At the TapeOpCon this year our Keynote Interview will be New Orleans recording legend Cosimo Matassa. This is a man who should go down in the history books with as much acclaim as Sam Phillips,...
Hardly known, yet everywhere at the same time, Bryce Goggin has managed to help create seminal albums for Pavement, Spacehog, Evan Dando, Elliott Sharp, The Lemonheads, Kim Deal's Amps, The Apples...
East of Louisville, Kentucky, in a small town called Shelbyville, Paul Oldham has been recording some of the most unique and important American records of our times. His work can be heard on...
Italian-born film composer Daniele Luppi grew up listening to the groovy lounge sounds of Italian pop music in the late '60s and early '70s. Used in advertising, film, television and radio, this...
I've been listening to Bonny "Prince" Billy's Master and Everyone a little obsessively lately, so it seemed auspicious when the chance to interview him came up. At his hotel, we talked about the...
Fran Manzella, designer of East Hill Studios, Masterdisk, Sterling Sound, Stratosphere Studios and many, many others, learned studio design through his inquisitive nature and determination to...
BLUE (Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics) builds some of the finest microphones available today. The company's commitment to manufacturing its own parts, from condenser diaphragms to the tiny...
One of the most important things you can do to improve your mixes deals with monitor placement. Correct placement allows your speakers to perform at their potential. A thorough discussion of room...
I just finished mastering an EP for Centuries of Slow Accumulation, a two-piece outfit with a surprisingly big sound. Their style uses barking Kinks-esque guitars and rowdy drums. Although focused,...
I confess. When I get my new Tape Op the first thing I do is look at all of the gear ads. In some respects, I would love to tell you these products are more about marketing hype and less about sound....
"I'm currently a junior in high school, and I have a lot of interest in recording and how a studio and the equipment in a studio works — I'd even like to open my own studio one day. There's only...
Theremins. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. On the one hand, they're just ridiculously difficult to play in a musical way. On the other, as far as crazy noisemakers go, their cool-quotient...
I'll be right up front about the fact that I really like Blue mics. I own four of their mics and they all sound great -I mean good enough to stand next to vintage mics costing six times more- and they...
I've been looking for a good RTAS sampler plug-in since I played around with SampleTank SE, which was bundled with my Digi 002. While the LE version had some good sounds, it was obviously a...
The Altec/Western Electric 633A is the classic microphone known as the "Salt Shaker," so named for its small cylindrical body with rounded edges and series of small holes across the top. It's an...
In that neurotic quest to listen to a fresh mix on as many systems as possible, I stumbled on a new one. You know, you listen through every monitor in the control room, then you burn a disc and listen...
Whenever I get the chance, I like to cruise through toy stores to see what kind of oddball noise makers or noise manipulators I can find. During a recent hunt, I ran across what looked like a...
While I gave the mic preamps in the Focusrite ISA 428 a favorable review back in Tape Op #38, I wasn't able to check out the optional, eight-channel, 192k-capable A/D converter in time for that issue,...
For the past few months I've been evaluating a very nice stack of equipment made by Dangerous Music of New York City. These four devices function as stand-alone units as well as connected together to...
The enclosures for the various Mac G4 desktops- sure they're easy on the eyes, easy to pick up, and easy to open... but adding anything other than DIMM's and PCI cards is a hassle... and the cases are...
When I first installed my Polywell rackmount PC into my Sound Construction Isobox Post, I was not happy. The case fan in the PC vibrated with such vigor that it shook the whole rack. It was as if the...
Since its appearance in 1970, the Minimoog® has become one of the most valuable analog synthesizers- and for good reason. Its commanding bass and lead sounds are unmatched by any other monophonic...
Open letter to Jon Brion: At last year's TapeOpCon in Portland, OR, when asked what piece of gear you hate the most, you responded by saying that you hate the Shure SM57. "Why do we have to always use...
Another "toy hunt" led me to what has become one of my personal favorites: A 1984 Fisher-Price model 3805 Karaoke machine. This little eBay wonder cost me $9.99 plus shipping. This 6'' x 8'' x 2'' box...
I was looking around for a decent stereo equalizer to combine with my stereo compressor across the mix bus. I found quite a few choices that would serve my purposes, mostly in the $2000 to $4000...
The Evolution UC-33e is the latest in what is sure to be a bonanza of budget-minded MIDI control surfaces. Compared to bigger brothers like the Mackie Baby HUI or TASCAM US-428, the UC-33e has a...
I reviewed the Drum Drops CD's a while back, which were simply two-track audio CD's of cool-sounding drum tracks for use in recordings, demos or what have you. Now the boys at Drum Drops are hooking...
It's hard to write "reviews" of digital gear. First off, since there are so many specs it seems like half the review is repeating this info off the brochure. Second of all, depending on the...
Aarrgh!! Dealing with headphones has to be one of the worst things about owning a studio. Headphones seem to spontaneously break, blow up, or magically grow legs and leave the studio without even...
