Interviews
By Brantley Gutierrez, Meredith Hobbs Coons
About ten years ago, New Jersey-born producer and songwriter Jennifer Decilveo pivoted from a degree and career in finance to begin a life in the Los Angeles music scene. Since then, she has collaborated with a multitude of artists, including: Amos Lee, Anne-Marie, Beth Ditto, Bat for Lashes, Ben Platt,...
Interviews
With a list of credits and Grammy awards with artists such as D'Angelo, The Roots, Kamasi Washington, Common, Angél...
Interviews
A fascinating person, Blake Morgan is a songwriter, producer, engineer, studio owner, recording artist, music rights activist, and ...
Interviews
Releasing his first album in 1982, Steve Roach has continued to make hundreds of records...
Interviews
Known as the Sonic Sorceress, composer and synthesist Lisa Bella Donna has a talent for...
Interviews
There is an old saying: "Only back up what you can't afford to lose." As...
One of my favorite records of 2024 to date is Phosphorescent's Revelator. It's a beautifully recorded album, featuring Matthew Houck's timeless songwriting and lyrics plus gorgeous arrangements. I was hooked the first time I heard the title track. I recently picked up a copy of the vinyl LP, and as I was reading the credits I noticed that the album was mixed by Tape Op contributor Dave Cerminara, so I thought I'd drop him a line and find out more about the mixing sessions. -JB
If you’re just making a few edits on open reel tapes, or attaching a leader to tops and tails, it won’t kill you to cut off a piece of leader tape from a spool. But there are times where I’m doing a lot of edits, such as repairing failed splices on post-baked stock or setting up several reels for a...
apTrigga has been around since 2004 (and it was good back then!). In 2015, apulSoft released a full rewrite of their sample trigger plug-in that included AAX support, which I grabbed immediately and have used regularly since. I realized this plug-in has never been reviewed here, and I wanted to...
As an audio professional, I'm often asked by friends who record podcasts at home for microphone recommendations. So, I was excited when I got the opportunity to review Audio-Technica's new AT2040 hypercardioid dynamic podcast microphone, as it's designed to fit the needs of content creators on a...
Proclaimed as "an adaptive tone shaper," Bloom is a new plug-in by oeksound, known for the handy tone-fixers Soothe2 [Tape Op #138] and Spiff [#137]. I constantly use Soothe2 to fix tracks that have issues, and it gets a lot of use on my remote mixing jobs, so I was curious what Bloom would be. At...
I’ve loved listening to music in headphones since I was a child, but I’ve come a long way from those flimsy freebies that came with my yellow Sony Walkman. As an adult, I’ve spent weeks at a time earning a living in audio while primarily clocking my hours in cans, and I've learned the hard way that...
We've all grown far too accustomed to the head puckering, bass muffled, ear-smushing, insulated fake spaciness of crappy small speakers strapped to our skulls masquerading as headphones. I've been escaping into under-engineered closed-back headphones since I bought my first copy of Pink Floyd's The...
With mottos like, "You're doing nothing wrong" and, "Nothing is wrong with your mix," Head Voice arrived last fall as a mission statement and an "audio recording zine focused on creativity." Founded by musicians Donovan Quinn, Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), and James Toth (James & The...
Those of us who have tried mixing music in Dolby Atmos understand the challenges of learning a new skill. Some of those challenges lie in creative dilemmas, such as “What should go in the overhead speakers?” Yet, the most exasperating struggle lies in predicting the audience’s experience when...
Some 24 years ago, my pal Craig Alvin [Tape Op #137] found out that one of Tchad Blake's [#133, #16] ubiquitous mix distortion devices was the Shure Level-Loc. Level-Locs were Shure's attempt at a dummy-proof limiter for podium speakers, even featuring a Distance Selector switch for how far the...
The need for flexibility is paramount in many recording situations, and affordably meeting that need is a challenge. Fortunately, Roswell Audio’s Mini K67x cardioid large diaphragm condenser mic nicely balances colorful harmonic saturation (from a transformer-coupled circuit) and sparkling clarity,...
The Soundcraft Notepad-8FX is an entry-level mixer that seamlessly connects as a USB 2.0 interface to your laptop, tablet or phone. It has two mic/line XLR combo input jacks (one of which has a selectable Hi-Z input option for DI sources like electric guitar or bass) with +48V phantom power, four...
Pulsar Modular’s P455 MDN Sidecar plug-in was designed in conjunction with engineer Marc Daniel Nelson. Although there’s definitely some API style inspiration involved, they’ve taken a much broader and, in my opinion, much more useful approach to creating a tool that will probably replace entire...
Congrats! You have a solid collection of mics and mic stands, a battery of plug-ins, a few pieces of outboard gear for that extra special sauce, a great pair of monitors and stands, and even some stylish acoustic treatments along with a nice large rug for the live room. You are now a studio owner....
Folks, please label your patchbays: Not with a paper key that sits on top of the bays, not with a PDF on your computer, but with labels on the patchbays. For years, I made labels using a carefully crafted Excel spreadsheet. It worked okay, but when I found PatchCAD 3 I never looked back. PatchCAD 3...
Pearl Microphone Laboratory is one of the longest-running and oldest microphone manufacturers in the world. Their former production manager, Bernt Malmqvist, has been building quality microphones since 1954. It goes without saying that his expertise and experience is unparalleled. Recently, Pearl...
With the subtitle "A Practical Guide to Becoming and Succeeding as an Audio Engineer and Producer," the goal of this book should be obvious. But where many books of this ilk usually fail, this book excels. Why is that? Because Neil Kesterson (owner of Dynamix Productions, Inc. in Lexington,...
I've had the opportunity not only to sing and play into many sought-after microphones, but I've also been able to use even more mics on artists and instrumentalists as a producer and engineer. I recall the first time I ever performed into a vintage Telefunken ELA M 251E. I was young and didn't...
The name of this magazine is Tape Op, and we know that lots of people still love working on analog tape machines. We also know that there are a lot of people who have never worked with tape machines yet love the idea of working with tape. However, I want to talk about the elephant in the room; the...
The Louder Than Liftoff [Tape Op #122] Silver Bullet mk2 plug-in is my new favorite in the box processor by a wide margin – and that’s kind of hilarious, considering that my trusty hardware Silver Bullet mk1 is the analog centerpiece of my personal studio. The thing is, the mk2 plug-in has new...
It’s clear that TASCAM made no compromises when designing the Sonicview 24XP digital recording and mixing console. While its virtually endless features should make it attractive to seasoned engineers, the Sonicview is exceedingly simple to set up and use for those with less experience. Its unique...
When I was managing Jackpot! Recording Studio, I was fascinated by Tape Op editor and studio owner Larry Crane’s approach to gear-buying. The studio is mostly made up of new equipment with a few vintage items. This is savvy, as new gear doesn’t come with inflated price tags or unexpected (and even...
I’m always reluctant to review speakers. It’s hard to do client work on unfamiliar monitors. My room was tuned for my current nearfields over ten years ago, and since then I haven’t moved them an inch – mixing is hard enough already. But when asked about reviewing Focal’s new flagship studio...
At the last few pre-pandemic AES conferences I attended, my brief conversations with David Bock centered around his opinions about the classic microphones that were built incorrectly. Most of his comments went over my head, but what I took away was an impression of his passion, talent, and ambition...
For most live performers, the days of wedge floor monitors are a thing of the past. IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) have become the new standard for stage monitoring, and for good reason. A monitor engineer can take preferred mixes from venue to venue and recall monitoring preferences with the push of a...
I’m an EQ guy and always have been. When I began working in studios, the debate was whether or not to EQ to tape or wait to EQ when mixing. Fuck that; get the sound the way you want it when hitting the tape! Nowadays, the debate is about whether hardware EQs sound better than plug-in EQs. If you’ve...