We first met esteemed mix engineer Michael Brauer in Tape Op #37 in 2003, when Mike Caffrey interviewed him about his multi-bus mixing technique. Some 16 years later Michael and I sat down at his new...
New Zealand's Mark de Clive-Lowe is your conductor, musical tour guide, and conduit to the past and future. From accomplished jazz artist to a shaker in London's underground music scene, de Clive-Lowe...
Long before I even dreamed of professionally recording or starting a magazine like Tape Op, I was a huge fan of the band Dead Can Dance. Formed by Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard in Australia in 1981,...
Made up of former AKG employees, Austrian Audio is a new company located in Vienna. I sat down with Kent Iverson, Head of Marketing and PR (former AKG Director of Marketing and Product Management),...
Since 2006 Catherine Vericolli has run her Fivethirteen Recording in Tempe, outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Along with long-time engineer Dominic Armstrong, she's kept the studio busy and growing in a...
This album is one of my favorite records of 2018 and, I gotta be honest, I’ve been a bit bored by a lot of guitar, bass, and drums bands lately. While the band may not be reinventing the...
Years ago, before they hired (Tape Op contributor) Chris Koltay to tour with them, I mixed the band Deerhunter at a festival. Afterward I went to find the band and say hello. Lead singer and guitarist...
A while back, Larry Crane – Tape Op's editor – tweeted an observation implying that many producers, engineers, and artists fill up their productions with tons of tracks simply because the...
Recently, a reader asked me to recommend a cable tester, and that got me thinking about what would be appropriate for today’s needs — with networked audio being as ubiquitous as...
The DrAlienSmith DirtMic-01 is an awesome "outside the box" mic for creating rich harmonic distortion effects without a plug-in or guitar pedal. It's very useful for blending with clean vocals, bass,...
Solid State Logic has dominated the analog mixing console world for rock, pop, and R&B records for over three decades, and while DAWs have mostly taken over as production and mixing environments,...
(Cue Bon Scott howling "HIGH! VOLTAGE!") The Crescendo, andSPL's proprietary SUPRA high voltage op-ampsare an exciting innovation, and I believe it's a first of its kind: an 8-channel mic preamp...
The Stealth is the latest addition to Aston's product line. I've been an admirer of their revolutionary designs since reviewing their Starlight small diaphragm condenser [Tape Op #123]. I then...
I'm old enough to be wary of devices that claim to be cure-alls for making audio sound good. Processing devices, such as Aphex's Aural Exciter and BBE's Sonic Maximizer, abounded in the '80s, but most...
Leave it to Wade Goeke at Chandler Limited to come up with a new mic circuit unlike any I (and probably anyone else) have ever experienced. The full name of this new mic from the folks in Iowa is the...
The recent history of audio has seen many companies come out with outboard phantom powered microphone amplifier devices intended to be used prior to the input stage of a proper mic preamplifier since...
My mix bus is a little crowded. Generally, I have three to four units doing very subtle things. I enjoy the cumulative effect of several stages of iron and discrete op-amps soaking up transients and...
Earthworks has made well-regarded condenser microphones for over 20 years. I've been curious about their drum mics for quite a while, so I was stoked to receive a CMK4 mic kit for review. The CMK4 kit...
Welcome to the brave new world of DSP! Along with folks like iZotope, Audionamix is on the cutting edge of spectral based DSP technology that can do previously unheard of things with audio. These...
If you've ever mic'd up a drum set, you are no doubt familiar with the struggle for floor space among various cymbal and mic stands – the traffic jam around the snare drum is about as...
This "daughter card" works with the BURL B80 Mothership [Tape Op #84] and B16 Mothership configurable audio I/O systems. When the B80 Mothership was introduced, the BDA8 was the choice for D-to-A...
I've chatted with Eric "Mixerman" Sarafin in the past [Tape Op #34] about his hilarious The Daily Adventures of Mixerman book and reviewed some of his helpful Zen and the Art of... guides to...
This wonderful book tells the story of master engineer/producer Al Schmitt's career, along with many of his thoughts about the art of making records, with a smattering of interesting photos to boot....
When producing, mixing, or mastering, how frequently do you go out to your car and check your mix? Do you listen on three different headphones and a few different Bluetooth speakers? My answer to this...
Most 500 Series racks are just that – a hunk of rack gear that's not the sexiest piece of kit in the studio. They're mostly just a utility piece that's simply designed to interface other...
Cubase is my primary DAW. It offers me the best performance and user experience for recording and mixing music – whether I'm running it on my Microsoft Surface hybrid tablet/laptop with a...
I have to stop and reflect on the way we listen to music today versus how I did growing up. It used to be a trip to the now defunct Tower Records or whatever local record store was in my town at the...
To piggyback on John Baccigaluppi's End Rant musings "Give Me a Hammer" [Tape Op #102 and #115], I have been looking for a particular hammer that might serve as my aspiration to get back to what fired...
