Women in Audio
Sally Browder: Raising the Kids to Punk and Roots Rock
by Larry Crane
Sally Browder is a producer/engineer working in Los Angeles. The path to her career was an odd one, paved with lots of luck along the way, but the results are impressive. Initially working with...
Interviews
Jonathan Kreinik: Trans Am, !!!, Le Tigre and lots more
by Bob Massey
Since he first hit the road in 1996 with Washington, DC skronk-rockers Kerosene 454, engineer Jonathan Kreinik has never slowed down. His resume as a live and studio engineer includes work with...
Interviews
David Lewiston: Field recording around the world
by Curtis Settino
For forty years, David Lewiston has been recording traditional music all around the globe. He grew up in the London suburbs playing the piano and went on to study at Trinity College of Music in...
Interviews
Jamie Laboz: Music for Television
by Kevin Jones
Unlike other musicians, Jamie Laboz doesn't need to be in the spotlight. It's not like he hasn't had the opportunity to be in the public eye — in the early '90s, his "post-industrial...
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Geoff Emerick: Recording the Beatles
by Jeff Slate
I'd come to a midtown Manhattan law office to meet Geoff Emerick, the infamous engineer on most of the significant recordings by The Beatles, to talk about his new memoir Here, There and...
Pete Anderson: Raising the Kids to Punk and Roots Rock
by Larry Crane
Pete Anderson is known to many as the original guitarist and producer for Dwight Yoakam. These days Pete's life revolves around his label, Little Dog Records, and studio, where he's recently...
Ghetto Recorders: Motor City Secret
by Ryan Pritts
Tucked away smack dab in the middle of two stadiums, the Fox and State theatre complexes, a police station and the rotting corpses of Detroit's once elegant apartment district, lies one of the...
Crowley & Tripp: Behind the Gear with Soundwave Research Labs
by Darron Burke
Chris Regan of Soundwave Research Labs introduced me to Crowley and Tripp microphones (Soundwave Research Labs is the parent company of Crowley and Tripp). He explained that the company had been...
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End Rant
Copy Protection Sucks
by John Baccigaluppi
First off, to all of you who've stolen software, and I will include myself in that list, you (and I) suck. You have only yourself to blame for how damn difficult and frustrating it is to install and...
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Gear Reviews See more →
ProFire Lightbridge interface
by M-Audio | reviewed by Andy Hong
Wow. 34 inputs and 36 outputs via a single FireWire cable. 32 channels of ADAT Optical I/O at 44.1/48 kHz; 16 channels S/MUX'ed at 88.2/96 kHz. Two channels of S/PDIF I/O. Word clock in and out. Two...
ATM450 side-address condenser
by Audio-Technica | reviewed by Chris Garges
Audio-Technica has just released a microphone that I've been waiting on for years. The ATM450 is a small-diaphragm condenser microphone. Audio-Technica makes several excellent small-diaphragm...
AudioSkin Cable organizer
by AudioSkin | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi
Our pal Diane Gershuny turned us onto this handy little studio organization tool at the Austin NAMM show and sent us a few to try out. AudioSkin is one of those plastic products that wraps around...
EMI TG EQ Mastering Pack
by Chandler Limited / Abbey Road | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi
Abbey Road Studios along with their stateside partner, Wade Goeke of Chandler Limited, are continuing to make some of the great sounding early audio gear from the EMI empire available to us common...
Sputnik multi-pattern tube mic
by M-Audio | reviewed by Joel Patterson
There's hype, and then there's hype... and then there's HYPE. No buzzwords have been spared in the promotion of M-Audio's new tube microphone, the Sputnik. "The end of microphone envy," with its saucy...
S3 multiband compressor
by Drawmer | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi
Almost 20 years ago, I was working for a recording studio that was owned by an FM radio station. One day, the Program Manager asked me if I wanted some gear the station was throwing away. They had...
China Cones
by China Cones | reviewed by Garrett Haines
China Cones are an isolation device used to decouple monitor speakers from the console, stand, or surface supporting them. Made of ceramic, the manufacturer claims China Cones vibrate in a frequency...
Pro Tools 7.3 upgrade for HD, LE, and M-Powered
by Digidesign | reviewed by Andy Hong
As I write this, I'm just finishing up rough mixes for a project that I tracked and edited with Pro Tools HD 7.3. It's my favorite upgrade in recent years. 7.3 added so many crucial user-interface...
Portico 5033 parametric EQ
by Rupert Neve Designs | reviewed by Andy Hong
The more I use Pro Tools, the more I use outboard analog. I used to have a single table-high rack of outboard processors (not including all my preamps), but these days, I'm working with two racks full...
SHH Studio Headphone Hanger
by Stedman | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi
Anyone who's read my reviews in Tape Op has probably seen one of my "dealing with headphones in a busy studio sucks" rants where I complain about how my clients treat all my headphones like crap and...
Reason Pianos
by Propellerhead Software | reviewed by Josh Peck
Creating a sample instrument is a seemingly straightforward task-record the sound of the instrument with great fidelity, and program a sleek and usable interface to trigger that recording. However,...
L2007 Mastering Limiter plug-in
by Massey | reviewed by Garrett Haines
For quite sometime many have viewed Waves L2 as the best digital plug-in limiter. And over the years, there have been many challengers. While some upstarts had strengths in different uses, none seemed...
A7 active monitor
by ADAM Audio | reviewed by Thom Monahan
Over the last two years, mixing at The Hangar, John Baccigalupi's studio in Sacramento, I've come to rely on the pair of ADAM P22As that John has in the control room there. They've been just about my...
MA-2.2 TX mic preamp
by Buzz Audio | reviewed by Chris Garges
Having never used any Buzz Audio products before, I was intrigued at the prospect of checking out this 2-channel Class A preamp. The 1RU-height box features a nice array of front-panel controls for...
Audio Kontrol 1
by Native Instruments | reviewed by Rich Hardesty
Native Instruments-a company whose reputation was built on software as opposed to hardware-just released their Audio Kontrol 1 into a market already crowded with affordable portable recording...
Live 6
by Ableton | reviewed by Walt Szalva
I finally got hip to Live. I used to think it was primarily for stage use, but I've since realized that its ease-of-use (hey, if you can perform with it, it better have an extremely efficient UI)...
Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City
by Paul Morley | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi
This is the last book I ever bought at Tower Books on the corner of Broadway and Land Park Dr., before they and the entire Tower Records chain, which was started here in Sacramento, CA, went out of...
CS-80V & Prophet-V software synths
by Arturia | reviewed by Dana Gumbiner
I have fallen in love with a software synthesizer. I never thought it could happen to me. After long, fulfilling relationships with my analog synths (various Moogs, Rolands, etc.), I kinda brushed off...
Analog Factory
by Arturia | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi
I love the Arturia plug-ins and so does Dana Gumbiner. Between the two of us, we've reviewed every plug-in synth they've ever released. But as much as I think the plug-ins are amazing, I use them less...
Macht 12x guitar amp
by Savage Audio | reviewed by Allen Farmelo
Last winter, I got my hands on a Savage Macht 12x guitar amplifier and haven't tracked guitars without it since. For technical details and configuration options, visit the website. I'm going to focus...
Lemur multitouch surface controller
by JazzMutant | reviewed by Dana Gumbiner
The Lemur is a unique, open-ended controller geared towards DAW and live-performance applications. The Lemur hardware is essentially a flat touch-screen interface (kind of like a tablet PC) which...
Mbox 2 Mini
by Digidesign | reviewed by Andy Hong
The Mbox 2 Mini is the most compact of Digidesign's Pro Tools systems; it's almost exactly the same size as a stack of four CD jewel cases. It has some heft due to its robust metal enclosure; I...
DigiMAX FS 8-channel preamp
by PreSonus | reviewed by Andy Hong
When this unit arrived in my studio, my first assumption was that it was a "remix" of the DigiMAX 96 or LT, both of which are fine units and sound pretty good, especially for their price. But...