I was an analog snob. Having fallen foul of a few ADATs back in the day, I badmouthed the sonics of digital: the crispiness, the sterility, the lack of depth, etc. In the last couple of years,...
I am sure I’m not alone here in my curiosity of Thermionic Culture products. The literal meaning of the company name, the not-just-free-from-digital but “free from solid-state...
To begin this review, I first must admit that this is the most expensive piece of recording equipment we have yet reviewed in Tape Op. It is also, outside of my home, the most expensive purchase I...
We recently added a Pro Tools HD rig to our studio, and an unexpected hitch was that the pre-"VT" Lynx Aurora 16 interfaces we bought don't have trimming capabilities. Since we often track to tape and...
Sterling Modular founder Jim Maher believes that acoustics matter when choosing furniture for an audio working environment. Having used products from his competitors as well as from general office and...
For the past two years, I've been looking for the perfect home-studio mixer. I've been through three or four of them, each inadequate for various reasons, and sold them all. The mixer of my dreams has...
Switching between in-the-box mixing, external summing, and console mixing has been a project-by-project reality in my personal world for a long time now. There are merits to all of these different...
A recording console is arguably one of the toughest pieces of gear to review. Connectivity to other gear, internal routing capability, build quality, ergonomics, and all-around workflow are necessary...
When I first heard about the U.420 compact mixers from Mackie, I immediately realized where they would be effective. I asked Mackie to send the U.420d version to my colleague Brandon Miller, who is a...
These days, my business partner Neil Mclellan spends just as much time working on the road with his laptop or on his home rig as he does in big SSL and Neve-equipped rooms-that's just the current...
I am a sucker for recording through outboard preamps direct to a recording device. I'm also a sucker for using a lot of microphones on a sound source. Sometimes these two loves can cause problems in...
From professional multi-room facilities to bedroom computer rigs, the compact utility mixer is ubiquitous. Whether it's being used for its mic preamps and zero-latency monitoring facilities in front...
