Gear Reviews

Issue #131

NO. 131

Audionamix: Trax Pro SP & XTRAX STEMS

REVIEWED BY John Baccigaluppi

Welcome to the brave new world of DSP! Along with folks like iZotope, Audionamix is on the cutting edge of spectral based DSP technology that can do previously unheard of things with audio. These products are both based on being able to take a stereo mix of a song and separate out the vocals from...

NO. 131 Gear Review

TK Audio: TK-lizer 500 Equalizer

REVIEWED BY Justin Mantooth
May 15, 2019

My mix bus is a little crowded. Generally, I have three to four units doing very subtle things. I enjoy the cumulative effect of several stages of iron and discrete op-amps soaking up transients and warming things up. I seem to get away with a single bus compressor, like many may use. Often, before...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Aston Microphones: Stealth Microphone

REVIEWED BY Ben Bernstein
May 15, 2019

The Stealth is the latest addition to Aston's product line. I've been an admirer of their revolutionary designs since reviewing their Starlight small diaphragm condenser [Tape Op#123]. I then purchased the Halo Shadow reflection filter based solely on my experience with the Starlight....

NO. 131 Gear Review

Sonarworks: Reference 4 Plug-In

REVIEWED BY Adam Kagan
May 15, 2019

When producing, mixing, or mastering, how frequently do you go out to your car and check your mix? Do you listen on three different headphones and a few different Bluetooth speakers? My answer to this question has changed over the years, and today the simple answer is that I don't feel the...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Solid State Logic: Fusion Master Processor

REVIEWED BY Adam Kagan
May 15, 2019

Solid State Logic has dominated the analog mixing console world for rock, pop, and R&B records for over three decades, and while DAWs have mostly taken over as production and mixing environments, SSL has been expanding into digital consoles for broadcasting and live sound. SSL also produces a...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Chandler Limited: EMI Abbey Road Studios TG Microphone

REVIEWED BY Don Gunn
May 15, 2019

Leave it to Wade Goeke at Chandler Limited to come up with a new mic circuit unlike any I (and probably anyone else) have ever experienced. The full name of this new mic from the folks in Iowa is the Chandler Limited EMI Abbey Road Studios TG Microphone, and that should help give some idea of the...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Earthworks Audio: DM20 DrumMic / CMK4 Mic Kit

REVIEWED BY Scott Evans
May 15, 2019

Earthworks has made well-regarded condenser microphones for over 20 years. I've been curious about their drum mics for quite a while, so I was stoked to receive a CMK4 mic kit for review. The CMK4 kit provides four DM20 mics and clips inside a Pelican style suitcase. The DM20 is the latest...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Royer Labs: dBooster Mic Preamp Booster

REVIEWED BY Larry Crane
May 15, 2019

The recent history of audio has seen many companies come out with outboard phantom powered microphone amplifier devices intended to be used prior to the input stage of a proper mic preamplifier since the Cloud Microphones Cloudlifter CL-1 [Tape Op#85] was introduced in 2009. Typically, these are...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Steinberg: Cubase Pro 10

REVIEWED BY Andy Hong
May 15, 2019

Cubase is my primary DAW. It offers me the best performance and user experience for recording and mixing music – whether I'm running it on my Microsoft Surface hybrid tablet/laptop with a portable stereo interface, or on my purpose-built rackmount PC with 194/196 channels of I/O. Cubase is...

NO. 131 Gear Review

DrAlienSmith: DirtMic-01 Microphone

REVIEWED BY Ben Bernstein
May 15, 2019

The DrAlienSmith DirtMic-01 is an awesome "outside the box" mic for creating rich harmonic distortion effects without a plug-in or guitar pedal. It's very useful for blending with clean vocals, bass, and electric guitar tracks in order to enhance a source's sound. It can also be...

NO. 131 Gear Review

SPL: Crescendo Mic Preamp

REVIEWED BY Dana Gumbiner
May 15, 2019

(Cue Bon Scott howling "HIGH! VOLTAGE!") The Crescendo, andSPL's proprietary SUPRA high voltage op-ampsare an exciting innovation, and I believe it's a first of its kind: an 8-channel mic preamp operating on ±60 volt DC power rails (touted by SPL as "120V Technology")....

NO. 131 Gear Review

Soundtheory: Gullfoss EQ Plug-In

REVIEWED BY Larry Crane
May 15, 2019

I'm old enough to be wary of devices that claim to be cure-alls for making audio sound good. Processing devices, such as Aphex's Aural Exciter and BBE's Sonic Maximizer, abounded in the '80s, but most of the time I found the supposed sonic benefits of these devices to be far...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Mytek: Brooklyn DAC+

REVIEWED BY Geoff Stanfield
May 15, 2019

I have to stop and reflect on the way we listen to music today versus how I did growing up. It used to be a trip to the now defunct Tower Records or whatever local record store was in my town at the time. We browsed the racks looking for either the latest release from our favorite band or the...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Sound Devices: MixPre-10T & 10M Interfaces

REVIEWED BY Kerry Rose
May 15, 2019

To piggyback on John Baccigaluppi's End Rant musings "Give Me a Hammer" [Tape Op#102 and #115], I have been looking for a particular hammer that might serve as my aspiration to get back to what fired me up about recording in the first place: spontaneously capturing ideas as they...

NO. 131 Gear Review

BURL Audio: BDA4 4-ch D/A Converter

REVIEWED BY Larry Crane
May 15, 2019

This "daughter card" works with the BURL B80 Mothership [Tape Op#84] and B16 Mothership configurable audio I/O systems. When the B80 Mothership was introduced, the BDA8 was the choice for D-to-A output conversion, but it was not transformer-balanced like the BAD8 A-to-D input cards were...

NO. 131 Gear Review

Black Lion Audio: PBR-8 500 Series Rack

REVIEWED BY Don Gunn
May 15, 2019

Most 500 Series racks are just that – a hunk of rack gear that's not the sexiest piece of kit in the studio. They're mostly just a utility piece that's simply designed to interface other equipment with the really fun stuff in the 500 Series world. Let's face it, 500 Series...