You could argue that these days, the title of "living legend" is thrown out as indiscriminately as Mardi Gras beads. However, in the case of engineer/producer Dayton "Bones" Howe, the title is...
He has been able to fly below the radar for most of his career. That is all about to change. Musician, engineer, producer and sound designer Damian Francis Wagner now enters the fray. His...
One has to wonder whether musicians and engineers really understand how to interact with technology as a larger social force — that is, beyond coveting the newest nerd- trinkets. Running a...
It is the brave men and women fascinated by analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to- analog (D/A) conversion that make audio a reality today. Dan Lavry, founder of Seattle-based Lavry Engineering,...
A friend slipped me a copy of her upcoming album recently. I liked her songs as well as her singing. The arrangements on the album showed that some thought had been put into making each song feel...
When I was at the last AES conference, I ran into Fletcher of Mercenary Audio, and I saw something sticking out of his shirt pocket. He pulled it out proudly and showed it around. I said, "That's got...
The PreSonus HP60 solves two of the most common home- studio problems by providing individual headphone mixes for up to six people as well as a convenient talkback system. There are two main stereo...
Some years ago, I owned an original Allen & Heath WZ20:8:2 MixWizard designed for use with an 8-track. It was a major step up from other small-format consoles of the time, both functionally and...
Massey CT4 is a straightforward compressor plug-in that comes in RTAS and TDM formats. With an uncluttered interface, CT4 has only four controls-compression, makeup, attack, and release-making it easy...
Here's a neat solution for solving problems with your recording environment's acoustics. Take two sheets of rigid fiberglass, wrap them neatly in fire-rated acoustic fabric, glue them together to form...
When Andy Hong asked me to write a review of the mic preamps currently-available from Hamptone (the tube-based HVTP2 and transistor-based HJFP2), I got a weird sense of deja vu. Haven't these already...
You may recall my review of the Safe Sound P1 Audio Processor (Tape Op #53)-a mic preamp, instrument DI, expander, compressor, limiter, and headphone monitor/mixer designed by Robert Campbell,...
About a year ago, several of my peers were involved in an audio geekfest here in Nashville centered around a shootout between several vintage Neve 1073 modules and a Vintech X73. I wasn't able to...
Larry covered the first edition of this book back in Tape Op #35. But there is so much updated content in this second printing that a second review is merited. The title, Mastering Audio, is clearly a...
If you've read Tape Op over the years, you've probably noticed that one of my pet peeves is headphones. You gotta' have 'em, but they're expensive, and everyone treats 'em like crap. On the other...
A number of years back, I was tracking a record in a room with a 24-fader Digidesign ProControl and then migrated to a situation with only a keyboard and a mouse. About halfway through the first day...
So we were strolling around AES last October and we run into Harley Fine who we met at TapeOpCon 2007. Harley took us over to meet Jim Kaye of Matrix Audio Systems. At his table were three 2-channel...
I am a home recordist with a humble 12-space rack filled with affordable (and occasionally interesting) gear. I am also a sucker for anything odd, old, and esoteric... and bonus points for strange...
It's funny how the audio industry sometimes seems to go in waves. Four years ago, summing mixers, like the Dangerous 2-BUS (Tape Op #35), were the new thing, and two years ago, monitor controllers...
David Hidek and Garrett's positive review of the ASK Video Sibelius Tutorial DVD bundle (Tape Op #62) prompted me to check out ASK's Cubase 4 Tutorial. In short, if you are new to Cubase (or to DAWs...
My wife is a filmmaker, and her primary platform is Final Cut Studio running on a Mac Pro. She is neither an audio engineer nor a gear geek like many of us are. For her current project, she needed to...
Voxengo is a company that has been selling digital audio processing tools online since 2002. The r8brain PRO application is a high-quality sample-rate converter for PCM audio. While it's hard to get...
This plug-in has quickly become a go-to for my clients who ask for realistic string and orchestral parts. It's simply the best orchestral sampler I've heard at this price point. And that's my review!...
I've been using a pair of KRK 7000B speakers, driven by a Bryston 3B-ST power amp, as my nearfield monitors for a dozen years. I trust them and know them inside-out, but after working with higher-end...
