Tape Op Magazine - Issue #60 - issue-60

Sonicraft

Interviews

Sonicraft

By David Weiss and Virginia Kamenitzer

If the good men and women of NASA who put the Hubble Telescope together were ever to visit Sonicraft in Freehold, New Jersey, they just may come away ashamed of the shoddy work they'd done. That's because there resides the Sonicraft A2DX (analog-to-digital transfer) lab, built to...

Mike Castoro

Interviews

Mike Castoro: Behind the Gear with Wunder Audio

By Mike Jasper, Max Cooper

Mike Castoro, the 43-year-old owner and creator of Wunder Audio, lives quietly with his wife and two kids in the northern hills of Austin, Texas. Originally from upstate New York, he spent his junior high and high school years in Florida, then moved to Austin during the '80s to attend the...

Jace Lasek / Dave Smith

Interviews

Jace Lasek / Dave Smith

By Martin Horn

My first encounter with the sprawling collection of keyboards, pianos, British-made guitar amplifiers and homemade walls that is Breakglass Studios happened when I had the opportunity to sit in on a session for the band Shoot the Moon. I opened the door at the end of the hall in an otherwise...

Bob Power

Interviews

Bob Power: Seminal NYC Hip-Hop engineer

By Allen Farmelo, Ronald Porty

Bob Power is one of those names you might know not from reading liner notes, but instead...

Joe Boyd

Interviews

Joe Boyd: Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., more...

By Larry Crane

When Joe Boyd's book White Bicycles came out last year, I was excited. Not only could...

COLUMNS

GEAR REVIEWS

Gear Reviews

B:Assmaster distortion pedal

BY B:Assmaster distortion pedal | reviewed by Pete Weiss

Distortion aficionados, take note-Malekko has served up the indie-stompbox scene with a doozie. The B:Assmaster is a contemporary tribute to the exquisitely rare Maestro Bass Brassmaster, a '70s-era pedal that was intended to impart trumpet-like tones onto electric guitar or bass. In truth, the...

Gear Reviews

CL2 Pencil Condenser Mic

BY CL2 Pencil Condenser Mic | reviewed by Dana Gumbiner

Here's a couple of new and very affordable mics from Samson. First up, the CL2s are sold as a matched pair of small-diaphragm pencil-style condensers with high-pass filters and 10 dB pads. The mics come very handsomely packaged in a tough little aluminum case that holds the two mics, plus just...

Gear Reviews

Ellipse 8 iDP studio monitor TS212 iDP subwoofer

BY Ellipse 8 iDP studio monitor TS212 iDP subwoofer | reviewed by Andy Hong

I love the Bag End M-6 Time-Align monitors (Tape Op #50) that I have in my living room for their accurate imaging; these were my first long-term experience with coaxial drivers featuring a tweeter mounted within the center of the woofer. So I was excited to demo Tannoy's top-of-the-line Ellipse...

Gear Reviews

KikBrik

BY KikBrik | reviewed by Tony SanFilippo

Bass drums are a strange thing. They are big and can be unruly, or worse yet, tiny-sounding if packed with a bunch of crap. They have a lot of interior space that is reflective and rounded. And they play a really important part of most music made involving a drum set. Enter the KikBrik, a truly...

Gear Reviews

M 160 & M 130 ribbon mics

BY M 160 & M 130 ribbon mics | reviewed by Scott Craggs

Does the Beyer M 160 even need a review? Surely everyone knows by now that this is the mic Andy Johns used to record John Bonham's drums on "When The Levee Breaks". Does anything else need be said? I rather doubt, it but I will prattle on for a bit anyway. It's a ribbon mic, but unlike most...

Gear Reviews

Monitor ST

BY Monitor ST | reviewed by Larry Crane

Probably more than ever, recording studios have seen a need for monitoring different inputs and routing these signals to a variety of speakers. In my studio, we monitor the DAW, console LR, console control room out, CD, iPod, and computer outputs. We listen through three different speaker/amp...

Gear Reviews

NRV10 mixer/interface

BY NRV10 mixer/interface | reviewed by Andy Hong

When I first saw the NRV10 at the NAMM show in January, I said out loud, "Duh! Why didn't anyone else think of doing this?" The sucker is an analog mixer and multichannel audio interface in one. It makes a ton of sense! Well, I finally got one, and you know what, the pocket-protector geeks at...

Gear Reviews

R-1 ribbon mic

BY R-1 ribbon mic | reviewed by Andy Hong

My guess is that a lot of people considering the purchase of the SE R-1 will wonder how it compares to the Royer R-121. Both feature a rectangular ribbon that's offset-mounted within the magnet structure (a Royer innovation) to allow greater ribbon excursion, which equates to higher SPL capability...

Gear Reviews

Reveal 6D active nearfields

BY Reveal 6D active nearfields | reviewed by Josh Peck

When Andy first asked me to take a listen to the new Tannoy Reveal 6D studio monitors, I was eager to hear what improvements had been made from its predecessor the Reveal Active, a speaker that I wasn't too impressed with but with which I was already familiar. After working with the Tannoy Reveal...

Gear Reviews

RM-5C ribbon mic

BY RM-5C ribbon mic | reviewed by Barry Hufker

Students enrolled in the Audio Production program at Webster University, St. Louis and I had the great experience of evaluating the new Telefunken USA ribbon microphone, the RM-5C. The students participated as engineers, listeners and musicians. The setup was quick and not at all scientific, but...

Gear Reviews

SLD Total 44.1 ReFill

BY SLD Total 44.1 ReFill | reviewed by Jeff Elbel

Michael Moushon and Glenn Forsythe are Boston-based musicians with lengthy studio tenures and expertise in development of music production tools. The pair undertook a major endeavor with Sounds Like Drums, which was initially available as a ReFill for Propellerhead Reason. The audio content is now...

Gear Reviews

Solo6 Be active monitors

BY Solo6 Be active monitors | reviewed by Allen Farmelo

The French company Focal has dominated the audiophile speaker market since its inception in the 1970s. Today, Focal helps to form what I consider to be a vanguard of studio monitor designers who are quickly catching up with the ever-increasing resolution, bandwidth, and dynamic range of modern...

Gear Reviews

SP1 large-diaphragm condenser mic

BY SP1 large-diaphragm condenser mic | reviewed by Terry Setter

You knew it. You knew that with all the microphones on the market, there had to be at least one cheapo Chinese mic that stands head and shoulders above the rest. You were right! Interestingly, this mic is so overlooked that it is slated to be discontinued, although you can still find them for sale....

Gear Reviews

TM-1 & TM-2 tube mics

BY TM-1 & TM-2 tube mics | reviewed by Mark Warren

There are legends in microphone technology, and there are legends in microphone technology. Everyone has surely heard about the legendary U 47 microphone, but have you heard about the U 47 Church microphone? The legend goes something like this. On a smoky movie set on an MGM soundstage sometime in...

Gear Reviews

TS-1 small-diaphragm condenser mic

BY TS-1 small-diaphragm condenser mic | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi

The sonic combination of a small-capsule microphone diaphragm with a tube amplifier can be a thoroughly pleasing one for many applications. The high-frequency definition and quick transient-response of the small diaphragm coupled with the moderating and sweetening response of a well-designed tube...

Gear Reviews

VMX tube mic

BY VMX tube mic | reviewed by Joel Hamilton

I have always been curious about the Brauner microphones. I have seen the name for a while now, and the fact that Klaus Heyne got involved with this company, when any company would probably be glad to collaborate with such a man on a microphone, really piqued my interest. Brauner seems to make...

Gear Reviews

VR88 Velocity Ribbon Mic

BY VR88 Velocity Ribbon Mic | reviewed by Dana Gumbiner

Here's a couple of new and very affordable mics from Samson. First up, the CL2s are sold as a matched pair of small-diaphragm pencil-style condensers with high-pass filters and 10 dB pads. The mics come very handsomely packaged in a tough little aluminum case that holds the two mics, plus just...