Interviews
Interviews
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.
Let's start this conversation off by stating the obvious. You cannot properly record or mix music if you cannot accurately hear what you are recording or mixing. If music is more than a hobby, and you are working with low to mid-level monitoring with your computer and DAW, your next purchases...
Larry Crane: Sometimes a plug-in comes out that I totally adore, but I get worried that its subtlety and usefulness will get lost in the shuffle of "whiz bang" over-the-top effects and emulations of vintage gear. The new bx_refinement, developed by Gebre Waddell of Stonebridge Mastering, is one...
I couldn't possibly count the number of times I've used an outboard preamp and thought, "I wish this had a two-band EQ." Perhaps the floor tom or the bass is a tad too muddy, or the bottom of the snare is a bit too crispy, or some boominess in the electric guitar is making its compressor behave...
The DA-3000 is a high-quality, stereo, digital master recorder capable of both PCM (up to 24-bit, 192 kHz) and DSD (2.8 and 5.6 MHz) operation, and it can also function as a standalone A/D and D/A converter. It is an elegant 1RU-height unit with an intuitive, even enjoyable, interface that makes it...
We all know that the Shure SM57 and AKG D 112 are pretty ubiquitous on snare and kick on countless recordings, right? Why? Because they are affordable and sound pretty damn good! Many an engineer, myself included, have tried other mics, but come back to the 57/112 combo because it works. But we...
Eventide bills its MixingLink as a "Mic Pre with FX Loop." It is so much more than that! I tried to sum it up technically: It's a mic/line preamp. It's an instrument preamp/DI. It's a headphone amp. It has a balanced effects loop. It has a smartphone/tablet loop via 1/8'' TRRS (4-conductor). It has...
Located in Caldwell, Idaho, Revive Audio offers hardware, custom builds, modifications, and repairs. I first encountered Revive Audio a few years ago. They were selling rackmount gear reclaimed from decommissioned consoles. From the workmanship, it was obvious to me that this group was capable of...
When I think of AEA, I think of vintage-styled, classic ribbon mics. The AEA R-series harks back to RCA ribbon mics in both looks and tonal qualities, while AEA's modern manufacturing approach includes innovations in internal shockmounting and adding active electronics for higher output levels and...
I like gear that makes a statement. The long, narrow aluminum briefcase of the PM40 PianoMic System certainly makes one. That of, "I've got an upscale rifle here" — an impression that can come in handy at times. But back to recording... People have been mic'ing acoustic grand pianos in much the...
Writing about audio gear is an interesting exercise in trying to capture the emotional impact of an inanimate object. I think that it is less important how something works than how something makes you feel. When a piece of gear allows you to transfer a performance to a fixed format with emotion...
A shotgun shell — an actual shotgun shell, from a 12 gauge shotgun — turned into a microphone. I liked the idea immediately. "Let's use these shells for creating, rather than destroying, something." I ordered a pair of the original, red-colored Red12 omnidirectional mics very early on in the...
The Sigma 500 provides a unique twist on the implementation of an analog summing mixer. The unit contains two 500-series slots to insert preamps of your choice to serve as the final gain stage for the stereo mix. Moreover, when not being used to sum, the Sigma 500 has an Alt mode that transforms...
The Two-V is a double-wide, two-channel preamp module for the 500-series format. It comes painted battleship grey with minimal markings denoting the usual features: polarity, high-pass filter, phantom power, and input impedance. The front panel seems a bit austere at first — deceptively so! The...
No matter how many amazing equalizers that I buy, I find that I never have enough great outboard EQs for everything I need. In my opinion, the biggest advantage of expensive EQs is their ability to boost and manage treble, but I have often found myself using one (or even two) on kick drum to shape...
The X1R is a ribbon mic with a few design twists. It's housed in the same body as sE's X1 large-diaphragm condenser and is designed to produce more high end, and more output level, than the average ribbon. sE sent me a pair of these mics to test. I was tracking an album at my studio with Doralice,...
