Interviews
By Lori Stoll, Larry Crane
Chris Hillman has spent the last 60 years making more music and conquering more sonic territory than most. Being a founding member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers would be enough for most, but add in The Desert Rose Band, Stephen Stills' Manassas, The Souther–Hillman–Furay Band, and...
Interviews
Jason Carmer's name kept coming up, so when our ad rep, Marsha Vdovin, told me he was sheltering in place in nearby Sonoma Coun...
Interviews
As a seasoned professional producer, mixer, and engineer, Toronto-based Richard Chycki has...
Interviews
Interviews
Around five years ago I went to see Low [Tape Op #31] play in Portland, and their opening act was a guy with a guitar who had a unique singing style. At first, I sort of tuned him out, but within minutes both myself and a friend of mine turned to each other and said, "This is the real thing." We weren't the only ones to notice – the entire audience stood captivated by his performance. It's hard to explain what makes one artist instantly compelling over another. I mean, how many people have we seen get onstage with an acoustic guitar? But when someone has crafted songs as compelling as Andy Shauf's, it is a cut above – the whole club shuts the fuck up and listens. Andy's new album is The Neon Skyline. He played it all, recorded it, and he did one hell of a fine job.
Anne Gauthier is a producer, engineer, and drummer who cut her teeth in the Montreal punk scene, touring with bands like TR/ST and The Frenetics. In 2015 she relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, and recently took over as head engineer for La La Land Studios when its founder, Kevin Ratterman [Tape Op #89] moved to Los Angeles. She's worked with Murder By Death, Bonnie Prince Billy, Rachel Grimes, Ray Lamontagne, Jim James, and more. Gauthier's got talent, vibe, an incredible work ethic, and Glyn Johns [#109] on speed-dial.
I always thought ATC meant "always translates correctly," but it's really the Acoustic Transducer Company. I've known Brad Lunde of TransAudio Group for decades, and have used many of the products he carries (Daking, Drawmer, A Designs, Mojave) for years. When I was on my perpetual quest for "perfect" monitors, Brad turned me on to the ATC SCM25A, a nearfield powered monitor with outstanding frequency response and balance for its size. Ben Lilly has been the Technical Sales Manager for years, spending a lot of time in the U.S. getting people set up with ATC rooms. I've heard multiple ATC systems; I enjoy the clarity and imaging, so I had a lot of questions for Ben and Brad.
Chris Cohen may be as well-known at this point for his distinctively self-produced solo records as for playing in bands like Deerhoof [Tape Op #55], Cryptacize, and The Curtains, and for recent production work for artists like Weyes Blood. He is a singer, songwriter, engineer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, and inhabits all of those roles on his 2019 album, Chris Cohen.
Russian-made mics have been a healthy part of my recording life since the mid-'90s. Back in the days when the local six-string retail chain had an excess of Oktava mics and managers were armed with discounts, you could buy a pile of these for less than $500. These Russian mics became some of the...
This thing is beautifully bat-shit crazy. The 0-CTRL is a patchable step sequencer and touch-sensitive tabletop control surface designed tobe used primarily with Eurorack-standard modular gear (or anything that can accept CV [control voltage]). Unlike quite a few othermoderncontrollers out there,...
Continuing with their excellent 3 FX You'll Actually Use series of plug-ins, Arturia has released the next installment, 3 Modulation FX You'll Actually Use, and it's a winner in my book. Let's face it, we all have our favorites for a lot of effects and we're not likely to change our minds on them...
First, some semantics. When we audio engineer types use language like warm, or full, or vintage, etc. – generally, we're referencing our penchant for distortion. Our ears have been conditioned by years of analog recording and delivery models to respond to subtle (or sometimes drastic) levels of...
Universal Audio has a reasonably broad audio interface offering within the Apollo range, including the Apollo Twin X and Apollo x4 series [Tape Op #136], which have been marketed as the "desktop" alternatives (or supplements) to your UA ecosystem. In 2018, the introduction of the UA Arrow added a...
Manufacturers are still pumping out recording interfaces during this global pandemic, but self-imposed isolation has many of us contemplating and planning how we might best move forward with audio production. Still, music-making continues. Here's the good news: Healthy competition among...
Steinberg revealed what they label as a drum re-synthesizer in Backbone. In a market saturated with sample packs, this plug-in can help tailor samples into unique drum sounds, create risers, impacts, and other sound design effects. It is essentially a sampler, but more than a traditional sampler,...
Radial Engineering, of Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada, has built its business by designing clever solutions for stage and studio, including an extensive line of direct boxes. The BT-Pro V2 is their second-generation box that receives a Bluetooth wireless signal from a phone, tablet, or laptop (or any...
Through my (now Virtual) Recording Workshops, I've spent a lot of time advising home recordists on how to track and mix for better results. One of the equipment choices I urge is to have an actual, physical compressor to track into. At the mixing stage, the difference (for me) between vocals...
Every electrical device has a power consumption signature. If your service is a split-phase 120/240 V residential panel up to 200 A (and many studios are), a Sense is compatible. About the size of a paperback book, Sense includes two sensors that clamp around the main lines (no splicing required)...
If you mix records for a living and are spending too much time digging through texts, Facebook Messenger posts, and bottomless email threads from various band members looking for mix notes, then Filepass is a must-have for you! An online platform that streamlines the sharing of mixes and client...
In the world of both hardware and software synthesizers, there is a lot of focus on classic instruments like the Minimoog and their time-tested analog subtractive synthesis method. That's all fine and good, and I love my vintage Moog synth, but wasn't the whole idea of synthesis meant to be...
Maybe I've been hiding under a rock, but I recently found out there are replacement wheels for rolling studio (or office) chairs. No more "clack-clack-clack" across the floor, or the need to keep a rug under my chair to protect the surface. My chairs now glide smoothly across my wood and laminate...
A few years ago I reviewed Arturia’s Beatstep Pro [Tape Op #111] and was really impressed by the functionality of that unit. Their new MIDI/CV sequencer/controller KeyStep Pro takes things up several levels. BeatStep Pro was essentially Arturia's take on older voltage-controlled step sequencers on...
This Mini FET condenser mic from MXL is the latest addition to their REVELATION line, as the more affordable, FET-based little brother to their REVELATION II [Tape Op #138]. In this case, more affordable does not indicate less useful. The Mini FET offers a 32 mm, gold-sputtered cardioid capsule...
At the 2019 AES show, Solid State Logic introduced their super smart Origin, an all analog console for today’s (mostly) digital workflow. The Origin has a ton of features cleverly designed for working with a DAW, but this console would also be right at home in a tape-based studio. Recently, at the...
BABY Audio's new Parallel Aggressor combines elements of some of their other plug-ins to add punch or weight to a track or mix. But this isn't simply a straight rehash. According to the company, the algorithms are tweaked specifically for use in this new plug-in. Three main sliders control the mix...
In Tape Op #104 we chatted with the fabulous Oliver Ackermann from the band A Place to Bury Strangers and the head of Death By Audio. His Death By Audio still makes some of the best stompboxes out there, and with ROOMS I think they created one just to please me. Accurately described as "a stereo,...
Kush has been consistently developing plug-ins that have major vibe with analog character for years now. Even their partner company, California's Sly-Fi Digital, has made some of the go-to plug-ins that I use on almost every mix – the Sat(uration) knob on their Axis EQ is "chef's kiss." But I'm...
Occasionally, a piece of gear comes along that impresses me enough to reach out to Tape Op and make an effort to write a review. The Atomic SixTens have done just that. Founded in 2014 by Norman Druce and F. Reid Shippen [Tape Op #125], Atomic Instrument may be best known for their outstanding...
Wavesfactory's Spectre is a unique take on a saturation plug-in, coupling powerful distortion profiles with the familiarity of a parametric EQ. The thought is that you can add distortion or saturation to just the frequencies you want, in just the way that you want, in just the amount that you want,...
I reviewed the original Symphony system previously [Tape Op #87], and we recently covered the new Symphony I/O Mk II [#118, #128] in different configurations, so I'm not going to dive deep into an overview of its main features (that we've already covered) or the excellent converters themselves, but...
Veteran engineers occasionally wax nostalgic about mixing as a "community" act. Until the DAW's rise to prominence, it wasn't unusual to have half a dozen people engaged in a game of Twister above a big console, each carrying out a series of prescribed moves as tape rolled. But while these...
The Zen Tour Synergy Core system is an 18 x 24 (eight analog in and 14 analog out), quad DSP-enabled Thunderbolt 3/USB 2.0 recording interface with a wealth of I/O and a spec sheet that rivals or surpasses other comparable desktop boxes in the current market. Available for both Mac and Windows...