BABY Audio is quickly developing a reputation for boiling plug-ins down to their essential components and reshaping them into concentrated, powerful production tools. With their newest release, a...
There is absolute magic contained in the plastered walls of classic studios’ echo chambers. I’ve been lucky enough to make many records at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, which has...
Texture still seems to me to be the hill on which the battle between us analog Luddites and the digital future is raging. Though digital emulations are now, broadly, pretty good and getting better,...
Every stereo mix has a phantom center, or middle channel. This “mid,” includes any audio that is not panned (or recorded) exclusively to the right and left “side” channels, and...
Hailing from 1978, and peppered throughout several classic recordings in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the AMS DMX 15-80 S was the world’s first microprocessor-controlled, 15-bit digital delay...
In our world of recording gear, there are plenty of “classics” when one thinks of compressors, mic preamps, or microphones. However, one particular piece of gear that usually isn’t...
EC: The past two years have given many of us an opportunity to reexamine our daily routines. For me, this manifested most profoundly in my work environment. I was already doing a fair amount of...
Space. The final frontier. Is it? So, what is space as it relates to music? Space is that last audible cue that gives listeners a sense of location. Near, far, big room, small room, no room, etc. It...
Apogee’s Symphony Desktop was first covered last spring in Tape Op #142. Firmware and software were still in beta testing at the time, so the unit was reviewed based on its primary hardware...
When digital audio workstations were in their infancy, third-party plug-ins were scarce. Even more rare were ones that sounded good. But in those early years, Poland’s PSPaudioware released a...
John McBride [Tape Op #97], owner of Blackbird Studio in Nashville, woke up from a nightmare one night thinking his studio had burned to the ground. Although his studio contains countless pieces of...
Earlier this year, I called Tape Op editor Larry Crane to ask if he could help me with a mixing dilemma. I wanted to recreate the vocal effect on Steely Dan’s “Daddy Don’t Live in...
