Mark de Clive-Lowe

Interviews

Mark de Clive-Lowe

By Geoff Stanfield

New Zealand's Mark de Clive-Lowe is your conductor, musical tour guide, and conduit to the past and future. From accomplished jazz artist to a shaker in London's underground music scene, de Clive-Lowe has been part of over 200 releases and continues to produce, perform live...

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Brendan Perry

Interviews

Brendan Perry: Recording Dead Can Dance

By Stephanie Stedman, Larry Crane

Long before I even dreamed of professionally recording or starting a magazine like Tape Op, I was a huge fan of the band Dead Can Dance. Formed by Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard in Australia in 1981, the band soon morphed from post punk to creating beautiful, ethereal sounds drawn from ethnic music...

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Catherine Vericolli

Interviews

Catherine Vericolli: A Sense of Wonder

By Valerie Crane, Larry Crane

Since 2006 Catherine Vericolli has run her Fivethirteen Recording in Tempe, outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Along with long-time engineer Dominic Armstrong, she's kept the studio busy and growing in a difficult market. I was curious to find out how she started up, and what she'd learned...

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Austrian Audio

Interviews

Austrian Audio: This Issue's Creator of Capsules

By Bruce Whisler
Made up of former AKG employees, Austrian Audio is a new company located in Vienna. I sat...
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Recording the Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Hope Downs LP

Interviews

Recording the Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Hope Downs LP

By John Baccigaluppi
This album is one of my favorite records of 2018 and, I gotta be honest, I've been a...
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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

FEBRUARY 27, 2026 INTERVIEWS
A Practical Guide to Loudness Metering for the Recording Studio

A Practical Guide to Loudness Metering for the Recording Studio

BY AARON MULLAN

Years ago, before they hired (Tape Op contributor) Chris Koltay to tour with them, I mixed the band Deerhunter at a festival. Afterward I went to find the band and say hello. Lead singer and guitarist Bradford Cox came right up to me and said, "Dude! You turned up my guitar for the solos! I could hear it from the stage! Nobody knows to do that. Thank you!" It seemed so obvious to me, I couldn't understand how somebody would not do that. A few years after that I noticed another live sound engineer, mixing a Latin band, had a VCA group [voltage controlled amplifier] labeled "VAMP." He explained to me that the VCA had everything except the vocals in it. That way when the vocalist stepped away from the mic, and the band started to vamp, he would push the whole band louder to fill the void. Here was something just as obvious as turning up a guitar solo, and it had never occurred to me. The point is, when listening to popular forms of music, we generally want the music to consistently fill up about the same amount of space. When James Brown counts to four on "Funky Drummer," so everyone could "lay out and let the drummer go," Clyde Stubblefield does play a little bit harder, but the mix engineer also clearly turns him up right when the band drops out, and, correctly, doesn't turn him down until after the second beat when the band comes back in.

FEBRUARY 27, 2026 INTERVIEWS
Michael Brauer

Michael Brauer: The Emotion of a Mix

BY LARRY (PORTRAIT), LARRY CRANE

We first met esteemed mix engineer Michael Brauer in Tape Op #37 in 2003, when Mike Caffrey interviewed him about his multi-bus mixing technique. Some 16 years later Michael and I sat down at his new space, BrauerSound Studios, to discuss his career path and unique mixing techniques. He's crossed genres frequently, working as a mixer on projects by artists as varied as Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Tony Bennett, Coldplay, John Mayer, Calle 13, Angelique Kidjo, Phoenix, Bon Jovi, M. Ward, Grandaddy [Tape Op #7], Caveman, James Bay, and Grizzly Bear.All archive photos and captions courtesy of MB.

COLUMNS

END RANT by Larry Crane
Think Like Tape
END RANT

Think Like Tape

by Larry Crane

A while back, Larry Crane – Tape Op's editor – tweeted an observation implying that many producers, engineers, and artists fill up their productions with tons of tracks simply because the modern DAW allows for such. He and I went back and forth a bit about having started out recording on linear...

GEAR GEEKING by Andy Hong
Gear Geeking w/ Andy
GEAR GEEKING

Gear Geeking w/ Andy

by Andy Hong

Recently, a reader asked me to recommend a cable tester, and that got me thinking about what would be appropriate for today's needs — with networked audio being as ubiquitous as traditional interconnection schemes. There are $1,000+ analyzers available that will qualify twisted-pair network wiring...

GEAR REVIEWS

Gear Reviews

BDA4 4-ch D/A Converter

BY BDA4 4-ch D/A Converter  |  reviewed by Larry Crane

This "daughter card" works with the BURL B80 Mothership [Tape Op #84] and B16 Mothership configurable audio I/O systems. When the B80 Mothership was introduced, the BDA8 was the choice for D-to-A output conversion, but it was not transformer-balanced like the BAD8 A-to-D input cards were, instead...

Gear Reviews

Brooklyn DAC+

BY Brooklyn DAC+  |  reviewed by Geoff Stanfield

I have to stop and reflect on the way we listen to music today versus how I did growing up. It used to be a trip to the now defunct Tower Records or whatever local record store was in my town at the time. We browsed the racks looking for either the latest release from our favorite band or the...

Gear Reviews

Crescendo Mic Preamp

BY Crescendo Mic Preamp  |  reviewed by Dana Gumbiner

(Cue Bon Scott howling "HIGH! VOLTAGE!") The Crescendo, andSPL's proprietary SUPRA high voltage op-ampsare an exciting innovation, and I believe it's a first of its kind: an 8-channel mic preamp operating on ±60 volt DC power rails (touted by SPL as "120V Technology"). While most pro audio gear...

Gear Reviews

Cubase Pro 10

BY Cubase Pro 10  |  reviewed by Andy Hong

Cubase is my primary DAW. It offers me the best performance and user experience for recording and mixing music – whether I'm running it on my Microsoft Surface hybrid tablet/laptop with a portable stereo interface, or on my purpose-built rackmount PC with 194/196 channels of I/O. Cubase is...

Gear Reviews

dBooster Mic Preamp Booster

BY dBooster Mic Preamp Booster  |  reviewed by Larry Crane

The recent history of audio has seen many companies come out with outboard phantom powered microphone amplifier devices intended to be used prior to the input stage of a proper mic preamplifier since the Cloud Microphones Cloudlifter CL-1 [Tape Op #85] was introduced in 2009. Typically, these are...

Gear Reviews

DirtMic-01 Microphone

BY DirtMic-01 Microphone  |  reviewed by Ben Bernstein

The DrAlienSmith DirtMic-01 is an awesome "outside the box" mic for creating rich harmonic distortion effects without a plug-in or guitar pedal. It's very useful for blending with clean vocals, bass, and electric guitar tracks in order to enhance a source's sound. It can also be used as a stand...

Gear Reviews

DM20 DrumMic / CMK4 Mic Kit

BY DM20 DrumMic / CMK4 Mic Kit  |  reviewed by Scott Evans

Earthworks has made well-regarded condenser microphones for over 20 years. I've been curious about their drum mics for quite a while, so I was stoked to receive a CMK4 mic kit for review. The CMK4 kit provides four DM20 mics and clips inside a Pelican style suitcase. The DM20 is the latest...

Gear Reviews

EMI Abbey Road Studios TG Microphone

BY EMI Abbey Road Studios TG Microphone  |  reviewed by Don Gunn

Leave it to Wade Goeke at Chandler Limited to come up with a new mic circuit unlike any I (and probably anyone else) have ever experienced. The full name of this new mic from the folks in Iowa is the Chandler Limited EMI Abbey Road Studios TG Microphone, and that should help give some idea of the...

Gear Reviews

Fusion Master Processor

BY Fusion Master Processor  |  reviewed by Adam Kagan

Solid State Logic has dominated the analog mixing console world for rock, pop, and R&B records for over three decades, and while DAWs have mostly taken over as production and mixing environments, SSL has been expanding into digital consoles for broadcasting and live sound. SSL also produces a line...

Gear Reviews

Gullfoss EQ Plug-In

BY Gullfoss EQ Plug-In  |  reviewed by Larry Crane

I'm old enough to be wary of devices that claim to be cure-alls for making audio sound good. Processing devices, such as Aphex's Aural Exciter and BBE's Sonic Maximizer, abounded in the '80s, but most of the time I found the supposed sonic benefits of these devices to be far outweighed by how they...

Gear Reviews

MixPre-10T & 10M Interfaces

BY MixPre-10T & 10M Interfaces  |  reviewed by Kerry Rose

To piggyback on John Baccigaluppi's End Rant musings "Give Me a Hammer" [Tape Op #102 and #115], I have been looking for a particular hammer that might serve as my aspiration to get back to what fired me up about recording in the first place: spontaneously capturing ideas as they arose, with no...

Gear Reviews

Musician's Survival Guide to a Killer Record (Book)

BY Musician's Survival Guide to a Killer Record (Book)  |  reviewed by Larry Crane

I've chatted with Eric "Mixerman" Sarafin in the past [Tape Op #34] about his hilarious The Daily Adventures of Mixerman book and reviewed some of his helpful Zen and the Art of... guides to producing, mixing, and recording. With Musician's Survival Guide to a Killer Record, Mixerman turns the...

Gear Reviews

On the Record: The Magic Behind the Music (Book)

BY On the Record: The Magic Behind the Music (Book)  |  reviewed by Larry Crane

This wonderful book tells the story of master engineer/producer Al Schmitt's career, along with many of his thoughts about the art of making records, with a smattering of interesting photos to boot. I'm not sure I need to remind the readers of the artists Al has worked with, but names like Bob...

Gear Reviews

Orbit Series O2X Dual-Arm Orbital Boom System

BY Orbit Series O2X Dual-Arm Orbital Boom System  |  reviewed by Dave Hidek

If you've ever mic'd up a drum set, you are no doubt familiar with the struggle for floor space among various cymbal and mic stands – the traffic jam around the snare drum is about as predictable as death and taxes. If you've ever used multiple microphones in an iso booth, you know that floor real...

Gear Reviews

PBR-8 500 Series Rack

BY PBR-8 500 Series Rack  |  reviewed by Don Gunn

Most 500 Series racks are just that – a hunk of rack gear that's not the sexiest piece of kit in the studio. They're mostly just a utility piece that's simply designed to interface other equipment with the really fun stuff in the 500 Series world. Let's face it, 500 Series chassis are mostly just a...

Gear Reviews

Reference 4 Plug-In

BY Reference 4 Plug-In  |  reviewed by Adam Kagan

When producing, mixing, or mastering, how frequently do you go out to your car and check your mix? Do you listen on three different headphones and a few different Bluetooth speakers? My answer to this question has changed over the years, and today the simple answer is that I don't feel the need to...

Gear Reviews

Stealth Microphone

BY Stealth Microphone  |  reviewed by Ben Bernstein

The Stealth is the latest addition to Aston's product line. I've been an admirer of their revolutionary designs since reviewing their Starlight small diaphragm condenser [Tape Op #123]. I then purchased the Halo Shadow reflection filter based solely on my experience with the Starlight. Aston...

Gear Reviews

TK-lizer 500 Equalizer

BY TK-lizer 500 Equalizer  |  reviewed by Justin Mantooth

My mix bus is a little crowded. Generally, I have three to four units doing very subtle things. I enjoy the cumulative effect of several stages of iron and discrete op-amps soaking up transients and warming things up. I seem to get away with a single bus compressor, like many may use. Often, before...

Gear Reviews

Trax Pro SP & XTRAX STEMS

BY Trax Pro SP & XTRAX STEMS  |  reviewed by John Baccigaluppi

Welcome to the brave new world of DSP! Along with folks like iZotope, Audionamix is on the cutting edge of spectral based DSP technology that can do previously unheard of things with audio. These products are both based on being able to take a stereo mix of a song and separate out the vocals from...