Jim Williams has spent much of his 56 years working with some of the biggest names in the music business, including Frank Zappa, John McLaughlin and Stevie Wonder. He's the owner of Audio Upgrades,...
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...
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...
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.,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I became acquainted with Glenn Coleman when we shared a week together at the Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES) in New York. Glenn's early employer, MCI, was a leading manufacturer of pro...
We last visited legendary console designer and audio guru Rupert Neve in Tape Op #26, in 2001. In 2005 his corporation Rupert Neve Designs debuted the amazing Portico Range of equalizers, mic...
I first met Retro Instruments' Phil Moore when he emailed me out of the blue about buying an old tri-band Gregg Labs broadcast compressor I had listed on my studio website. I was reluctant to sell it,...
Roll Music Systems has been slowly bringing out pro audio products since 2003. Starting as a small recording studio in Minneapolis, this company (Justin Ulysses Morse and John Sommer, aka Johnny...
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...
I've been using iZotope's RX audio restoration bundle extensively for a few years now. I think this product is exemplary. I'd heard good things about their Ozone mastering plug-in, so I decided it'd...
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...
Justin Frankel has always pushed the envelopes of music and software. In 1997 he dropped out of college to release Winamp and found Nullsoft, which was later sold to AOL. Justin started a new company,...
Denmark's John G. Petersen has been designing and building audio equipment since the seventies, but is certainly best known for 25 years of producing the fine Tube-Tech line of equipment, seen in...
David Bock has fostered (and weathered) the changes in the microphone marketplace over the last 14 years, first as cofounder and main designer for Soundelux Microphones and now with his own Bock Audio...
Ernst Nathorst-Boos and Marcus Zetterquist, along with Peter "Pelle" Jubel, founded Propellerhead Software in 1994. Propellerhead, based in Stockholm Sweden, has given us some unique software for...
For years now I've been bumping into Brad Avenson, a real down-to-earth guy who's been building his Avenson Audio company up with small, ingenious little tools to help us all make better records...
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...
Ken Hirsch has had a varied career in live sound, studio recording, product support and electronics. These days he and Josie, his wife and partner, head up their original company, Orphan Audio, along...
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,...
Tim Spencer's TRUE Systems, based in Tucson, Arizona, has been quietly building a reputation as a manufacturer of quality mic preamps for the last 12 years. Tim's electrical engineering degree, and...
Vic Keary and Nick Terry, along with partner Jon Bailes, are the people behind the UK gear company Thermionic Culture. Larry and I both have several pieces of their gear that we really like, so...
About an hour's drive across the Netherlands from Amsterdam sits the city of Oosterhout. In Oosterhout is where you'll find RMGI, Recordable Media Group International, one of two places in the...
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...
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...
When the name Heil started popping up around recording studios in conjunction with an interesting take on large diaphragm dynamic microphones a few years back, it was not a new name to those with a...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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'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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
To begin with, how did you get started in designing audio gear? Thirty-two years ago I was working for a guy that built hi-fi equipment. His trick was to take Dynaco gear, hot rod it and sell it. He...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
