With his early years in Roxy Music, arty solo albums in the '70s, the creation and conceptualization of "ambient" music, groundbreaking collaborations with David Bowie and as the producer of albums...
I've always been a big fan of Gillian Welch's albums. She and her musical partner, Dave Rawlings, made two records (Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings) for Almo Sounds with producer T Bone Burnett...
It's not an exaggeration to say that most non-Icelandic people come to know of this tiny island country through the records Valgeir Sigurðsson made with Björk, and there's no denying that...
When we heard Joel Hamilton, long time Tape Op contributor and partner in Brooklyn's Studio G with Tony Maimone [issue #41], was co-producing and engineering on a hip-hop project called Blakroc...
A while back I met this guy in New York, and he tells me, "Hey, I just produced an album with RZA where we used a live band for basic tracks and then tried to make it sound like samples." I was...
I first met Retro Instruments' Phil Moore when he emailed me out of the blue about buying an old tri-band Gregg Labs broadcast compressor I had listed on my studio website. I was reluctant to sell it,...
As a mastering engineer, Steve Hoffman has worked on many classic recordings, but very few of them would be considered standard CD or LP releases. After working at MCA on reissue CDs from Buddy...
If you spend some time around Trey Spruance, it's not uncommon to hear him expounding on Islamic theologians, geopolitics or holes in the Big Bang Theory. Yet Trey is better known not for his...
It's easy to play a "six degrees of separation game" with an engineer-producer who's worked with the likes of Joe Pass, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Vince Gill. Rather than tout his resume,...
Making the transition from artist to professional songwriter usually divorces the composer from the final shape of the piece, leaving the execution in the hands of distant artists, producers and on...
It's not an exaggeration to say that most non-Icelandic people come to know of this tiny island country through the records Valgeir Sigurðsson made with Björk, and there's no denying that...
In Tape Op #85 we interviewed Joel Hamilton about working on the Blakroc project. Here's a bit more about his background.
In doing the design for Brian Eno's interview in Tape Op #85 I had wanted to try and illustration instead of a photo for the piece. There is a Picasso drawing of Igor Stravinsky that I liked and I...
During a recording session, there are many small details that can subtly derail the ideal flow of the work at hand. Outside of the technical end of capturing music, I think we all bring other habits...
While recommending various hand tools for maintaining studio wiring in the previous issue, I thought of also covering flashlights, but being the tool geek that I am, I realized I wouldn't have enough...
Radial Engineering sent both LC and AH a Workhorse and a selection of 500-series modules. Neither of them has had the time to try out all of the modules, but they both got in some quality time with...
We had two writers test-drive the new plug-in from Sonnox that allows you to encode, decode — and audition in real-time — data-compressed audio using Fraunhofer codecs. Let’s start...
I first became acquainted with the Lexicon 224X digital reverb in Studio One at the Strongroom around about 1989. It was the first time we had made that level of investment, and back then, Strongroom...
DI boxes are just not that sexy. However, the more sessions I record, the more I grow to really appreciate the simple pieces of gear that I can consistently rely upon. After repeated use, the Avenson...
When I initially donned these headphones, I was reminded of when I heard ADAM Audio S3-A active monitors (Tape Op #33) for the first time at the now defunct Bomb Factory Studios in Burbank. I was...
Former Trillium Labs software engineer Steven Massey (Tape Op #68) - who worked on both TL Aggro and TL Space - now makes Pro Tools plug-ins for the rest of us. No dongles, affordably priced,...
Back when I reviewed the Eisen Audio DIY500 mic preamp kit (Tape Op #80), I bragged about the beefy monsters we brewed. But shortly after publication, the manufacturer discontinued the kits, leaving...
I had seen the ads for a while in Tape Op. There were these preamps I had never heard of by a company I had never heard of — Ingram Engineering. They looked cool and somewhat retro. I had always...
The Studer A800 Multichannel Tape Recorder plug-in from Universal Audio is one of the latest in a series of classic hardware emulations made for the UAD-2 series DSP Accelerators (Tape Op #57, #73,...
Sound Skulptor is a division of the Synchronia Company, which also runs a studio in southwest France. They offer a line of DIY audio kits. We jumped at the chance to review the Stereo Tape Simulator...
Assuming that one of the goals in treating a mix room is to achieve flat frequency response at the mix position, one must simultaneously grapple with room dimensions; resonant and reflective surfaces;...
These days, fans of the much-loved (and much-misunderstood) Spectra Sonics 610 compressor/limiter (dubbed “Complimiter” by the company) have much to be happy about. In addition to the...
Cloud Microphones has intrigued me since I first heard about its JRS-34 and JRS-34-P ribbon mics (Tape Op #78), which utilize the same ribbons as those in the classic RCA 44-series mics. When asked...
I’ve been using that same crap splicing tape that most everyone uses. You know, that thin white stuff that holds better to skin than tape. I found a much better solution sold by Splicit....
SE Electronics has been busy building a loyal fan-base for their wide range of microphones, and they recently teamed up with Rupert Neve to design some new microphones for SE's lineup. The SE RNR1...
I was wandering around Rough Trade Records in London recently, when a small contraption caught my eye. Looking like a see through plastic AM radio, and the size of a pack of smokes, I recognized the...
