Interviews
By John Baccigaluppi
I've always been a big fan of Gillian Welch's albums. She and her musical partner, Dave Rawlings, made two records (Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings) for Almo Sounds with producer T Bone Burnett [Tape Op #67] that I enjoyed. But it was the next album, the Dave Rawlings-produced Time (The...
Interviews
It's not an exaggeration to say that most non-Icelandic people come to know of this tiny island country through the records Val...
Interviews
Before sitting down to talk with Chris Zane at Gigantic Studios in Chinatown, New York City, he gave me a quick tour of the place. ...
Interviews
I first met Retro Instruments' Phil Moore when he emailed me out of the blue about...
Interviews
When we heard Joel Hamilton, long time Tape Op contributor and partner in Brooklyn's...
Interviews
A while back I met this guy in New York, and he tells me, "Hey, I just produced an...
As a mastering engineer, Steve Hoffman has worked on many classic recordings, but very few of them would be considered standard CD or LP releases. After working at MCA on reissue CDs from Buddy Holly and The Who (among others), he entered the audiophile world. He is currently a free agent, working on SACDs for Audio Fidelity and LPs for S&P Records. He made his name as the mastering engineer for DCC Compact Classics. Throughout the '90s, DCC specialized in producing 24-karat gold compact discs. They released gold disc versions of albums by The Doors, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys, Miles Davis and many others. Even non-audiophiles feel that these discs are the definitive versions. Indeed, the first time I heard his work on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, I felt as though I was hearing what Dylan heard in the control room during playback. Steve's trademark is what he refers to as the "breath of life" — recordings that are dynamic and natural sounding. You don't have to have a $50,000 system to hear the difference.
If you spend some time around Trey Spruance, it's not uncommon to hear him expounding on Islamic theologians, geopolitics or holes in the Big Bang Theory. Yet Trey is better known not for his encyclopedic abilities, but for his former band Mr. Bungle and current project Secret Chiefs 3. Trey's most under-appreciated talent, however, is his masterful engineering ability. He started recording by tracking his high school band, Mr. Bungle, on a Tascam Porta One 4-track cassette recorder. When they were signed to Warner Bros. Records, Trey seized the opportunity to learn as much he could. He befriended engineer Billy Anderson [Tape Op #33], who taught him the ins and outs of studio recording. By Mr. Bungle's third record, they were linking three 24-track, 2-inch tape machines and two ADAT machines together to accommodate their ever-expanding orchestrations. At the same time, Trey had been tracking his other project, Secret Chiefs 3, in Bungle's rehearsal space. While Secret Chiefs 3 share Mr. Bungle's extensive orchestration and track density, they didn't have the same extensive recording budgets. This forced Trey to develop creative solutions to realize his musical visions in his home studio. Many records later, he has cultivated a set of surprisingly original techniques for getting the most out of home-recording and professional studios.
With his early years in Roxy Music, arty solo albums in the '70s, the creation and conceptualization of "ambient" music, groundbreaking collaborations with David Bowie and as the producer of albums for Devo, Talking Heads, U2, James and Coldplay, Brian Eno should need no introduction to the readers of this magazine. Most likely no one else has discussed and analyzed the art of capturing music as much as Eno. He's obviously gifted with a constantly active mind. It has long been a dream of mine to meet this man, as well as ask him questions about music and the art of recording. One recent sunny day in London found John and I walking down a dead end street leading to Eno's workshop near the famed Portobello Road. We waited patiently while paintbrushes were cleaned, cats discussed and tea made; then we sat down for an hour and talked.
These days, fans of the much-loved (and much-misunderstood) Spectra Sonics 610 compressor/limiter (dubbed “Complimiter” by the company) have much to be happy about. In addition to the original model being readily available again (it was introduced in 1969, eventually becoming somewhat obscure, and...
Cloud Microphones has intrigued me since I first heard about its JRS-34 and JRS-34-P ribbon mics (Tape Op #78), which utilize the same ribbons as those in the classic RCA 44-series mics. When asked about reviewing the Cloudlifter CL-1 Mic Activator, I was unaware of what it was but became very...
Former Trillium Labs software engineer Steven Massey (Tape Op #68) - who worked on both TL Aggro and TL Space - now makes Pro Tools plug-ins for the rest of us. No dongles, affordably priced, no time-limit on the demos, and each plug-in is always of the highest quality, Massey has given us...
Back when I reviewed the Eisen Audio DIY500 mic preamp kit (Tape Op #80), I bragged about the beefy monsters we brewed. But shortly after publication, the manufacturer discontinued the kits, leaving some readers without a way to obtain similar preamps. To be fair, the input transformer and op-amp...
We had two writers test-drive the new plug-in from Sonnox that allows you to encode, decode — and audition in real-time — data-compressed audio using Fraunhofer codecs. Let’s start with multi–Grammy winner Joe Chiccarelli (Tape Op #14), whose first Tape Op review appeared in 2003 (#35). Following...
DI boxes are just not that sexy. However, the more sessions I record, the more I grow to really appreciate the simple pieces of gear that I can consistently rely upon. After repeated use, the Avenson IsoDI boxes now hit the tracking room floor at the same time the mic stands and cables come out....
I first became acquainted with the Lexicon 224X digital reverb in Studio One at the Strongroom around about 1989. It was the first time we had made that level of investment, and back then, Strongroom was a small, independent company, which meant that such a purchase was a big decision; I remember...
Assuming that one of the goals in treating a mix room is to achieve flat frequency response at the mix position, one must simultaneously grapple with room dimensions; resonant and reflective surfaces; speaker placement and stands; subwoofer placement and settings; crossover frequencies; active and...
I had seen the ads for a while in Tape Op. There were these preamps I had never heard of by a company I had never heard of — Ingram Engineering. They looked cool and somewhat retro. I had always thought that I’d like to try these out, so I jumped at the chance when offered the Ingram MPA685 for...
I’ve been using that same crap splicing tape that most everyone uses. You know, that thin white stuff that holds better to skin than tape. I found a much better solution sold by Splicit. It’s made of strong acrylic polyester. The pressure-sensitive coating grabs just enough when you’re getting set...
SE Electronics has been busy building a loyal fan-base for their wide range of microphones, and they recently teamed up with Rupert Neve to design some new microphones for SE's lineup. The SE RNR1 active ribbon mic emerged as the first effort, where Mr. Neve brought his knowledge of transformers...
When I initially donned these headphones, I was reminded of when I heard ADAM Audio S3-A active monitors (Tape Op #33) for the first time at the now defunct Bomb Factory Studios in Burbank. I was blown away by the immediate sense of space and detail that I was hearing. I've purchased several pairs...
Sound Skulptor is a division of the Synchronia Company, which also runs a studio in southwest France. They offer a line of DIY audio kits. We jumped at the chance to review the Stereo Tape Simulator (STS). Encased in a desktop box, the STS includes the electronics of a classical tape recorder along...
The Studer A800 Multichannel Tape Recorder plug-in from Universal Audio is one of the latest in a series of classic hardware emulations made for the UAD-2 series DSP Accelerators (Tape Op #57, #73, #76, #83). Having long been a convert to the UAD DSP platform, I had to check this out but had only...
Radial Engineering sent both LC and AH a Workhorse and a selection of 500-series modules. Neither of them has had the time to try out all of the modules, but they both got in some quality time with the Workhorse, and Larry also had a chance to try out the Shuttle module.LC: Radial Engineering seems...