It was a wet, shitty late November afternoon as photographer Brian Silak and I made our way across Manhattan's West 48th Street to the legendary New York recording institution known as Sear Sound....
Bob Moog, inventor of the legendary Moog synthesizers, is a friendly, down-to-earth man with a sharp wit and a sense of humor. He's practical, too — while interviewing him I moved his plate...
Pauline Oliveros ranks among the most innovative composers of the last 40 years. Her creative exploration of improvisation and acoustic properties, along with her theatrical pieces and studies of...
While Tape Op has covered countless recordists with low-budget, grass-roots backgrounds in rock recording, we've talked to very few grass-roots engineers in the avant-garde music world. Russell...
While listening to mixes at his new Chicago studio, Jay Bennett rolls his own cigarettes, then smokes them with a Hunter S. Thompson-style filter. "It's a good prop," he says. "I have a certain mad...
The Icelandic combo known as Sigur Rós create some of the most haunting otherworldly sounds and songs. Their third album, known only as (), clocks in at 70 minutes with eight tracks and no...
In issue #28 we interviewed Jimmy LaValle, the man behind The Album Leaf, about his home recorded instrumental albums that we really enjoyed. Now Jimmy has had the opportunity to record his new...
While Tape Op has covered countless recordists with low-budget, grass-roots backgrounds in rock recording, we've talked to very few grass-roots engineers in the avant-garde music world. Russell...
A consummate populist, Tony Maimone first caught my attention lecturing eloquently in defense of the women's-only swim time at the Metropolitan pool in Williamsburg to a grumbling bunch of men in the...
David Minehan played guitar, sang and wrote songs for the Boston punk band The Neighborhoods from 1979-1992. After the 'Hoods he played guitar with Paul Westerberg on the 14 Songs tour and even...
Engineers are good at spreading information about recording techniques. In fact, most love to talk about recording as much as they love to make recordings. This magazine you're reading right now is an...
Equalization is a powerful weapon — something that can easily be abused and overused. We know frequencies are divided into lows, low mids, high mids and highs, but how helpful is that in...
Recording music is often a challenge of doing the most amount of work within the shortest amount of time. The demand is that the work be done well and immediately, if not sooner. This is usually due...
Engineers are good at spreading information about recording techniques. In fact, most love to talk about recording as much as they love to make recordings. This magazine you're reading right now is an...
Equalization is a powerful weapon — something that can easily be abused and overused. We know frequencies are divided into lows, low mids, high mids and highs, but how helpful is that in terms...
Recording music is often a challenge of doing the most amount of work within the shortest amount of time. The demand is that the work be done well and immediately, if not sooner. This is usually due...
From a letter from contributor and reader Lou Carlozo: "I'm at a crossroads. I have a professional home studio that continues to grow and has done well in the Chicago market. I'm blessed to work...
Gary Garritan, owner of Garritan Orchestral Libraries, has just released Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO), a full orchestral software-sampler program for $249 plus $15 shipping. Now that's news,...
Not too long ago, Samson Audio decided to enter the realm of low cost/good performance audio equipment with the introduction of their line of C Class processors. Amongst these stackable, half rack...
Over the years there have been many devices that have claimed to recreate room ambiences artificially, which is not entirely untrue. Yet it is to be noted that most of these devices have more pages to...
One of the joys of doing this mag is checking out recording gear from small companies that are just starting out... and doing so before anyone else! Bob Starr is connected with our friends at Zero...
These two virtual instrument plug-ins are the two best simulations of a real instrument that I've seen and heard to date. Although Walter Sear might disagree with me, both of these simulations do a...
The DPS-V55 was released in the U.S. around 1996 and came in two flavors: the DPS-V55 and the DPS-V55M, which included a front panel mic/line jack. Both models are 2U-rackmount, quad-DSP boxes that...
The DPS-R7 is part of the single-rackspace series that Sony manufactured in the early 90s. It has 100 factory presets and room to store 256 user-created settings. The front panel has a scroll knob,...
The UAD-1 card is a PCI card that uses an onboard DSP engine to run high-quality plug-ins on various DAW systems without taking a big hit to your host computer. When I first saw the card demo'ed a few...
The PEQ1 is a Class-A, discrete mic-preamp and equalizer that can be used as a replacement module in vintage Neve 80-series consoles. For those who don't have an 80-series, a 19'' rackmount version of...
Back in early 2002, while I was reviewing another acoustic drum instrument plug-in, I had what I thought was an epiphany. Why not design the instrument's interface so that it resembles a fully-mic'ed...
After reading John's review of various software samplers in the last issue, I thought I'd give my opinion as to what's happening in the soft-sampler scene. NI touts Kontakt as the most advanced...
I recently got to try out M-Audio's new large- diaphragm condenser mics. The two are well constructed and moderately priced (though not as dirt cheap as the many bargain-basement Chinese condensers...
Recording drums has always seemed to be more of a hassle than recording other instruments. A lot of this can be attributed to multiple microphones, phasing, etc. One area of recording drums that has...
I recently updated my Logic Platinum installation to Logic Pro 6 and wanted to mention some of the additions and improvements (besides the slicker-looking graphics). One major new feature is the...
Seasoned readers of Tape Op will recall that I purchased one of the first Sony DMX-R100 mixers four years ago and felt that it was the first digital console I'd used that didn't compromise "the...
Hey kids, a convolution reverb is a big word that means this is a reverb that has actual sampled (IR Short for impulse response) spaces in it. That's right, instead of suffering with digitally-modeled...
Sometimes I get sent a piece of gear to review that I think I don't really need, and then once it's in use at my studio, I don't know how I lived without it. Apogee dropped me a line asking if I'd...
With music production moving to DAW-centric recording and mixing, the monitor controller is one of the fastest-growing hardware categories in Pro Audio. Providing monitor volume and switching along...
I seem to recall Steve Albini saying something at one of the TapeOpCons about how he wished there was a box that could turn the hi-hat down on a drummer's kit. Well, since he doesn't use Pro Tools, he...
This is such an ingenious, useful, and simple product that I'm surprised nobody came up with it earlier. But Auralex continues to figure out new ways to make acoustic foam useful in the studio, so...
E-MU's last product entry for the PC audio-interface market was five years ago. I don't know why they stayed away so long, but they've returned with a line of well- integrated, all-in-one desktop...
Over the last five years, quite a few DAW controllers have come onto the market that offer up such features as motorized faders, shortcut and transport buttons that give direct access to commonly used...
