Interviews
By Wendy Allen, Andy Brawner
Try to write about Scott Solter and you will struggle. You will have numerous conversations with the man. Those conversations will span a number of years. You will talk about tape machines. You will talk about Christopher Hitchens and Tchad Blake [Tape Op#16], Noam Chomsky and Jay-Z. You will talk about...
Interviews
Lewis Durham is the guitarist from sibling trio Kitty, Daisy & Lewis. Their songs and style are heavily influenced by a variety of ge...
Interviews
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for first-time recordists is capturing acoustic guitars.
There are many ways to mic these inst...
Interviews
After we interviewed Eric "Roscoe" Ambel for Tape Op [issue 13, 1999, book Vol...
Interviews
I've been all over the world, searching out unique recording spaces. However, none...
When the name Heil started popping up around recording studios in conjunction with an interesting take on large diaphragm dynamic microphones a few years back, it was not a new name to those with a sense of history. As the proponent of the Heil Talk Box (remember Frampton Comes Alive?), many guitarists should already have known Bob Heil's name. His vision of putting together some of the first seriously designed and properly powered large PA systems in the early '70s for bands like The Who and The Grateful Dead made a huge impact of the rock touring world. But Bob's interest in transducers, his long-time friendship with fellow HAM-operator Joe Walsh and a desire to always do something new have once again brought him to the attention of the live and recording end of the music world.
Kevin Killen has helped create what many consider some of the most important records of our time. Peter Gabriel's So and U2's The Unforgettable Fire crown an impressive discography that includes Tori Amos, Elvis Costello, Prince, Laurie Anderson, Stevie Nicks, Brian Ferry and Patti Smith. Always forward thinking, Kevin is a founding member of an online record- making community called eSessions (see issue #62, Gina Fant-Saez), has fully embraced mixing in the box (without an analog 2-bus chain) and continues to evolve his record-making approach as economies, technology and culture rapidly change. Given his track record it's difficult to grasp him telling me that he still wakes up some days and wonders if he's still got a career. Yet this remark is a good example of how Kevin's warm and humble personality shines through the glitter of a hit-studded discography to open up a candid conversation about making records as well as his career. We got together at Mavericks Studio in NYC and talked about everything from Ireland's early punk scene, to the technical perils of making So, to Kevin's first leap into producing and Kevin's proclivity for mixing in the box.
At one time, I owned an Alan Smart C2 compressor, but these days, I mix in the box and rely on the Waves SSL compressor plug-in, so I was excited to try out the VCA-based 7720, which relies on THAT Corporation circuitry and low component count to purportedly sound like its SSL and Smart brethren....
The emulation of analog gear in the digital realm is nothing new, but the emulation of analog gear in the analog realm is a new concept-analog modeling. AnaMod was founded in 2006 by two long-time industry innovators, Dave Amels (Bomb Factory, Voce, Tape Op #31) and Greg Gualtieri (Pendulum Audio,...
Another iPhone app, this utility helps you determine tempo and delay times. Just tap the tap button in time to a track, and it outputs the tempo and delay times in milliseconds for whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes. It also has two alternate modes for dotted notes and triplets. A...
There aren't a lot of de-essers out there, probably because they're not very sexy and not at the top of many people's wishlists. But a good de-esser is invaluable, especially now that so many people are tracking vocals at home through crappy converters with harsh condenser mics. I hate to look down...
These days, my business partner Neil Mclellan spends just as much time working on the road with his laptop or on his home rig as he does in big SSL and Neve-equipped rooms-that's just the current state of the music production world. Up until recently, Neil was relying on a Mackie Big Knob and an...
In my personal studio, I've relied on ADAM S3-A's (Tape Op #33) as my main monitors for the past five years. But for many years before that, I counted on Mackie HR824's. I purchased the HR's after bringing home and demo'ing speakers from JBL, Genelec, and KRK-pretty much all that was available back...
When the ISA One first arrived, I was worried that its features seem to be targeted at the solo, at-home recordist and that I wasn't going to get the best out of it purely because that's not usually how I work. That feeling didn't last long though, when I realized that it's actually a few separate...
It used to be that using a soft synth really felt like a compromise. Even with the best emulations, it's always been hard not to think that if you could get your hands on the "real thing" it would just sound better, be a better experience, sit easier in the track, and be easier to mix. Arturia's...
Yet another timely upgrade to Ableton's unparalleled DAW sequencing software instrument, Live 7 offers up a great number of optimizations, enhancements, and new instruments. I can be a bit wary of upgrades in the DAW world, as I feel that often the hype surrounding them doesn't often elevate the...
This is a great little app for the iPod Touch or iPhone available from the iTunes store. It outputs a sine, square, or sawtooth wave with variable pan and output gain. It also outputs white noise. Perfect for traveling engineers! I like it because I can use my studio's longer iPod cable and have my...
The Legendary Audio Masterpiece 2 is a comprehensive 2-bus analog processing system conceived by Billy Stull and designed by Rupert Neve. Physically, the Masterpiece is a 6RU-height 19" rack unit that resembles a console miniaturized for mastering engineers. In addition to a fixed main input/output...
A few years ago, we lucked upon an old Neumann U 87. Cosmetically, it was pretty beat up, so it was only $1200. After testing it, we were exceptionally pleased with its sound. I supplied Neumann with the serial number in an effort to determine the mic's age. They certified that it was from the...
In my review of the Samson Audio G-Track USB mic (Tape Op #64), I praised it for its ease of use and affordability as well as its built-in zero-latency monitoring. Without the latter, a USB mic would be pretty much useless due to the inherent delay caused by digital conversion and host processing....
My first outboard preamp was the much-maligned Drawmer 1969. I wanted to keep the signal chain as simple as possible and use a preamp with a built-in compressor, so I chose two channels of Drawmer over one channel of Avalon. I used it for everything on the front end, and you know what? It worked...
The first time I connected these tiny speakers to my console's outputs, I couldn't believe the size of the sound I was hearing. After playing through a few more songs, I had to walk out of the control room and relate my disbelief to my brother who was working in the next room over. Sitting back...
Schwa/Stillwell are a cool plug-in company. I'm going to start writing about one of their utilities to help our readers ease into this product line. Simply put, the titles you'll find at stillwellaudio.com look amazing, sound even better, and are much more original than the recent deluge of reissue...
Although Thermionic Culture's Phoenix compressor (Tape Op #63) gets raves from everyone I know who has one, as does the Culture Vulture (Tape Op #45), The Earlybird 1.2 has yet to receive the recognition it deserves. This truly excellent product is a 2RU-height, two-channel microphone preamp...
Universal Audio more or less set the standard for hardware plug-in processors with their UAD-1 series. They were one of the first to release a product of this type and currently have one of the deepest libraries of plug-ins, including quite a few officially-licensed emulations of gear from Neve,...