Tape Op Magazine - Issue #70

Interviews

Interviews

Interviews

Interviews

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

JULY 10, 2025 INTERVIEWS

TJ Doherty : Wilco, Sonic Youth, Stephen Malkmus and more

BY ZORAN ORLIC, ALEX MCKENZIE

Over the last few years, I've seen TJ's name show up repeatedly on some of my favorite artist's albums: Wilco, Sonic Youth, Beth Orton, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Loose Fur, The Rapture, White Magic, Steely Dan, Joanna Newsom, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Hold Steady and The Killers (with Lou Reed) — they've all been graced with TJ's fine ears and (often) old-school techniques. But who the hell is this guy? I kept getting the same response, "I don't know much about him, but I hear he's been real sick." When I was finally able to track him down at NYC's legendary Sear Sound [Walter Sear, Tape Op #41], I found an instantly likable guy who was indeed on the mend after a nasty illness. We spent the day talking about his learning the ropes in one of the world's most respected studios, keeping healthy in what can be a chaotic industry and how a sense of humor and a simple signal chain are really all a good engineer needs...

JULY 10, 2025 INTERVIEWS

Sufjan Stevens : So wrong but so right....

BY RAFTER ROBERTS, KITTY JOE SAINTS-MARIE, JULIE BENZINGER

Sufjan Stevens is awesome and punk. You might not know it by listening to his albums — they're feats of orchestration, arrangement and craft that have the power to sweep you right the eff up in a majestic way, but he's a total recording rebel, Tape Op style. Both of his "Fifty States Project" albums, Michigan and Illinois, sound incredible — and both were made using ghetto-style techniques that most (if not all) recordists would be crippled by, — doing all your mixing on headphones, tracking an entire record with Shure SM57s and an AKG C 1000, recording your album at 32 kHz, tracking on a cheap digital 8-track and dumping it into Pro Tools two tracks at a time thru the 1/8" jack and lining them up by sight. Yow! Talking with Sufjan about his recording process really reinforced a few key things in my head — the core reasons why I believe in Tape Op magazine and what it stands for (to me, at least) — that there is no right way to record, that the most important thing are the ideas and songs and performances, that you can work with whatever you have and make something incredible, that gear is truly secondary, maybe tertiary. Is it raw material/technique/ equipment, in that order? So yeah, Sufjan's records sound so good to my ears — and he was mic'ing the kick with a freakin' C 1000 and recording it at 32 kHz. WTF?

GEAR REVIEWS

Gear Reviews

710 Twin-Finity mic preamp & DI

by 710 Twin-Finity mic preamp & DI | reviewed by Craig Schumacher

So, what is this Twin-Finity bit all about? It's the "two, two, two mints in one" preamp-tube and solid state! This is the perfect preamp for those who want it all, but can't make up their minds. Using a solid-state transimpedance input, the 710 combines two separate gain stages driven...

Gear Reviews

AM-20 500-series EQ

by AM-20 500-series EQ | reviewed by John Baccigaluppi

I have been looking for a fully-sweepable EQ for two channels of our API 1608 console that sounds as good as the classic stepped API 550 EQs. I prefer the sound of stepped EQs in general, but sometimes you just need to get in between the selectable frequencies no matter how many there are-on drums...

Gear Reviews

AxePort Pro USB instrument DI

by AxePort Pro USB instrument DI | reviewed by Andy Hong

This handy item is a USB bus-powered instrument DI with integral headphone monitoring that's about three-quarters the size of an SM57. On one end of the anodized-aluminum housing is a 1/4" jack that's surrounded by an LED-lit plastic endcap; on the other end you'll find a mini-USB plug and a 3.5 mm...

Gear Reviews

Ear Wax Removal Syringe

by Ear Wax Removal Syringe | reviewed by Joseph Lemmer

This is the only ear wax removal method I have tried that is both safe and effective. Ear wax is my least favorite bodily secretion, especially because it affects hearing. I get a lot of it. (No, I don't listen too loud; that's a myth.) It is, however, more dangerous to remove than people realize....

Gear Reviews

MA-201 fet large-diaphragm condenser mic

by MA-201 fet large-diaphragm condenser mic | reviewed by Craig Schumacher

Over the past few years, Mojave Audio has established itself as a manufacturer of quality, affordable microphones with their MA-200 (Tape Op #55) and MA-100 (#62) tube mics. The MA-201 fet is the third microphone in their line. With the same build-quality and form-factor as the 200, the MA-201 fet...

Gear Reviews

M-Tron Pro keyboard plug-in

by M-Tron Pro keyboard plug-in | reviewed by Will Severin

Over the holiday season, I added a handful of new software instruments to my audio arsenal, including M-Tron Pro (an update to GForce's well-known M-Tron plug-in). M-Tron Pro includes both standalone and host-based versions of VST, AU, and RTAS plug-ins for Mac OS X and Windows. This plug-in...

Gear Reviews

Obsidian stereo compressor

by Obsidian stereo compressor | reviewed by Garrett Haines

Several months ago, I noticed the Dramastic Audio Obsidian compressor on the Mercenary Audio website. The units had not shipped, so I had little to go on. After a while, I started to think it was just an SSL bus compressor knockoff with a blue VU meter. Then I heard that it was a feed-forward...

Gear Reviews

Omnisphere virtual instrument

by Omnisphere virtual instrument | reviewed by Brandon Miller

I've never been one to jump to the last page in a book, and I generally don't like to hear what happened at the end of a movie before I've seen it, but in some cases (like an opera or a good Broadway show) knowing the gist of things can help you follow along better from start to finish. In this...

Gear Reviews

SCM16A active monitor

by SCM16A active monitor | reviewed by Kirt Shearer

Control room monitors are a tricky thing. They need to really perform to allow us to hear the nuances in the mixes we obsess over. At the same time, they need to help us deliver a mix that will translate to a $50 boombox, a car stereo, and a full-blown home stereo. To make things more difficult, we...

Gear Reviews

sQUAD equalizer bundle

by sQUAD equalizer bundle | reviewed by Garrett Haines

With so many EQ plug-ins on the market, the question remains, what's different about PSP's brand-new bundle of four high-quality equalizers? Well, the models are inspired by not only the sound of analog classics, but also the functionality-namely musicality and simplicity. That translates into...

Gear Reviews

Stickers para Pro Tools

by Stickers para Pro Tools | reviewed by Scott McChane

On the Spanish isle of Majorca, in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, there lies a luxurious recording studio and production facility named Calma Estudis, who recently made available for free download a set of QWERTY shortcut stickers they designed for Pro Tools....

Gear Reviews

SubDude, SubDude(HD), GRAMMA, and Great GRAMMA isolation platforms

by SubDude, SubDude(HD), GRAMMA, and Great GRAMMA isolation platforms | reviewed by Andy Hong

I've owned a GRAMMA isolation platform (Tape Op #34) for six years now. It's a 23" x 15" MDF deck covered in Ozite fabric (the stuff you find lining car trunks), sitting on two rails of Auralex PlatFoam high-density isolation foam (Tape Op #36). A piece of Auralex Studiofoam is attached to the...

Gear Reviews

T-RackS 3 Deluxe plug-in suite

by T-RackS 3 Deluxe plug-in suite | reviewed by Scott McChane

My first lesson in audio mastering consisted of reading the documentation included with an early standalone version of T-RackS 24 that I purchased in 1999. The manual read like a "mastering for dummies" quick-start guide-helpful, informative, and most of all, very encouraging for the uninitiated....

Gear Reviews

Ultimate MXL 603 Mod MXL 603 Premium Electronics Mod Hidden '84 Mod & Capsule Upgrade

by Ultimate MXL 603 Mod MXL 603 Premium Electronics Mod Hidden '84 Mod & Capsule Upgrade | reviewed by Mike Jasper

Lately, I've been working on a project tentatively called The Greatest Small-Diaphragm Mic Shootout of All Time, so I've been testing a veritable truckload of SD mics-Neumann, Gefell, Schoeps, RØDE, Studio Projects, MXL, and everything in between. Naturally, I wanted to get an MK-012 (Tape Op #25)...