Cranborne was not an audio company I was familiar with. When first contacted about reviewing the 500R8, I was immediately intrigued. Here's why: the 500R8 is an 8-slot 500 Series rack and 28-in/30-out...
For years, I've been tortured by drum gates. First, in the analog realm, where I'd be mixing poorly-recorded tracks (sometimes my fault) and I'd attempt to use gates to add punch and clarity to my...
SpectraLayers Pro is an exceedingly powerful program for restoring, editing, and manipulating audio. I mistakenly ignored this product, classifying it as just another spectral editor. Ultimately,...
Sometimes it's the lesser heralded, helpful products that catch my eye more than some fancy new compressor or microphone. Stedman's PureConnect connector cleaning kit series – the GP-1 Gig Pack,...
Bob Clearmountain [Tape Op #84, #129] is responsible for mixing some of rock music's most iconic records and happens to be one of my favorite mixing engineers of all time. So, when I heard Apogee had...
Anyone familiar with the iconic Roland Juno-6 or 60, will know and love the analog bucket brigade (BBD) chorus effect that is part of that instrument. Now that classic effect is available as part of a...
I recently received the PreSonus FaderPort 16 Production Controller to review. Since the biggest difference between this model and the FaderPort 8 [Tape Op #119] is the additional eight channels, I...
The French brain trust at Arturia has done it again with MicroFreak; yet another brilliantly designed instrument that's intuitive, highly playable, and builds on some classic designs – but one...
Last winter, I set up an extra room in my house as a digitizing and restoration studio. I don't master in this room, but I still need it to sound good sothat when calibrating my tape machine,...
If you really think about it, choosing studio monitors is strange – they shouldn't sound like anything. They need to be capable blank slates. We base most of our decisions on monitors, but if...
I wanted some small-format speakers for monitoring a transfer chain I set up to digitize a medium-sized pile of old NTSC videos. These videos weren't great quality in the first place, but I wanted to...
I have been the proud owner of the original Retro DOUBLEWIDE mono variable-mu compressor for several years now. It's a handsome, timeless, and classic-styled module that delivers character-filled...
