I had ruled out mic mounts that attach to a drum’s rim after trying some in my studio years ago, only to find that they transmitted way too many bad sounds directly through the mount. I’ve been happily using mic stands since. However, I also play drums in several bands, and sometimes I notice the live...
I was mixing the record that would never die – or at least would never go to mastering. You may have been there yourself; you start mixing, and then the artist goes to another studio and adds a bunch of tracks, and now you’re dangerously close to having to start over. Except, the client definitely doesn’t...
I’m a songwriter and musician who composes and records at home. Once in a while, I may bring in another musician buddy with a special skill on a particular instrument, but when it comes to recording I work solo 90% of the time. I also tend to use the least amount of gear possible; mainly due to the...
Like a lot of Tape Op-ers, I started my recording expedition with a cassette 4-track. For a young songwriter, the 4-track was nothing less than a joy engine – a new way to capture ideas and shape song demos, wrapped into a studio that I could take with me that unlocked a whole new creative landscape....
Just as one must “settle in” to a new set of monitors, getting accustomed to new headphones can also be challenging. However, if you’ve ever sat down in an unfamiliar control room, in front of monitors you’ve never mixed/tracked with, and were able to say to yourself, “Everything sounds perfect. Let’s...
In a climate where it sometimes seems like a race to the bottom, with companies trying to build the cheapest audio outboard equipment they can, it’s refreshing to come across gear like Soyuz’s new Lakeside. A single channel preamp in one rack space, with an internal power supply, XLR I/O, and a 1/4-inch...
The Sony C37A may be the last classic tube mic without ubiquitous modern clones. There are a million variations of the Neumann and AKG classics at all sorts of price points, which is wonderful considering the continuously skyrocketing vintage market. However, until recently, there were few modern takes...
I was extremely excited to see Audient – the British audio manufacturer that makes everything from budget-conscious USB interfaces to large format recording consoles – debut the ORIA immersive monitor controller/audio interface at this year’s NAMM Show. I recently expanded my studio for Dolby Atmos...
Well hell, let’s face it – who doesn’t love a good sounding 1176? It’s one of my favorite compressors! Everything – vocals, guitars, bass, drums, percussion, and sax – sounds good through it. Quick history lesson: Bill Putnam founded Universal Audio in Chicago in the 1950s, then moved to Hollywood,...
Subtitled "Vintage Electronic Musical Instruments," this is a treat of a book. From 1977 to 1981, Dr. Tom Rhea wrote 52 columns for Keyboard magazine called "Electronic Perspectives." In an era where synthesizer technology was changing incredibly fast, Tom was looking back on the...
Drum-specific mics have been around for some time, but innovative companies such as Lauten Audio are still finding ways to improve them. Recently unveiling the Snare Mic [Tape Op#159] to bring out the best from snare drums, they have now introduced the Tom Mic, which – no surprise – is for toms! But...
In Tape Op#143, Dawn Landes interviewed Linda Perry, one of the most successful producers and songwriters of the last 30 years. In this documentary, Don Hardy captures Linda in action, writing and recording with Dolly Parton, Kate Hudson, and Christina Aguilera. She recounts her story of producing the...
Billed as a "Spectral Dynamic Stereo Width Maximizer," the SideMinder Max plug-in works on stereo tracks to adjust the width of a signal at different frequency ranges. I reviewed the original SideMinder in Tape Op#136, and since then, it’s had a few iterations and upgrades. As I noted in my...
In the fall of 2023, Baby Audio acquired Denise Audio, a company with an awesome line of deceptively-simplified plug-ins. Motion Filter is their reworking of Denise's The Sweeper, a digital motion filter that includes two dynamic motion modes with lots of control over a variety of possible sounds....
A pocket DAW app for your iPhone? Sure! Songzap is built for creating and capturing song ideas. Professor Rob Toulson and Dr. Mike Exarchos developed this app, and Rob wrote the excellent book Drum Sound and Drum Tuning [Tape Op#146] and made the iDrumTune Pro app; plus, he's a real musician. Here's...
The boxy, rectangular shapes, light grayish-white painted bodies, and contrasting black windscreens of the new dynamic microphones in Universal Audio Standard Series – SD-3, SD-5, and SD-7 with Hemisphere mic modeling – certainly don’t look like the classic studio mics they are intended to emulate....
I’m nearing the end of a search for a new monitoring setup in my small home studio (aka spare bedroom). I fell in love with the ADAM Audio A7Vs [Tape Op#153] and a matching subwoofer Sub10 MK2 [#156]. I learned the hard way that my nearfield monitors did not stand a chance in my less-than-optimal room...
half light is Mitchell Schneider and David Riddle. Taped Spaces is their first full plug-in (they’ve also made some Kontakt instruments), but they’ve been playing music together for over a decade since they met in Nashville in 2012. Let’s start with their music. In the tradition of Eno (Brian and Roger),...
Here's another new plug-in that comes included with McDSP's APB ("analog processing box") units (APB-8, APB-16 [Tape Op#134]). In case you don't know what APB processors are, they're 8 and 16-channel outboard units that connect to a computer and allow plug-in control of...