Interviews
By Larry Crane
He's just a really great engineer.Illustration by Miles Hermann
In issue #10 of Tape Op we ran an interview with Steve Albini by my pal John Chandler. Being that the piece was actually done for some oddly named company called Amazon that was branching into music sales, I spent the next 13 years...
Interviews
Greg Norman has worn many hats. For 15 years he's worked for Steve Albini helping build and ru...
Interviews
A studio in the basement of a ukulele shop in London? It seemed like a nutty idea, but there it was, and owner Simon Trought, along wi...
Interviews
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Barton Carroll and producer/engineer Graig Markel set out to record Carroll's 2009 album, Together, You and I, entirely to a Tascam 34 4-track tape machine. Carroll, who has toured and recorded extensively with Eric Bachmann's Crooked Fingers, is a studio specialist and a fan of folk and jazz from the World War II era to the late '60s. Together, You and I, needed a classic organic sound that only tape could provide. But as time, budget, and the process wore on, he and Markel discovered how hard it is to stay out of the box these days. Together, You and I is a confessional of lost love, found love, and yearning. It's folk music, plain and simple, that cuts a frayed swath from open fields to lonely bar rooms.
greg norman --> intern --> musician --> repair tech --> engineer --> greg norman Greg Norman has worn many hats. For 15 years he's worked for Steve Albini, helping build and run Chicago's Electrical Audio, but he also records at his home and takes on many other projects. And he's a nice guy.
We last visited the legendary console designer and audio guru Rupert Neve in Tape Op #26, over ten years ago. In 2005 Rupert Neve Designs presented the world some amazing new Neve products, with the Portico Range of equalizers, mic preamps, compressors and more. A few years later the 5088 Discrete Analogue Mixer [Tape Op #73] made its debut, and I became the very satisfied owner of 5088, serial number 27. I traveled down to the serene rolling hills of Wimberley, Texas, to meet up with a very gracious Rupert, Josh Thomas (Director of Sales and Strategic Alliances), and Craig "Hutch" Hutchison (Senior Design Engineer, formerly with Manley Labs).
It’s nice to see something at this price point showing up in the 500-Series world. The 581 is a Class AB, discrete preamp based on the venerable Neve 1081 mic preamp design. It has all your typical adjustments: two knobs for gain and output level; buttons for polarity, phantom power, and impedance;...
Olympia, Washington's Cascade is probably best known for bringing affordable ribbon mics to the masses. Sure, they offer condensers too, but a quick scan of their website quickly reveals their niche. Shown are multiple short-ribbon (Gomez, C77, Knuckle Head, the popular Fat Heads) and long-ribbon...
The C716 is the long-awaited addition to Josephson Engineering’s acclaimed Series Seven family of mics. It was developed and designed in the beautiful California coastal town of Santa Cruz, CA. I think it’s a very important microphone.My recording studio, Tiny Telephone, owns twelve Josephson mics....
The first time I ran music through a pair of these tiny speakers, I had to double check to make sure I wasn’t listening to my larger ADAM P11A monitors (Tape Op #33). Bass extension in particular is surprisingly good for a 2-way speaker of this size. The 4’’ Polyglass woofer, driven by a dedicated...
At first glance, the Liaison is not much more than an insert switcher. Plug in six of your outboard processors, and you can use Liaison’s front-panel buttons to switch your processors in and out of two stereo buses. The buses can be used individually, or they can be daisy-chained to form a single...
Mojave mics have quickly become a favorite of many studio owners and engineers. They are well designed and affordable, and they sound really good. The MA-200 (Tape Op #55) has been out for three years now, and I have yet to meet anyone who does not like it. Now the good folks at Mojave have added...
As I mentioned in the previous issue's "Gear Geeking" (Tape Op #86), the Pegasus was one the most exciting products to be unveiled at the AES Convention. Unlike most tube mics on the market today, this one is not based on any classic designs. It utilizes unique, original circuitry as well as...
This is the sentence where we make some stupid snake joke, or worse, a juvenile double entendre. Moving on, this is a cool new 500-Series bus compressor. Last year, Serpent Audio released the SB4000 compressor as a DIY project. Response was positive, but the designer wanted to enhance features and...
I admit to having been quite skeptical when Eventide’s most recent stompbox, Space, arrived at my doorstep. In the first place, I’m the kind of guy whose favorite pedals have a maximum of three knobs. I generally have very little patience for any device with menu scrolling and multi-use rotary...
I have to confess that when I saw the early ads marketing Symphony I/O with its sleek Scandinavian hi-fi aesthetic and big rubber feet, it looked to me like something built for audiophiles or home recordists. Is Apogee abandoning the pro user I wondered? Were they dumbing down their converters? As...