Interviews
By Courtesy Lucier, Ian Brennan
Alvin Lucier is one of the most influential composers in the post-John Cage era. Having authored over 172 pieces for film, theater, television, and dance companies, it is fair to say that he is prolific. At the age of 87 he continues to produce new works, his latest involving sending his heartbeat to...
Interviews
As the music director for Bruno Mars, Kanye West, and Lady Gaga, Jeff Bhasker eventually parlayed a keen musical sense into a successful production career, with credi...
Interviews
North London-born Chris Carter has had an extraordinary 50-year career in music. While working as a visual artist and sound engineer ...
Interviews
As creative people in the music industry, many of us fail or succeed based on our credits....
Interviews
The Miami-based songwriter, producer, and fashionista known as Suzi Analogue lives with...
The career of Jimmy Douglass is incredibly interesting. Coming up at Atlantic Records in the early '70s, he learned the ins and outs of studio life on the fly while observing masters like Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin. In the '90s he began a long run of engineering, producing, and mixing with Timbaland on projects like Jodeci, Missy Elliott, Ginuwine, and Jay-Z. Not many recording folks can list credits as wide as Foreigner, Björk, Snoop Dogg, Roxy Music, Gang of Four, AC/DC, Donny Hathaway, and Kanye West. Jimmy's wisdom and open enthusiasm is obvious when you first meet him, and it's no surprise that he's been a big part of our sonic landscape for decades.
One of the original founders of Eventide Clock Works Inc, Richard Factor has seen a lot of changes in the world of audio and electronics. Eventide's time-based effects units were some of the first to open up new sounds and effects.
Oh lord, he's reviewing rack screws. I'll make it quick: these are some nice rack screws! The pilot point makes them much easier to start than the hardware store screws I've used forever, and they're smoother to screw in and out too. Better tolerances? I don't know, but I put all my other screws...
I've been considering a new hardware compressor for my drum bus, and the Drawmer 1978 compressor has recently intrigued me. It's a stereo FET compression design with many extra creative features packed into a single unit rack space, and it sports the same look and feel of Drawmer's 1968 stereo...
Since API introduced the 1608 [Tape Op #81] discrete analog recording console a little over a decade ago, it has become something of an industry standard in its class – highly respected for its build quality and for API's unique combination of sonic transparency and analog warmth. Now the company...
This is a future-proof controller that’s really more of a studio “director” or “headmaster-in-charge of all things bleepy-bloopy” – not your grandad’s MIDI controller, no sir. The SL MkIII is easily the most utility-driven, feature-full MIDI controller/sequencer I’ve yet to test drive. And although...
Universal Audio – knock it off, already. We could probably end this review right there, and most existing Universal Audio/UAD users would get the point: the release cycle from this company is nothing if not consistent in its ability to disengage one's better judgment from, ahem, sympathetic...
If you are newer to audio production, you may have asked this question – and if you are a veteran of audio production you have absolutely been asked this question – "What preamp should I buy?" The answer is far from easy. These days we have a huge selection of available mic preamps at almost every...
I’m really digging these lightweight and discovery-laden plug-in bundles from Native Instruments; the fun-to-cost ratio is highly disproportionate! Each of these packs features three 64-bit plug-ins (VST, AU, or AAX) that offer a surprising amount of creative potential for such a low cost. I was a...
Iowa-based Sioux Guitars has been making very cool, very colorful, and very rock ‘n’ roll guitars, amps, and pedals since 2007. I have long admired their stuff from a distance – always hearing positive things but for some reason never finding a chance to try any of it myself, so I was psyched when...
A single microphone that allows you to digitally emulate famously expensive mics of yesteryear and today at a fraction of the cost? It reminds me of the advent of guitar amp modeling, and how far that technology has come since first being introduced. As a guitarist, I've seen amp modeling go from a...
As an engineer in my mid-40s, Eventide is one of those iconic companies I grew up with. First seeing gear ads in magazines and studio shots, and then hearing stories about Brian Eno [Tape Op #85] or Tony Visconti [#29] and his famous "fucks with the fabric of time" quote. I was in high school at...
The original Fireface UFX has been the centerpiece of my mixing studio and mobile recording rig for nearly eight years. The unique feature that sold me on the original UFX was its built-in DURec recorder, which allowed me to record all 60 channels of I/O onto a USB flash drive as a multitrack WAV...
I've had one of these chairs forever. Its design is simple; a triangular cushion, a pneumatic cylinder to adjust height, and a 5-wheel base – no arms. No back. There are tons of saddle chairs on the market, including some that look more like actual saddles, but I like Humanscale's design. It...
First introduced in 1994, the 801 series eight-channel mic preamp set a standard for quality, value, and unique design that still resonates in all the excellent products that Grace Design now offers. This two rack space unit has simple to use preamps, with each channel sporting a single stepped...
Note: I was using this product and was so excited about it, that I wrote this review. Then as I was finishing it up, I remembered Tom Fine already reviewed it a few issues back [Tape Op #124] – https://tapeop.com/reviews/gear/124/m900-headphone-ampdacpreamp/. I went back and re-read Tom’s review...
The Michelangelo is a discrete, Class A, all tube, full-stereo equalizer with Jensen input and output transformers. Each unit is hand-made in Texas on a first-come-first-served basis. Go ahead and order one now, then come back to read the rest of this review. I’ll wait. Michelangelo is the original...
When Arturia introduced a new series of Brute synths and a Eurorack/power supply system at NAMM last year, we had several reviewers asking about them. Thom Monahan is an experienced analog synthesizer user and wanted to review the MiniBrute 2S, which has an onboard step sequencer but no keyboard....
I've been a Maglite man since I was in college. They are built to be dropped, don't die under most rain conditions and the beam-focus feature has always been useful, especially for tasks like finding a black screw dropped on a dark-colored floor under an equipment rack. I just did a big transfer...
I've followed DIYRE since reviewing their Colour 500 Series analog saturation platform kit [Tape Op #107], and they've been busy. They've released three or four new kits since 2015: a Colour mkII with a lot of solid improvements (I bought and built a pair); a Pultec-inspired passive EQ; a...
This latest soft synth moves in a totally new direction for Arturia as it’s not an emulation based on a vintage hardware synth (that’s been their stock in trade for over a decade) – it’s completely original. But concurrently to their soft synths they’ve also been making their own unique analog...
I will start with the bold statement that I feel solidly qualified to weigh in on Avid’s latest control surface offerings, the Pro Tools | S3 and the Pro Tools | Dock, having purchased the very first control surface available for Pro Tools – the Mackie HUI (Human User Interface) – way back in 1999....
I've reviewed various versions of iZotope's RX plug-in since RX 3. I really like this software suite and use it all the time. With the amount of home-recorded music I end up mixing, I have my job cut out for me with extraneous noises, bad edits, reverb-y rooms, cheap vocal mics, and other sonic...
Here’s a surprisingly powerful new analog synth developed in collaboration with Roland and US-based synth designers Studio Electronics. This little box is the first of what Roland calls its “Boutique Designer Series” synthesizers and is in the compact and now-familiar Roland Boutique form...
Elysia, just over a decade old at this point, boasts over a dozen hardware products and more than a half-dozen plug-ins in its catalog. Their flagship Alpha Compressor and its plug-in version are fantastic mastering compressors, with unique features and outstanding sonics, and the rest of their...
We unfortunately live in an age where many of the tools we use are poorly made, disposable, and destined or even designed to end up in a landfill. As a studio owner and working engineer, I enjoy the tools I own that have stood the test of time, are decades old, but still work as well as they did...
Here's a 24-bit, 192 kHz audio interface that's a ridiculous bargain at this price point. The Studio 1824 has plenty of analog and digital I/O, plus an 18x8 DSP mixer with low-latency monitor mixing. That's all well and good, and to be honest we've tested many comparable interfaces – some with more...
Yes, I'm with you. Do we really need more Neumann U 47 and U 48 clones in the market? Apparently the Slovakian company FLEA Microphones thinks so, and has produced a pair of solid-state mics that they claim sound like the tube stalwarts among the holiest of grails in the vintage mic collection...
If you’ve been following my reviews in Tape Op, then you may have already read my reviews of several virtual software instruments based on the original Synclavier hardware synthesizer [Tape Op #118]. If not, you can read those to get more background on the Synclavier and it’s unique approach to...
When I reviewed Synclavier V [Tape Op #118] last year – https://tapeop.com/reviews/gear/118/synclavier-v/, I ended the review by saying that the software didn’t include any of the Synclavier’s sample library and that it couldn’t do resynthesis. Well, that’s all changed with the updated release...
I was first introduced to Vanguard Audio several years ago by an industry veteran who would periodically tell me about "a microphone that was still in development..." and that "...I would not only be blown away by its sound but that the price-point would leave me purchasing more than one." The mic...
Variable-mu compressors are renowned for their soft, gooey compression. A few of the heavyweights that come to mind are the Fairchild 660, RCA BA6A, and Gates Sta-Level. All of these come with a hefty price tag to go along with that sound, but what about a sub $1000 variable-mu? There used to be...