Interviews
By Larry Crane
An unsung studio hero? That's how some people see Tim Palmer. With a career beginning in London in the late '70s, he worked on records with Kajagoogoo, Cutting Crew, and Dead or Alive. Later work with The Mission UK and The House of Love led to working with Robert Plant, David Bowie's...
Interviews
In 2006 the world lost Arif Mardin, a classic (and classy) record producer and arranger who'd originally worked at Atlantic Rec...
Interviews
In 2006 the world lost Arif Mardin, a classic (and classy) record producer and arranger who'd originally worked at Atlantic Rec...
Interviews
Interviews
Interviews
Wayne Peet is an accomplished pianist/keyboardist and a first call player in the jazz/new music/avant-garde scene in Los Angeles, but he's also known as an excellent recordist, mixer, mastering engineer, and studio owner. The list of artists he's recorded spans genres and styles, including: Vinny Golia, Bobby Bradford, Nels Cline, Kenny Burrell, Bennie Maupin, Thurston Moore, Steuart Liebig, Mike Watt, Alex Cline, G.E. Stinson, Gregg Bendian, Lydia Lunch, Carla Bozulich, Scarlet Rivera, James Gadson, Louie Bellson, Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste, Jubilant Sykes, Robert Edward Thies, Pat Metheny, and Hubert Laws. Nestled in Mar Vista, between Venice and Culver City in Southern California, his Newzone Studio is conveniently located on the property behind Wayne's home.
Western Dynamo is a relatively new manufacturer, based in Austin, Texas. Started by J. Morris, an experienced studio tech and recording engineer, Western Dynamo aims to produce audio products using new design approaches to create useful and familiar sounding devices. The first such device is the...
Earthworks, while best known for its catalog of super- accurate microphones, also produces a line of microphone preamps based on the philosophy of extremely-low distortion and fast-responding circuitry. Transformerless and fully differential amplifier designs with no electrolytic capacitors in the...
The original Apollo [Tape Op #95] is a groundbreaking unit that combines real-time UAD plug-in processing, A/D and D/A conversion, and mic preamps in a single 1RU-height box. While the original unit was designed for a project or remote studio that requires an all-in-one device, the Apollo 16 is...
If you are short on time and just want the thumbs up/down on the B32 Vancouver 32×2 mix bus, it gets an enthusiastic thumbs up. All the adjectives that you might find in an adult-film review are applicable to the B32: wider, deeper, warmer, thicker, flexible, big bottom, sweet top. For more details...
Transparency comes in many colors. The Archangel is a mic preamp that seems to create its own reality of transparency - with unprecedented "passive gain" topology; cool, interesting design; and general feel of quality throughout. I got to plug this thing in, finally, after a lot of conversation...
The Phoenix Audio DRS-EQ/500 is a 4-band equalizer in 500-series format, loosely comparable to the API 550b. Each band offers fewer frequency points than a 550b, without overlap between the bands. The two mid bands are bell-shaped, while the high and low bands are shelving. The boost/cut knobs are...
Every now and then, a product comes along that sets a new bar for sound quality, features, and price. The Orion32 is a prime example. When contributing writers Tony SanFilippo and Chris Koltay contacted me to explain how the Orion32 had completely changed their games, I asked both of them to...
Never saw it coming. Another day at work at the Dock (our spanking-new studio spot in Sacramento), helping my bud John Dwyer (Thee Oh Sees, Coachwhips, Damaged Bug) spray fuzz guitar all over everything, and I'm blathering on as usual, "Gahd damn I wish I had a bunch of Death By Audio stuff, but...
Before we get to Steve Silverstein's opinion on the newest speaker offering from PreSonus, let me butt in. After reading the first draft of Steve's Sceptre S8 review and his email exchanges with PreSonus, my own interest was roused. I decided to demo a pair myself. After careful placement of the...
The SF-2 is a phantom-powered version of Royer's discontinued SF-1 ribbon mic, which means you get to press the +48V button without feeling like you've brought about the end of humanity. After that initial high wears off, you can start to record some really, really beautiful sounds using the mic....
What's a Studio Guitar Interface? Well, the SGI allows us to take an electric guitar, or any high-impedance, unbalanced instrument signal, and send it down a balanced signal path (think mic cables, snakes, or studio tie-lines) to an amp or processor. It does so with two small, stompbox-sized units...
Cakewalk has been in the news a lot lately. First, Gibson agreed to buy them from Roland. Having a guitar maker buy a DAW company is not as odd as it first seems, since Gibson also owns TASCAM, maker of interfaces and digital recording hardware. So Cakewalk becomes Cakewalk Development, and SONAR...
We always ask our gear reviewers at Tape Op to take the product in question into the studio and use it on sessions. I think this is a good thing. To me, there's not much use in the real world for key jangling in front of mics; and in the heat of a recording, I couldn't care less what someone's...
The original Symphony I/O was already reviewed [Tape Op #87], but Symphony is more than a converter; it is a configurable product line. With six different expansion modules, the Symphony chassis can be equipped for specific needs and applications. Two newer options for the system are the...
The original Symphony I/O was already reviewed [Tape Op #87], but Symphony is more than a converter; it is a configurable product line. With six different expansion modules, the Symphony chassis can be equipped for specific needs and applications. Two newer options for the system are the...