When I first began researching the career of British recording icon Joe Meek back in 2000, I knew that he was reputedly a great innovator, but I had no concept of the scope of his achievements. It...
In late 2005 we celebrated the 50th Tape Op with an end page of "Fifty Issues, Fifty Quotes," featuring one quote from every Tape Op up to that point. And here we are at Tape Op number 100, so I...
When Tape Op's 420th issue rolls out in 2040, the way we record, edit, mix, and master audio will be transformed entirely from the processes we use today. Currently we are separated by physical...
2012's Open Your Heart put The Men on the map. Their aggressive, raw rock 'n' roll was a welcome jolt, a reminder of the power of energetic live performances. Ben Greenberg is the band member and...
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With decreasing costs and increasing storage capacities, hard disk drives have become the ubiquitous nomads of studio environments. When the network is too slow and the project deadline was...
It's getting late. We've been working on this album off and on for months. We're nearing the end of the last mix, and it's sounding pretty good. It came together fairly easily, as we'd carefully...
Despite everything that we know about acoustics, and the trouble we go through to treat our rooms properly, a popular practice in recording studios is to place nearfield monitors on top of the...
Headphones tend to get dropped, placed, or temporarily forgotten on the studio floor - right? And then stepped on, tripped over, and/or kicked and busted. And once they are broken, they need to be...
The 500-series market has seen a flood of new products, to say the least. I keep waiting for Dyson to come out with a 500-series vacuum. Or maybe Bodum will make a milk frother for the format. The...
While making acoustic adjustments to one of our control rooms, we decided more absorption and diffusion were needed for the front wall. Diffuser City is a small company that makes one-of-a-kind...
The Neumann U 67 is one of my favorite mics of all time; I use it on nearly every tracking date that I do, on a variety of instruments, including electric and acoustic guitars, as well as vocals. When...
I have seen the future, and it is touch. And fun. Cakewalk's Scratchpad is their first foray into iOS apps and is exactly what it sounds like. The main portion of the on-screen interface is divided...
When I began work on what would become Elliott Smith's New Moon album in 2006, I knew I might have a few noise issues to tackle. One song in particular, "Angel in the Snow," had been recorded onto...
The RED48 is the love child of a control-room monitoring system and a 48-channel summing mixer, housed in a 2RU- height rackmount box with a companion desktop remote. I don't know if anyone else...
What do you get when you combine the guts of a Porsche 911 with the body of a VW Beetle? You get a high-performance sports car that does not look like one. This is analogous to what is offered by...
Lately, Chicago-based Black Lion Audio has been earning praise for its sensibly-priced homages to classic audio gear. In particular, the B12A preamp, a half-rack-format API-inspired mic preamp, has...
After making enhancements to the company's two-channel Duet [Tape Op #65, #89] and introducing the four-channel Quartet [#93], Apogee went on to upgrade 2009's original ONE audio interface [#78]. Now...
So there are two companies called API? Sort of. The original API, or Automated Processes, Inc., started manufacturing modular mixing consoles in 1969 and moved on to develop the 2520 op-amp,...
I've been using a pair of Hamptone HOC1 single-channel compressors on my mixing and tracking sessions for several months now, and they have become my favorite tools. I think this is a very unique and...
The original NT1 was a big deal when it hit the market. Back then, most large- diaphragm studio condensers cost over a thousand dollars. Australian company RØDE aimed for the small studio and...
Over the past year or two, I have had many pieces of both professional audio gear and consumer electronics that employ exceedingly bright LED lights. In the studio, these lights can be especially...
I tend to think of things in reference to a chronology of gear purchases. Like, "Oh yeah, we had just gotten that mic when we tracked those vocals!" Along those same lines, my studio's chronology...
Every time I try a new mic, I have to be able to justify the purchase, because it has to be useful enough to earn its place in the mic locker at Studio G Brooklyn [Tape Op #41]. The place is filled...
My wife: "How was your day, Honey?" Me: "Oh, it was awesome. I ran the lead vocal of this song I'm mixing through a cool fuzz pedal made for bass and an analog delay made for guitar and cranked up...
Sterling Audio teamed up with legendary engineer/producer Allen Sides of Ocean Way Recording to create an affordable go-to FET condenser mic, the Sterling ST6050. Recently, I was lucky enough to try...
I've been a fan of Patty Griffin's since I heard her first album, Living With Ghosts in 1996. The record is just Griffin solo with her acoustic guitar, and the sound quality is pretty rough. It sounds...
For this 100th issue, John and I tried to think of some of the albums that captured the attention of our contributors and interviewees in our early years, as well as what has made for good listening...
