How do you review a DI box? Here's what we did. We set up a passive DOD 265 DI ($20), the Raven Labs ADP-1 ($349) and Avalon Designs Ultra 5 Direct ($1450) in a row, all patched into the same mic pres and coming up on the mixer at the same volume (the Avalon's tone controls were off). Then we could...

There are quite a few different recording programs available now, and they're all really pretty amazing. It would be hard to say that one is drastically better, or even different, from another. I think it comes down to personal preference and learning the details of each package enough to decide...

Last year saw the introduction of several competing 24 channel, 24 bit stand alone hard drive recorders from Tascam, iZ Technology (Radar), Alesis and Mackie. As all of these units sound good and perform a similar range of functions, it's difficult to choose between them. The first question you...

Quicker than inserting earplugs (and waiting for them to expand). Bright red and big - they're hard to lose. Put them on like headphones and walk into any tracking session without fear of blowing your ears. Great when you're setting up mics, and the band is warming up. Peltor even makes a belt clip...

I've been a fan of the Evil Twin for several years. This is a great, warm tube direct box. You might wonder about the questionable extravagance of an $850 direct box. Well if you think of it as merely a DI you might be right, but you'd also be limiting your purview. You can use the Evil Twin to...

FATSO is an acronym for Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer. When digital multitracking first became affordable, it took only one session using 16 tracks of ADAT to convince me that I didn't want a digital multitrack in my own studio. Last year, I found myself returning to the world of digital...

Russian microphone manufacturer Oktava has been around since the 1950s. The MK 219 (a.k.a. MC 219) has been one of their most known and respected models for quite some time now, and is considered a staple in many studios, especially in England. The MK 219 is a solid state large-diaphragm condenser...

I gotta say I LOVE Bob Moog's MF102. I got one when they were first released and I have used it on something on every project since. I've had the best luck using it as a mix effect on shakers, hi-hat, piano and on the repeats of an echo. Set at the lower frequencies, it does an amazing tremolo...

We recently installed a MOTU/Macintosh hard-drive recording system into our studio. While some of the plug-ins sound pretty good, the reverbs generally leave something to be desired. Or, if they sound good, like Unversal Audio's RealVerb, they use a lot of the computer's CPU and processing power....

I've had this in my studio for a few months now but didn't have much chance to use it until recently. To be honest, one of the reasons I didn't use it much is because I have several other mic pres/compressors that cost quite a bit more than this one and that sound really great. But once I finally...

Many of us don't have the means to afford a rack full of processors to do all the things we need to do as practitioners of our field. So instead, we end up making compromises, oftentimes buying gear that is capable of performing more than one task, but not necessarily with the fidelity or control...

In my living room studio, I mix on a Sony DMX-R100 digital console feeding my 24-bit Alesis Masterlink via a digital link. Therefore, I don't have much of a need for an analog mixdown processor. Occasionally, I have clients that want to mix to analog tape to "warm up" the sound. That's when I fire...

Twenty-four bit recording is here, and now it nearly approaches the beauty of analog! I recently had the pleasure of test-driving the newly improved Radar 24 System by iZ Technology. The basic system (24-track, 24- bit hard disc recorder) lists at $4,995, and features a Celeron 667 with 132 Megs of...

Instead of paying big bucks for prepackaged air check out the ReAir refillable air sprayer. With about ten strokes of a standard bicycle pump, you've got a canister full of compressed air to blow crap out of crevices, patchbays, tape head assemblies, disk drives, etc. When it runs out, just re-pump...

All right, this thing is really cool. Sadly, it's also very expensive and is an extreme example of a "one trick pony." But what a trick, man! The Seek Wah sends your signal through a series of envelope filters. There are eight tiny pots so you can control the sensitivity of each filter. There's a...

In 1993 Lexicon came out with a couple of effects processors, the JamMan and the Vortex, that seemed to be here one moment and gone the next. The former is an incredible looping delay, possibly one of the first of its kind, and the latter was a stereo "audio morphing" effects processor. I first...