As a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, guitarist Mike Campbell found himself co-writing some of their biggest hits, plus songs for many others like Don Henley and Stevie Nicks. He...
The credits add up. Seminal, massively important, and popular works for Simon & Garfunkel, The Band, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and many others...
Record producer, songwriter, musician, and singer, Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart is a man of many talents and skills. Beyond co-producing all of the Eurythmics’ catalog with Annie Lennox,...
Recording engineer Bella Blasko has worked with bands like The National, Big Red Machine, Feist, and Bonny Light Horseman. Additionally, she earned a Grammy nomination for her work on Taylor...
Fantastic Negrito’s new album, White Jesus Black Problems, is based on the true story of Negrito’s seventh generation white Scottish grandmother (Grandma Gallamore), an indentured...
Someone built a vintage, '50s-style American recording studio in Germany? Or, as Moonshine's owner, Christian Krüger, said when he dropped a line, "I've lovingly recreated the original...
Since 1985 Vince Clarke and vocalist Andy Bell have helmed the group Erasure. Vince also was an original member of Depeche Mode, the music behind the duo Yazoo (or Yaz in the U.S.), remixed many songs...
A few months back, I stumbled upon a documentary called The Art of Recording a Big Band [reviewed in Tape Op #118]. The film allows the audience an intimate experience of watching the late, great...
If the mark of a great recording studio is the versatility and breadth of its clientele, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate than Richmond, Virginia’s Sound of Music. John...
It’s a snowy March morning, and I’m enroute to Corpus Studios in Queens to hang with Arthur Rizk. Arthur’s driven up from Philadelphia to chat before he works live sound at the...
As a house engineer for Death Row Records, multi-platinum engineer Tommy D recorded and mixed classic albums with Dr. Dre (Andre Young), Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus Jr.), and 2Pac (Tupac Shakur)....
Reprinted from Truth, Lies & Hearsay by John Simon.See interview here (on page 28 in print). Book and poster: www.johnsimonmusic.net/shop
Ever since the first-generation Apple AirPods became widely available in 2017, “true wireless earbuds” (as the category is called) have become ubiquitous. Now, it seems rare to step into a...
This is a new one. FiDef is a psychoacoustic process MAAT licensed from FideliQuest LLC for inclusion in thEQblue (which is a sweet EQ – but that’s a different discussion). Now available...
I love the sound of ribbon microphones, and I put one in front of a guitar amp nearly every time I record one. I ran across the Samar Audio Design AL95 online, and after reading about it, I had to...
BABY Audio is quickly developing a reputation for boiling plug-ins down to their essential components and reshaping them into concentrated, powerful production tools. With their newest release, a...
Fourteen years ago, Apogee Electronics released their original Firewire Duet [Tape Op #65] – arguably opening the floodgates for one-knob desktop interfaces that focus on portability and ease of...
Attention guitar nerds: A new documentary by Alice Gu premiered at SXSW this year that spotlights Reuben Cox, the man behind Old Style Guitar Shop in Los Angeles. Reuben is responsible for developing...
If you have a single rack space 1/4-inch patchbay from the likes of dbx, Behringer, Samson, or Neutrik, you understand the challenge of marking things clearly. Nashville’s Trace Audio has an...
Solid State Logic, better known as SSL, boasts a four-decade history of producing leading products for commercial studios, broadcast facilities, and live sound. However, SSL has recently directed...
You know the scenario: You’ve mic’d up a whole band, did the first day of tracking, and are shutting down for the night, coming back tomorrow for more takes. There are over 25 microphones...
There is absolute magic contained in the plastered walls of classic studios’ echo chambers. I’ve been lucky enough to make many records at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, which has...
Texture still seems to me to be the hill on which the battle between us analog Luddites and the digital future is raging. Though digital emulations are now, broadly, pretty good and getting better,...
Every stereo mix has a phantom center, or middle channel. This “mid,” includes any audio that is not panned (or recorded) exclusively to the right and left “side” channels, and...
I recently moved into a new control room, and because of this much of my gear, interface, monitoring, and general workflow changed drastically. My new mantra was to scale down the physical footprint...
CEntrance’s DACport Pro is a portable tool designed by people who understand the needs of working engineers. Laptop audio outputs offer up questionable quality – assuming your maker deigns...
Hailing from 1978, and peppered throughout several classic recordings in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the AMS DMX 15-80 S was the world’s first microprocessor-controlled, 15-bit digital delay...
In our world of recording gear, there are plenty of “classics” when one thinks of compressors, mic preamps, or microphones. However, one particular piece of gear that usually isn’t...
