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...
Pulsar Modular never seems to disappoint when it comes to unique and colorful designs. I’ve always kept it pretty simple when it comes to EQs. I have one main software plug-in that is surgical and flexible, and a handful of other options that can do one or two tasks well that I’ll sprinkle on for color....
In this large format, 90-page full-color book, Simone Corelli takes on a tutorial ride through iZotope’s RX audio restoration app and plug-in suite, and is updated for the current RX 11 [see review this issue]. With Avid recently offering up the simplified iZotope RX Spectral Editor with all Pro Tools...
I’ve been a longtime user of Applied Research and Technology (ART) hardware, as have most of my engineer friends with home, project, and professional studios. I remember many of my early-2000s era recordings being tracked and mixed through my old Dual Levelar compressor, mastering projects going through...
I recently discovered that my mixes sounded a bit thinner than I wanted because of a buildup in presence frequencies (4 to 6 kHz). Looking for a cure, I turned to Baby Audio’s Smooth Operator “intelligent signal balancer” plug-in. The GUI looks like a dynamic EQ or a multiband compressor, running from...
Touted as “a new kind of psycho-acoustic compressor,” PSP Flare can apply a huge amount of compression to a stereo or mono source, and do so without immediately veering into nasty artifacts or dulling the source. Post-production engineer Paolo Pasquariello provided the “project inspiration and base...
There are so many choices when it comes to studio monitors these days that I often forget that one of the original names in that space is JBL. For years, JBL was the monitor found in many of the best studios. As the smaller choice in JBL’s 7 Series line, The JBL 705P dual-amplified powered monitor makes...
"Wow, I don't feel like I'm listening to headphones. They sound so open" were the universal reactions from mastering engineers at Infrasonic Sound and students at The Blackbird Academy that I witnessed when they tried the first production prototype of the HEDDphone TWO last year....
ARC Studio is an easy-to-use acoustic room correction tool, and one of my favorite recent studio upgrades. Set up is relatively simple; while it does require a computer for the calibration, once calibrated it runs computer-free. It’s easy to forget it’s even there until I hit the bypass button and hear...
If you’re of a certain age (mid-40s/50s), you probably remember sifting through and being raised on the records of your parents and/or siblings. Such listening sessions probably included the likes of ABBA, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Queen – these are still all bands I love to listen to regularly – and...
I’ve loved everything Soyuz has made so far and own many of their mics, but ambisonics seemed like an odd direction for them. When Soyuz announced the 013A Ambisonic Mic, I began doing more research on the topic. From the little I knew of ambisonics, it was a bit of a complicated process with a lot...
Before delving into this review we should first clarify what is an EQ and what is a filter. EQ refers to tonal equalization with cuts or boosts of amplitude across the frequency spectrum. The most flexible form is parametric EQ, which provides frequency, bandwidth, and cut/boost controls. On the other...