Gear Reviews

For mixing, arguably the most important consideration for your monitoring setup is translation. You can have the most mind-blowing speakers in the world, but if for whatever reason the work you do on them doesn’t sound right elsewhere, what’s the point? The physical room you are working in – and...

The Yamaha YC61 Stage Keyboard is a 61-key waterfall keyboard, now also available with 73 and 88 keys. It has three separate sound engines: VCM for the H Organs, FM for the F Organs and FM sounds in the Keys Section, and AWM2 (Advanced Wave Memory 2). The VCM Organ and AWM2 engines share 128 notes...

Most ribbon microphones contain simply a thin aluminum ribbon, a magnet, and a transformer. This elegant design contributes much to what we love about the technology, but there are a few drawbacks: situational vulnerability to phantom power, low output levels, and demanding impedance requirements....

When I first got an original Roland RE-201 Space Echo, it required a lot of love to restore it to its former glory, so Echo Fix is who I turned to first. This Australian company has been providing parts for and servicing Space Echo delays and Maestro Echoplex units for over a decade. Fast forward...

In the category of alternate controllers, the Sensel Morph is one of the best I’ve seen to date. By alternate, I mean as an alternative to your ASCII keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and piano-style MIDI keyboard. Here’s the thing though, the Morph can replace all of those controllers, and more. It’s a...

I have a hard time trusting my ears. To be fair, my already limited mixing experience has been further restricted by a tight budget. But the thing I have the hardest time wrapping my head (or, ears) around is the way that each new room brings with it different inconsistencies that one must adapt...

Gummy residue on your Sennheiser MD 421s and mic stands from overuse of gaffer/duct tape? “Original” Surface Safe Goo Gone goo & adhesive remover to the rescue. With a fresh, citrusy smell, this liquid cleaner will easily remove that grime-grabbing gumminess that bums you out when you’re...

I’ve been recording many interviews for the Tape Op podcast series, and our new feature called DISCussion <tapeop.com/audio> en mass. In-person we usually use the DPA 4061 lavalier mics [Tape Op #127] and the small MMA-A interface that they make. These work great, and you can get them...

Electric & Company, operated by Mattie Smith and crew out of Austin, Texas, hand-build a small lineup of tube microphone preamplifiers and refurbish vintage units. My first experience with this company was to have them convert two Ampex 601 reel-to-reel tape recorders into two preamp/DIs. These...

One of the most esteemed names in the world of audio production, TELEFUNKEN, has released a new and exciting product in their Alchemy line of microphones: the TF11. I was beyond excited to test out their newest offering.

The TF11 is a large diaphragm FET condenser microphone designed and...

Perfect Groove, created by a small team of three developers at Rebeat Innovation, is a standalone application for Mac (OS X 10.11.6 or later and Windows 64-bit version 7 or later) that predicts how audio will be laid out and sound when it’s on vinyl. When an album is being prepared for vinyl, a...

The McDSP APB (Analog Processing Box) [Tape Op #134] is the gift that keeps on giving. In addition to the original stock plug-ins the APB-8 and APB-16 shipped with, Colin and the folks at McDSP have now added the MC-3 Multi-band Compressor and modernized the L-18 Limiter to add surround support as...

Years ago, while wandering around NAMM or AES looking for new plug-ins that could do something cool and unique, I could always count on seeing the people from Synchro Arts showing off their unique plug-in VocAlign, which could take one vocal’s timing and impart it to another. At first, it was...

Frustrated because your stock Sennheiser MD 421 clip broke and you’re finding out that a replacement for the poorly designed original clip will cost you more than several gourmet pizzas to go? If so, check out this molded plastic replacement clip from Island Park Recording Company that wraps around...

In Tape Op #83 – ten years ago – I favorably reviewed the original Zen & the Art of Mixing book, noting that it was “ideal for someone who is unhappy with their mixes and wants to get better.” I still absolutely agree with everything I wrote, and I heartily recommend this new version – please...

These days, it’s pretty rare to see a piece of audio equipment with an innovative feature set, but the Cranborne Audio Camden EC2 is indeed one of those rarities. It is a combination two-channel microphone preamp, saturation device, and dual headphone amp in a single space rack unit. Upon unpacking...

This is an ingenious and very useful $25 accessory for anybody who owns Sennheiser MD 421 microphones and is perpetually frustrated at the poorly-designed mic clip/mount, the one that results in the mic falling off the clip and needing to be duct-taped to stay in place. MicLock is a small, molded...

At my studio, Jackpot! Recording, while setting up for a tracking session I get pretty obsessive about fixing the little problems that annoy me. One of these “little” irritations is finding appropriate, safe, and durable mic clips for every microphone. One of my favorite pair of vintage mics are my...

I was an early adopter of Universal Audio’s UAD plug-in platform. My 2003 Power Macintosh G5 may have housed only a single UAD-1 DSP Card [Tape Op #41], but at the time, I thought the world of audio couldn’t get any better. No one could touch what Universal Audio was doing with their digital...