I entered the world of Australia’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard a few years back, via their Turkish psych-rock record, Flying Microtonal Banana. It struck me as so fun and fresh,...
A “typical” Tape Op interview might follow the path of playing music, learning engineering, and becoming a producer. Garret “Jacknife” Lee took the path of playing in a...
With two feet planted firmly in the jazz world, as well as tentacles reaching into hip-hop, R&B, ambient, world music, and experimental genres, Grammy-nominated producer, composer, and trumpeter...
Many folks who work in the studio straddle the line between musician and engineer on any given day. Sami Perez has kept her feet in both worlds since her teenage years. The result is a sparkling body...
Throughout his eight-year adventure of recording and producing Groenalund, a project for capturing the sound of the group ABBA, Martin Gerke has overcome plenty of discouragement. However, over the...
Making records has been both blissful and traumatic for me. I’ve made records with people (and in environments) so un-fun it could make a horrifying night on ayahuasca seem like a family trip to...
Or, conversely, The Anchoress is Catherine Anne Davies, a Welsh-born talented songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer, engineer, mixer, and more. Her debut album, Confessions of a...
I first heard Roger Eno via Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, the dreamy music written for the NASA footage-based documentary, For All Mankind. The album featured him collaborating with his...
Immersed in the world of recording since the age of 15, Glenn Brown wears many hats. With Michigan as his home base, Glenn has followed his Midwestern roots and developed an incredible work ethic....
Metal albums live in a perpetual battle between clarity and attitude, and Jay Ruston has become a go-to for heavy artists looking to toe that line. His productions harken back to an era of analog...
Recently, I was helping out a client via one of my Virtual Recording Workshops. In his single song session, there were almost 100 guitar tracks, with multiple amps and mics for every part and...
F. Reid Shippen [Tape Op #125], Pete Lyman of Infrasonic Mastering, and I are breaking ground on a 15,000 sq ft media production and mastering facility in Nashville. One of the rooms in our complex...
MicParts, the DIY-oriented company run by Roswell Pro Audio’s Matt McGlynn, has built up a faithful clientele over the last decade by delivering meticulously sourced and well-documented...
I’ve been using Audeze headphones for several years now, have written glowingly about them, and wholeheartedly recommend their headphones. The LCD-X [Tape Op #119] Reference Series models are my...
EC: The past two years have given many of us an opportunity to reexamine our daily routines. For me, this manifested most profoundly in my work environment. I was already doing a fair amount of...
My last iPod died about three years ago when the hard drive failed. Since then, I've lost my iPhone and iPad music library of MP3s during various upgrades when trying to keep them compatible with my...
Most people who have ever had the pleasure of using an iZ Technology RADAR 24 [Tape Op #56] recorder know they are rock solid digital audio recorders, with an analog workflow and exceptionally...
The Cranborne Audio 500ADAT is an 8-channel converter/expander for your current interface, with a built-in 500 Series rack, summing mixer, and monitor section that includes two separate headphone...
I recently became frustrated with what felt like an all too common theme in the conversation about gear: a hyper-reverence to the gold standard “classic” mics and how out of reach...
An upgrade to Kali Audio’s Project Lone Pine (LP) line of nearfield studio monitors has been released, and is worthy of a follow-up to my review of the original LP monitors [Tape Op #133]. The...
Vintage sound has become the new modern. To this end, Mojave Audio (Burbank, California) has released its adaptation of the vintage Sony C37A large-diaphragm tube condenser microphone. The original...
Space. The final frontier. Is it? So, what is space as it relates to music? Space is that last audible cue that gives listeners a sense of location. Near, far, big room, small room, no room, etc. It...
The A23-M is a 3-way studio monitor from Switzerland’s PSI Audio. My account of the company’s two-way A17-M monitors [Tape Op #142] provided details about the product line, so I...
Apogee’s Symphony Desktop was first covered last spring in Tape Op #142. Firmware and software were still in beta testing at the time, so the unit was reviewed based on its primary hardware...
Looking for an easy way to stream audio from laptops and phones during sessions? For years, Jackpot! has had a 1/4-inch jack mounted on the producer’s desk, with a long cable line feeding a...
Whenever my musician buddies or clients looking to start recording at home ask me what their first mic purchase should be, I often propose the Shure SM7B cardioid dynamic [Tape Op #36]. This...
The new Milab VIP-60 large diaphragm condenser mic is marketed as an update to its flagship VIP-50, but in all honesty, I had never heard of, seen, or used its predecessor. It’s quite refreshing...
Plenty of people still own PCIe audio interfaces, but in the past, these have been limited to use with larger tower computers with PCIe slots. Many now record on laptops or other smaller portable...
