With every recording session, there's one piece of the puzzle that never rests; it's constantly in use, informing every decision that you make - and that's your monitor controller. You'll use different mics, mic preamps, and dynamics processors; switch between speakers; and order...
The Grace brothers (Michael and Eben) are well-known for their uncompromised designs. I've been a big fan of Grace since JB introduced me to the Model 101 preamp [Tape Op #27] five years ago, and I've used some "Grace" on nearly all the recordings I've made since then. A few...
As anyone who's seen the TV show Portlandia knows, in our little city, the dream of the 1890s is still alive. People cure their own meats, roast coffee, raise chickens in the backyard, and pickle any food item, but they also build their own mics. Self-described bricoleur, Philip Graham, builds...
New Zealand gear manufacturer Buzz Audio is best known for its REQ-2.2 mastering EQ [Tape Op #71], which some have compared to a classic Sontec. This impressive reputation made me curious enough to buy Buzz Audio's top-of-the-line compressor, which has achieved less visibility so far. The SOC-20...
I have not tried every pair of headphones on the market, but I have tried a lot. I think these Monoprice DJ Style Pro Headphones are the best value out there. Closed-back, high-quality build, great sounding, and strangely inexpensive - I will look no further for tracking headphones. What the heck is...
Mike Senior has written about a million things for Sound On Sound magazine, but I associate his name with their "Mix Rescue" column. Each month, he does a "makeover" mix of a reader-submitted song, explaining his decisions and techniques in detail. The column is clearly and frankly...
In the world of boutique audio equipment, the classics are held in high regard. Manufacturers are praised for releasing the most accurate clones of gear from what people now consider to be the Golden Age (roughly anywhere from 1930-1990) but are often looked down upon for trying to improve on these...
Perhaps your car is not worth parking in the garage anymore? Or maybe you've cleared out your basement, deciding to generally complicate your life further by building a recording studio in your home? If you've done any research, you'll find many opinions and methods for creating critical...
Long considered to be one of the great producer/engineers, Ken Scott [Tape Op #52] has written a wonderful memoir of his career in audio. Starting as a tape op at Abbey Road, he had his first experience behind the board engineering The Beatles and soon moved on to produce David Bowie - hence the book's...
I bought my first RME product, an ADI-648 MADI-ADAT converter [Tape Op #63] a decade ago, when my primary recording devices were an Otari MTR-90 2'' tape machine, a TASCAM MX-2424 standalone HD recorder [#22], and Pro Tools|HD running on a single-processor Mac G4. Ten years later, my PT|HD...
I can't believe this boom stand streets for $200, because its quality is far above what you'd expect from an affordably-priced studio boom. I've used plenty of boom stands during the many decades I've been recording music, including modern, high-end models from Latch Lake [Tape Op...
The QWERTY keyboard that I use with my DAW is a fully-programmable Cherry SPOS G86-61410 (Tape Op #56) designed for use with Point of Sale register stations. Any keycode, key combination, or sequence of keys (up to 10 keycodes each) can be assigned to any of the hardware keys, and these assignments...
Past reviews in Tape Op have covered external hard drive storage systems with RAID capability for redundancy in case of drive failure. Even if you're doing daily backups, the loss of one day's worth of audio recordings could be disastrous, and a RAID can reduce the possibility of such a disaster...
Last year, I upgraded the pair of Ultimate Support MS-45B2 monitor stands (Tape Op #49) in my personal studio to the current, second-generation model in Ultimate Support's studio lineup, the MS-90/45B. For months now, I've been planning on writing a review, but I couldn't find the words....
Rupert Neve is a name that's been around in the recording world for quite a while now, and it holds a lot of weight. Few names are as synonymous with audio design, but when it came time to release a new series of gear in a new millennium, Rupert Neve Designs made the decision to try something different...
I've been using analog synthesizer filters to process audio ever since I bought a PAiA modular synth in the mid '80s, and you'll get no argument from me if you were to say the venerable Moog filter is one of the best sounding filters ever made. So when Moog introduced The Ladder, a 500-series...
I have not been excited about a new mic preamp in a long time, especially a solid-state one. You know what I mean? Doesn't it feel like in the last 10 years or so, we witnessed an explosion in the mic preamp category, and now again in the 500-series format, and some of these new products sound...
After years of reviewing gear, I have come to the conclusion that A/B comparisons are not able to tell me what I want to know about a piece of equipment. While I understand the value of A/B comparisons - and have used them for years as a basis for my evaluations - I have come to believe that an immersive...
Introduced in 1976, the Ampex ATR-102 2-track tape recorder is often cited as the finest tape handler invented. Not limited to one width, users can swap head-stacks and guides, permitting a single machine to handle 1/4'', 1/2'', and even 1'' (when modified) tape. For decades,...