After the internet came along and made sharing of information easier, I noticed an interesting trend. Maybe it's because of that misguided impulse of "doing it the right way" that beginners attempt to...
For 25 years, I have owned and run a commercial business, Jackpot! Recording Studio, in Portland, Oregon. During this time, I have developed a set of particular ideas of how to present my studio...
I've suffered through half a dozen home and studio moves over the past eight years. The moves have been challenging, to say the least, and two sources of frustration have been ISPs and wireless LANs....
I do a fair amount of one-on-one remote "teaching," many times working with folks running small studios, as well as a wide range of home setups. It's always fun to face this educational challenge, as...
As we all know, aging ears and sustained exposure to high SPL (sound pressure level) can lead to permanent hearing loss, chronic tinnitus, or both. I’m at the point in my music-making endeavors...
In 2023, I sold my Boston studio to Brian Charles, whose Zippah Recording facility was destroyed in a 2021 fire. Brian shared Zippah for many years with longtime Tape Op contributor Pete Weiss [Tape...
I’ve been fairly obsessed with Promises, an album by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra that came out in 2021. Maybe "obsessed" is a strong word, but I put it on...
My recording career did not begin in a professional studio. It began in high school, with a pile of cassette decks, cables, homemade oscillators, Casio keyboards, and cheap microphones strewn...
I've written here before that I own dozens of cordless power tools from Bosch, Milwaukee, and Ryobi for the never-ending list of projects around the house, inside the garage, out on the dock, and of...
I bet most Tape Op readers who own a soldering iron also have a digital multimeter (DMM), and they've learned at least the basics of diagnosing misbehaving instruments, amps, pedals, preamps,...
I sat down to try and write an End Rant describing how to know when a mix is done, and then I became stuck. Everyone’s experience with this can be different, so I dropped a line to some...
Somewhere along the line, when working on any recording project, there are points where the "real work" needs to be done. Real work, to me, is the time where intense listening skills are brought...
In 2022, I shared my opinions on several models of Bluetooth earbuds that I own [Tape Op #150, #151], with the conclusion that Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds with active noise cancellation (ANC) were my...
