acclaimed Series Seven family of mics. It was developed and designed in the beautiful California coastal town of Santa Cruz, CA. I think it’s a very important microphone.

My recording studio, Tiny Telephone, owns twelve Josephson...

At first glance, the Liaison is not much more than an insert switcher. Plug in six of your outboard processors, and you can use Liaison’s front-panel buttons to switch your processors in and out of two stereo buses. The buses can be used individually, or they can be daisy-chained to form a single...

I admit to having been quite skeptical when Eventide’s most recent stompbox, Space, arrived at my doorstep. In the first place, I’m the kind of guy whose favorite pedals have a maximum of three knobs. I generally have very little patience for any device with menu scrolling and multi-use rotary...

The first time I ran music through a pair of these tiny speakers, I had to double check to make sure I wasn’t listening to my larger ADAM P11A monitors (Tape Op #33). Bass extension in particular is surprisingly good for a 2-way speaker of this size.  The 4’’ Polyglass woofer, driven by a...

This is the sentence where we make some stupid snake joke, or worse, a juvenile double entendre. Moving on, this is a cool new 500-Series bus compressor. Last year, Serpent Audio released the SB4000 compressor as a DIY project. Response was positive, but the designer wanted to enhance features and...