Interviews
By Joseph Branciforte
I still remember my first experience hearing Taylor Deupree's Northern on a winter night back in 2007. Reaching into a stack of borrowed CDs in my apartment, I randomly selected a disc for some musical accompaniment while washing the dishes. The album began so stealthily that it took 10 minutes...
Interviews
Here Photo: At The Old Western waiting for the rest of the musicians...
Luke Temple wears several masks and many hats. Since ...
Interviews
Photographer Brian T. Silak and I met up with indie rock legends Yo La Tengo at the SOHO Manhattan offices of Matador Records. We di...
Interviews
Although I'd heard of Berlin-based musician Nils Frahm, I actually first heard his...
Interviews
Way back in [Tape Op #39], we received a wonderful report on how The Mammals utilized a...
Andrew Savage, one of the co-songwriters of Parquet Courts, is decidedly "not an engineer," yet he owns tape machines and once built a studio with his friends in Denton, Texas. Savage's top priority when recording is an environment free of distraction - acoustics be damned. Book his band Parquet Courts a week at Electric Lady Studios, or leave them in a musty warehouse with the lights off; whatever grows will still impress the music press and please their fans. Parquet Courts have a new album out this year, produced by Danger Mouse [Brian Burton], called Wide Awake.
Lead photo text: Author Wally Wilson behind the first Sphere multitrack console at Creative Workshop, Nashville, TN, 1976. Recently there's been renewed interest in Sphere consoles, and the history of Sphere Electronics. With Don McLaughlin having sadly passed away in 2014, I guess I'm the guy left to tell the original story. Don and I formed Sphere Electronics in 1973. This is my personal account of how it happened.
Large-format recording consoles; there just aren't as many of them being made these days compared to decades past. A portion of the industry has moved towards totally mixing in the box and tracking only with outboard preamps, but there is still a percentage of people, myself included, who...
Subtitled New York Songs and Stories, producer, musician, songwriter, engineer, and occasional Tape Op contributor Chris Stamey details his youth in North Carolina and his adventures in NYC of the late '70s. As a member of The dB's, he co-wrote and helmed their classic albums, Stands for deciBels...
I didn't realize Auto-Tune was 20 years old this year, and I'm sort of in shock. I remember renting the ATR-1 hardware version from a local studio back then and trying to tune some poorly pitched slide and violin by processing back to open tracks on 2-inch tape. It might not have worked well...
The Booty Shakers and The Little Booty Shakers make up a family of incredibly simple drum isolation mounts. They have been well designed by two guys in San Diego who refused to settle with drum tones. They do one thing, and they do it well, which is to decouple your drums from the floor (or the...
The reports of the death of the PC/Windows DAW Cakewalk were greatly exaggerated. With tens of thousands of users, many willing to pony up a hundred dollars plus every year for updates, and various top-notch virtual synths, plug-ins, etc. sold separately, Cakewalk (the company) had value - I just...
In January 2018, Focusrite introduced USB2.0 class compliant versions of three audio interfaces in the Clarett range that were previously available as Thunderbolt-only devices, opening up the range to greater compatibility across macOS and Windows. Clarett occupies the space between the...
Recently, while pondering the anonymous-yet-crucial role of the lowly microphone cable in studio and on stage, Fjord Audio owner Spencer Tweedy found himself in a quandary: could there be high quality XLR cables made in the USA that look, feel, and sound great? All without breaking the bank? It was...
Veteran Tape Op readers will know that I have tremendous respect for Bob Muller and Chris Muth of Dangerous Music [Tape Op #45]. Over the years, I've contributed to many reviews of their products published here in Tape Op, and I've retold educational conversations I've had with both of them....
I stumbled on this book from a recommendation by a friend from my past corporate life, and I'm passing this tip on. You may not know the name Bonnie Siegler, but you've encountered Siegler's work. The founder of New York-based Eight and a Half design studios, she's been responsible for visuals for...
DPA's approach when creating the d:vote CORE 4099G Instrument Microphone was to create a mic that is equally at home on the stage and in the studio. When I perform live, I want my acoustic guitar to sound like my acoustic guitar and that's what I got from the 4099G. The mic captured my six-string...
In the "modern recording era" (let's say 1950 until present), there are a few compressors that can easily be called Classic with a capital "C". You know, the ones by Fairchild, Teletronix, UREI, dbx, Gates, ADR and perhaps SSL? These compressors have helped define much of what we think of as...
Sphere Recording Consoles may not be the most recognized name in pro audio, but to those in the know, Sphere represents the holy grail of mixing consoles. [See Wally Wilson's article on Sphere Electronics this issue.] Sphere Recording consoles emerged in the late 1960's as an outgrowth of the...
I have always looked at cost versus performance with gear, and although I love the classics, I don't always love the price tag. I enjoy DIY projects for several reasons; gaining a better understanding of how gear works; if it's in need of repair, I can fix it myself; the cost is less expensive; and...
Anyone familiar with TAMA drum hardware will have the same reaction to learning that the respected drum maker is now selling mic stands: What took so long? I'm actually old enough to remember the debut of the Spartan and Titan stands. Before TAMA's stands, drummers used unstable, flat-bottom...
Ableton once again delivers a compelling update to their always imaginative music creation software suite, Live. Version 10 feels like an addition of significant fit, finish, and refinement to what has become a game-changing DAW. Of course, Live isn't just a DAW in the conventional sense; although...
Unlock the studio and walk in. Power up each rack, then the console, then lean over the console to turn on each powered monitor. Be sure to do the monitors last or they go pop and swearing ensues. Ten hours later, do the same list in reverse. I don't mind most studio rituals, but I don't like this...
Subtitled "Learning to Make Musical Choices," Wessel Oltheten's book is one of the most comprehensive guides to mixing music I have ever come across. As Peter Katis [Tape Op #31] is quoted on the back, "Mixing is an intensely instinctual endeavor that can't really be taught in a book. But Wessel,...
I had a blast reviewing Meris' Ottobit Jr. Bitcrusher and Mercury7 Reverb pedals [Tape Op #123]. The three-person company (steered by inventive folks formerly of Line 6 and Strymon) has been turning heads with its intense, expanded spins on stompbox classics. I was glad to hear they had a delay...
It's been a few years since we reviewed Pro Tools 11 [Tape Op #101], the first version of the venerable DAW that featured 64-bit architecture and a newly reimplemented Avid Audio Engine, as well as the staunch requirement that all plug-ins be AAX format. During the years that have passed, Avid has...
When looking for a new TT patchbay with DB25 connectors to add to the several I already have, I needed options beyond the typical offerings; something that was a step up in terms of quality and reliability. It also needed to be portable, with a solid build. A good patchbay is not cheap, and in my...
The rack-mount power strips I bought on eBay years ago (lots of server equipment to be found for cheap there) had blank front panels and six or eight outlets on the rear. I've since replaced them with these Tripp-Lite Power Strips that include six front-facing outlets - perfect for plugging in...
Alan Parsons' Art & Science of Sound Recording (ASSR) encompasses an array of audio recording educational tools and events built around Alan's [Tape Op #42] studio mastery and patient explanations of the process. Previous products have included Art & Science of Sound Recording - The Book [#82], ten...
Monitors of all shapes and sizes have always seemed like an extension of the stereo speakers I saved up my paper route money to buy when I was a kid. Over time they got better, clearer, definitely more expensive (ouch), and I learned what I needed from them to work and mix. Fundamentally just boxes...
I love electro-mechanical reverbs. I've owned several plate reverbs and currently have a Hamptone-customized EMT 140 along with two different Demeter Real Reverb units [Tape Op #21, #109]. I use these all the time and love the uniqueness of real hardware and rich tones. My pal Chris Benson builds...
Uh-oh. Looks like the cool techs at Steinberg have been up to something. Audio interfaces are traditionally designed to offer transparent conversion from capture to representation. Though the new UR-RT interfaces can achieve that transparency in digital conversion, and feature Yamaha-built...