Interviews
By Larry Crane
Eric Welsh has some crazy road stories to tell. He was initially in on the ground floor of DiscLive, a service that provided live concert CDs at the venue — immediately post gig, no less. He then created his own venture, The Show, which specializes in live concert recording, packaging and delivery....
Interviews
Elbow is one of those rare bands that seems able to do everything well. If I didn't love their work so much, I might even desp...
Interviews
I've known Paul Orofino for over a dozen years now. I first met him when I moved back to New York State and a friend o...
Interviews
Tommy Wiggins is one of the most versatile and infinitely cool people I've come to...
Arnie Acosta is a man who always plays an integral part when and where his efforts are put to use. He was established as a part of the hit factory that was A&M Records in the label's heyday, the 1980s, where the likes of The Police, The Bangles, Bryan Adams and "We Are The World" dominated the airwaves. He's now closely associated with the rock band U2. His career is a long one, however, intersecting with pop, jazz and a lot of rock n' roll history. After A&M, he later went on to work out of The Mastering Lab in Los Angeles, where he continues 'til this day making singles and album recordings ready for manufacture and radio. A few years ago he remastered the entire U2 catalog for Apple's iTunes Music Store. He won a 2006 Grammy Album of the Year award for U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb for his role as mastering engineer, not to mention Song Of The Year and Rock Album Of The Year.
How many hours have we all sat staring at the GUI [graphical user interface] of our plug-ins and rarely, if never, thought about the people behind the math, form and function of these amazing applications? I had the chance to meet one of these very people a few years back. Steven Massey has worked for Digidesign and Trillium Lane Labs in the past; he is now the (so far) sole man behind his own small company, Massey Plugins. Products like the THC distortion stompbox, CT4 compressor, L2007 mastering limiter, vt3 EQ, Tape-Head saturation, TD5 analog tape delay and De:Esser are his flagship items. However, some interesting applications like Talkback (a channel mute for studio communication) and an M/S encoder/decoder also lurk on his personal website. Not only are the plug-ins easy to use, they sound great. The demo versions are free and useable forever, with no beeps or audio drops. All the purchased versions add many features (and 88.2 to 192 kHz support) at low cost.
As a radio station primarily interested in close-mic'ed, live-in-the-studio recording (and also a radio station on a budget), WMBR relies heavily on inexpensive, durable dynamic microphones. While the venerable Shure SM57/SM58 (and lately the Shure Beta 57A/58A) are the workhorses of our setup,...
This book is as much of a page-turner as you're likely to find in the field of books about audio. It's very well written and the writers are very passionate about their subject matter. While technical issues are discussed here and there, this book is about the people, not the machines, behind the...
Algorithmix, in conjunction with Bob Katz, has released a software incarnation of Digital Domain K-Stereo, a patented process that can extract ambience and depth from existing recordings, allowing for post-mixdown adjustments. The hardware version was reviewed in Tape Op #45. Check out your back...
If a microphone helps me learn about how other mics in my collection sound, then it is worth spending time with it for this reasons alone. The KEL Audio HM-2d not only accomplishes this feat, but does so at an incredibly reasonable price. It's well understood that condensers generally have more...
In a digital system, the word-clock signal is used to generate a common time reference amongst all system components. It not only regulates data flow so that everything works together synchronously, but more importantly, it controls the spacing between sample words during analog-to-digital and...
In my personal studio, I rely heavily on outboard preamps: Brent Averill-racked vintage Neve 1272; BA-racked vintage API 312 (in 500-series form), two with original AP2622 input transformers and six with Reichenbachs; three contemporary BAE 312A (Tape Op #45) with Jensen transformers and Avedis...
This could be the shortest review I've ever done. The Komit Treehouse is simple to use, sounds great, and is sensibly priced. If you must have the gory details, read on. The Komit stirred up a local buzz when Stuart Sullivan of Wire Recording in Austin wouldn't send the prototype back. He is into...
Prepare to be impressed with a single word-transimpedance. What the hell does that mean? I think it's best explained by Michael Grace; refer to "Behind the Gear" in Tape Op #61 (also available on Grace Design's website under reviews). After reading his explanation and using several Grace...
Before considering any gear, I like to poke around the web for reviews, articles, and forum activity. I found very little talk of the m902's performance for pro audio applications. Most of the discussion was shared amongst audiophiles – listeners of the music we create. So before bringing the Grace...
I had a Manley Massive Passive. But the tracking guys "borrowed it" for a session. That was over a year ago. I don't think I am getting it back. So, I was excited when I heard Manley released the Mini Massive. Offered under the Langevin brand, the Mini Massive is not simply a solid-state version of...
I'm afraid that this is an unwieldily long review, and even at its length, I'm only touching on a few of the countless points worth discussing if you are considering Nuendo or its near-identical sibling Cubase as your primary DAW platform. (Although I use Nuendo, most of what I say here applies to...
When Sony Oxford released the OXF-R3 in the 1990s, it was one of the most ambitious digital consoles ever. It featured programs so advanced that the company had to fabricate custom DSP chips to run the effects. Years later, Sonnox is making the original Sony Oxford effects (as well as some new...
EastWest has really made a name for itself in producing great sounds. Its Symphonic Orchestra libraries have set a high standard and are considered a must-have by an enormous number of composers around the globe. With Goliath, they've taken a stab at entering the world of the "one-stop" sampler....
The SE2200A large-diaphragm condenser (Tape Op #48) is one of my favorite mics. At $300 street, it's easily one of the best deals in pro audio. Up until recently, I also had in my cabinet a matched pair of SE3 cardioid mics, which SE Electronics marketed as small-diaphragm condensers with Class A...
When I first heard about the U.420 compact mixers from Mackie, I immediately realized where they would be effective. I asked Mackie to send the U.420d version to my colleague Brandon Miller, who is a working DJ in the modern sense of the word, producing music at home and then presenting that music...
The Arsenal line is the new range of gear from API that is more affordably-priced than the legacy API gear. I am always interested in new EQs, so I asked the folks at API to send me a pair of the V14s to check out. The V14 is modeled after the APSI 562 EQ, which was in the APSI console. The V14 is...