Behind the Gear

We recently had a chance to meet up with Johannes Russ, Ableton's Head of ABL Products Unit (Move, Note, and Core Technology), to talk about their new portable music-making tool. Our conversation was held at Different Fur Studios in the Mission in San Francisco a few days...

Focusrite Audio Engineering Ltd. has been around for so long, it's easy to forget how many great products they've made over the years. We recently had a chance to sit down with the guiding lights of the company, Phil Dudderidge (Executive Chairman) and Rob Jenkins...

Connor Reviere, Gebre Waddell, and Patrick Moss are Soundways. Their recent plug-ins, the Core Production Bundle, are a new way to help engineers listen, as well as hear details, in recordings and mixes. I met up with them in their hometown of Memphis to learn more about their...

While motorcycling through the Appalachian Mountains, on my way to the 2015 Summer NAMM show in Nashville, I made an overnight stop in Jim Thorpe, PA, one of the most beautiful towns in the U.S., according to several national publications. Inside the former firehouse in the...

Walk into studios anywhere in the world and the name Clarence Kane will have preceded you. One of the true greats in ribbon mic repair and restoration, Mr. Kane started at RCA after returning from the Second World War. Later, he set out to start ENAK Microphone Repair, and has...

For years Rob Chiarelli and Chandler Bridges have worked, together and separately, producing and engineering records for the likes of Will Smith, Madonna, Pink, Janet Jackson, J-Lo, Christina Aguilera, P- Diddy (Puff Daddy), Aaliyah, and Johnny Mathis. Along the way they decided...

VintageWarmer was one of the first "must have" plug-ins for digital recording. Mateusz Wozniak is co-founder and lead developer of PSPaudioware. Recent plug-ins include PSP 2445 (inspired by the EMT 244 and 245 early digital reverberators) and the PSP E27 equalizer...

Since the early '80s James Demeter has been promoting the use of tubes in pro audio, and in his excellent amps as well.

Phoenix Audio, maker of Class A, high-end audio tools for the studio, seeks to, "embody the classic British tone, but with a modern twist," which they successfully do. Since 1998, Phoenix has designed quality preamps, compressors, equalizers, and summing mixers. In...

Burl Audio, under the direction of owner/designer Rich Williams, has developed some of the best new recording equipment over the last eight years. Their mic preamps, summing amps, and control room monitor are top-quality. But the company is best known for their analog/digital...

Jensen Transformers was founded in 1974 by Deane Jensen as part of his quest for excellent studio sound. He believed the transformers of the era were of a substandard quality, and our field has benefitted from his research and dedication ever since. When Deane tragically passed...

Jensen Transformers was founded in 1974 by Deane Jensen as part of his quest for excellent studio sound. He believed the transformers of the era were of a substandard quality, and our field has benefitted from his research and dedication ever since. When Deane tragically passed...

ADK Microphones began in 1997 as the dream of Larry Villella — recording engineer, piano expert, and vintage mic collector — to build quality microphones for his friends. ADK's extensive line of microphones now ranges from very affordable to top-of-the-line hand-built...

Bill Cheney and Jim Romney are the men responsible for keeping the amazing legacy of Spectra Sonics, a legendary, if criminally unheralded, pro-audio company alive.

Bill Cheney and his partner Jim Romney are the men responsible for keeping the amazing legacy of Spectra Sonics, a legendary, if criminally unheralded, pro-audio company alive.

Vintage King co-founder Michael Nehra shares some of his love, knowledge, and practical advice for diving into the world of vintage audio gear, and then takes us behind the scenes for a walk through of a laborious restoration of "The Holy Grail of Compressors."

Under the leadership and vision of EveAnna Manley, Manley Labs has created and built some of the finest studio equipment (and high-end home audio components) over the last two decades. Studios across the world count on their mostly tube-based EQs, compressors, microphones...

Wes Dooley loves ribbon mics. He's carried the torch for these fine tools for many years, and his AEA Ribbon Mics company manufactures some of the finest microphones of this type, as well as specialized preamps and more. I love listening to Wes spin his stories, so this was...

Wes Dooley loves ribbon mics. He's carried the torch for these fine tools for many years, and his AEA Ribbon Mics company manufactures some of the finest microphones of this type, as well as specialized preamps and more. I love listening to Wes spin his stories, so this was...

John Peluso has been quietly providing classic-styled mics to some of the biggest names in music for over ten years. Peluso's line of vacuum tube condenser, solid-state condenser, and ribbon microphones are hand assembled and tested, and surprisingly affordable.

John Peluso has been quietly providing classic-styled mics to some of the biggest names in music for over ten years. Peluso's line of vacuum tube condenser, solid-state condenser, and ribbon microphones are hand-assembled and tested, and surprisingly affordable. Peluso has...

Some audio equipment becomes more sought after once it goes out of production. A small company from Utah called NTI (later known as Nightpro) introduced the EQ3, PreQ3 and EQ3D in the '90s and then disappeared. But the uniqueness of their AIR BAND equalizer feature lived...

A while back I was working on a restoration process for an album that was long out of print. The only materials I had to work from were a ridiculously scratched vinyl LP and some 7-inch reference reels from the original session. When I played back the reels, I was horrified by...

Nashville's Chris Estes has been producing music for over a decade and, after years of frustration trying to replicate the analog audio of his youth in the digital realm, he conjured up CLASP (Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor), a seamless interface between digital audio...

Years ago I ran into a guy showing his tube mic preamp at a booth in the basement of the 2005 NAMM show. He'd built the unit with metal brackets from Home Depot — I kid you not. Since then he's kept at it, and his one-man company, Electronaut, has released the M63...

From the first moment another engineer raved about a Little Labs DI to me, I knew that this company was onto something special. It turns out Little Labs is Jonathan Little, a man who lives and works out of a funky mansion in the Hollywood Hills where he designs and QCs his...

Ableton Live is a program that has long been hard to define — is it a DAW, is it a DJ-centric program, is it a tweaker's toolbox or is it all (or none) of the above? A recent major update, Live 8, has brought more tweaks that bring it in line with a DAW while still...

In 1999 Universal Audio, the company founded by the esteemed Bill Putnam Sr., was re-launched by his sons, Bill Jr. and Jim Putnam [Tape Op#24]. In addition to re-creating some of the classic audio equipment that UA was known for, the company is also focused on "powered...

How many hours have we all sat staring at the GUI [graphical user interface] of our plug-ins and rarely, if never, thought about the people behind the math, form and function of these amazing applications? I had the chance to meet one of these very people a few years back....

In my own stubborn world of recording, sample libraries are slowly making inroads. Almost everything I work with involves real instruments recorded in a room, yet sampled strings, Mellotron and even percussion have found their way into my work as a producer. EASTWEST and Quantum...

Christopher Moore was the man behind the legendary Ursa Major Space Station (SST-282) as well as several other notable innovations in digital audio. Ursa Major was bought by AKG in 1985. Chris was pretty quiet for most of the 1990s until he released a digital clone of the Space...

It is the brave men and women fascinated by analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to- analog (D/A) conversion that make audio a reality today. Dan Lavry, founder of Seattle-based Lavry Engineering, put his music bug and his science bug together early on. Now he spends his days...

From the time he invented the parametric EQ in the 1960s, to the founding and operation of his company, GML (George Massenburg Labs), and his current projects in electronic design, George Massenburg has had a long and distinguished relationship with the development of...

Ken Bogdanowicz is the man behind Soundtoys, the boutique software company known for their feature laden and very analog flavored effects plug-ins. Ken's history with designing effects goes back to the pre-plug-in hardware days when he was a key player at Eventide. We...

Michael Grace started Grace Design in 1994, a boutique pro audio company located in Boulder, CO. The story of his rise as a designer is one born from a love of music. His need for a preamp to record Grateful Dead concerts drove him to design his first piece of gear. We talked...

Mike Castoro, the 43-year-old owner and creator of Wunder Audio, lives quietly with his wife and two kids in the northern hills of Austin, Texas. Originally from upstate New York, he spent his junior high and high school years in Florida, then moved to Austin during the...

Michael Joly has quickly gained a reputation for ironing the wrinkles out of a well-designed but inexpensive microphone, at a "Bang- for-the-buck" price which most of us can easily afford. Even so, I found nothing low-budget about Michael's customer service — he...

I'm starting the see a trend with the subjects of Behind the Gear. In an industry where trade shows demand new models every year, sometimes every quarter, these manufacturers follow their own schedule. Metric Halo is clearly one firm that bucks the trend. Their three main...

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 developing ribbon mics and testing them at area studios, gathering ideas and input...

The name Aspen Pittman is synonymous with vacuum tubes. But it's one thing to hawk a product, and another to understand the physics behind its performance. While working as a salesman in the first Guitar Center store, Pittman noticed that players (and techs) didn't...

Ted Fletcher can't get away from music. Originally trained as a civil engineer, he started taking gigs as a session singer at local studios. Before long, the gigs became full-time and he was working with legendary producer Joe Meek [Tape Op#100]. Combining his technical...

Once upon a time, there was a company called Stephens Electronics. They went head-to-head with Ampex, MCI, Studer and 3M, building tape decks that some folks still worship as the best sounding in the world. A conversation with John Stephens, the man behind these tape decks and...

Danny McKinney is a textbook case of a very busy man with a whole lot of irons in the fire. Requisite Audio is his boutique outboard gear company. Standel is his company that designs guitar amps. And he also makes super high-end cables. We talked to him about his design...

Jay McKnight is the founder and operator of MRL — Magnetic Refer- ence Laboratory. If you've ever owned and maintained an analog tape deck you know MRL as one of the few sources for calibration tapes. Before that he worked at Ampex, Gotham Audio and Armed Forces Radio, to...

Apogee Electronics recently celebrated 20 years in the business of digital audio. These days, 20 years in business is quite a long time. The following is a conversation with Apogee's lead analog designer, Lucas van der Mee. We talked about what makes a good converter, the...

Nick Mason's recent autobiography, Inside Out, recalls his unique experiences as the drummer for Pink Floyd during for over three decades — he is the only member to have remained with Pink Floyd throughout the complete duration of the group's career. The book contains...

One-time major label artist turned gear designer James Demeter talks about tubes, spring reverb and building gear for REO Speedwagon. Demeter Amplification was one of the first companies to re-embrace tubes for mic preamp and DI use in the early eighties, and has also been...

David Josephson, of Josephson Engineering, builds microphones that are innovative, interesting and downright great sounding. We talked about digital audio, cheap mics and the future of microphone design.

Real World Studios is an icon in the studio business, recognized internationally for its innovative architecture, high technology standards and, of course, its association with founder Peter Gabriel. Real World evolved following the success that Peter had with his album So in...

PreSonus Audio Electronics is celebrating its ten-year anniversary of delivering high quality recording and live audio gear at great prices. The Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based company features over 20 products, and is soon launching a high-end yet reasonably priced tube preamp in...

Wade Goeke is the man behind Chandler Limited, a boutique gear firm intent on taking the legendary designs of Rupert Neve and Abbey Road and updating them for present day studio use and abuse. Wade talks about how his quest for the ultimate in gear design took him from Los...

Chris Muth of Dangerous Music knows his stuff. Formerly a mastering gear designer at Sterling Sound in New York City, Muth now co-owns Dangerous Music with partner Bob Muller, a unique combination recording studio/boutique gear manufacturer. The Dangerous studio has recorded...

Many of us would be fortunate to record national bands, build great sounding studios, or design our own line of pro audio gear in our lifetime. But over the past ten years Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins have managed to do all three. Equally comfortable behind a soldering iron...

John Schumann makes crazy pedals. He makes them 10 to 12 hours a day, every day, in a shop at the back of Main Drag Music, a great independent store near Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Schumann walked in the very first day Carl Myers opened the store six years ago...

Bill Bradley has been collecting, modifying and selling vintage microphones for years. He started as an engineer in Chicago and now lives outside of Nashville where his workbench at The Mic Shop sees a constant flow of traffic.

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 to make room for my mic stand on our table and he looked alarmed and said...

BLUE (Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics) builds some of the finest microphones available today. The company's commitment to manufacturing its own parts, from condenser diaphragms to the tiny screws that hold them together, helps ensure consistent quality. Company founder...

David Hill is the owner and designer behind the company, as well as the owner of a recording studio with a lot of customized components, not surprisingly. Compressors, preamps, digital converters, tape machine components — David Hill has had a hand in designing gear that is fast...

Greg's Pendulum Audio has been building pro audio gear since 1998 and building high quality acoustic instrument preamps since 1988. All of the pro audio units he makes feature tubes, Class-A electronics, solid build quality and great sound. Recently he released the Quartet...

Doug has been a proponent of high-quality, high-end tube recording gear for ten years now. His mic preamps, EQs and direct boxes are known as some of the best-built and greatest sounding in the audio business.

If you were making music with a Macintosh in the 1990s, chances are SoundHack was an important part of your sound-mangling toolbox. It's an exceptionally rich and powerful tool, and it was one of the first attempts to make some of the esoteric "computer music"...

It's funny how I won't let anyone write in Tape Op about CDs I work on, but I'll go on and on about albums our contributors have worked on. Nedelle is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who explores a jazzy, intimate world with her sweet voice and...

A character, genius and great host are just a few of the words to use in describing Geoff Daking. A resilient man having survived an entire US tour with The Who opening for his band, The Blues Magoos, Geoff immediately strikes you as a man who could easily survive a nuclear...

In pro audio circles and throughout the vast realm of the internet, Fletcher is a ubiquitous and highly vocal presence. Always quick with commentary and an endless font of knowledge regarding even the most obscure pieces of gear, he is also the owner of MercenaryAudio, a...

In many a studio the Empirical Labs Distressor is as much a common sight — and sound — as a guitar amp or coffee machine. And for good reason — it works well, it's highly tweakable, and it sounds great. Could it be that the Distressor is the ultimate compressor? The only...

Most Tape Op articles feature the people behind the making of a record. But what about the people who make the gear that we make records on? "Behind the Gear" is a new column featuring interviews with engineers, businesspeople and innovators who are the faces...

Fontanelle, a Portland, Oregon, quartet which includes orphaned Jessamine offspring Andy Brown and Rex Ritter, paint a bipolar musical landscape that is both soothing and sardonically ominous in a "guilty pleasure" kind of way. One of the more fleshier/organic releases...

Prog rock played with hardcore intensity. Sledgehammer metronome rhythms and guitar student scale charts galore. This is the kind of stuff that can easily choke on it's own pretension, but these guys manage to make it sound pretty good. Partly since there is a sense of...

A couple of guys from Los Lobos, Tchad Blake, and Mitchell Froom using all the knobs and toys at Sunset Sound Factory. It's the second record from this collaboration and like the first, all the sounds are very inventive and imaginative. You can literally hear how much fun...

Their musicianship and songwriting continue to grow, and although the music has moved further into the pop realm, they haven't forgot- ten their punk roots. Roger Mountenot [known for his work with Yo La Tengo and Lou Reed] and Kip Beelman recorded this bad boy at Avast [in...