Category Archives for "Gear"
For a good part of the analog audio hardware years of the 80s and 90s, the TC Electronic TC-2290 delay was a standard in every studio. It offered excellent quality delays coupled with some amazing modulation effects to take it leaps and bounds beyond anything else on the market at the time. Since we’ve hit the […]
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Condenser microphones are fraught with fallacies that often lead to misuse and poor results thanks to unreasonable expectations. This excerpt from the 4th edition of my Recording Engineer’s Handbook looks at 5 popular misconceptions about condenser microphones, along with why the real reason might not be what you think. 1. A large-diaphragm condenser has more low […]
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Rupert Neve has a sterling reputation for great sounding audio, and we all want to have at least some of his gear in our audio toolbox. That being said, the one thing that Rupert’s latest company, Rupert Neve Designs, has never offered is an audio interface. Now Steinberg has teamed up with RND to create […]
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Ribbon microphones had fallen way out of favor with most recording engineers until Royer Labs rekindled the love for these excellent microphones. Indeed, the company is responsible more for the new generation of ribbons than any other manufacturer. There’s a reason why Royer mics are just about standard on any recording session, and that’s because of […]
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It’s really difficult for a piece of gear to become a standard that everyone must have. It’s especially difficult when it comes to compressors, since most of the classic designs were created 50 years ago or so and we’ve seen mostly variations on a theme since. That’s why Dave Derr’s EL8 Distressor is such a […]
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All songwriters face writer’s block from time to time and search for anything anywhere for inspiration. If that’s happened to you, one excellent place to refer to is a new plugin from Plugin Boutique called Scaler that’s uses “Creative Chord Composer” as an apt description that’s almost guaranteed to get you thinking about music in […]
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You probably read the headline for this post and thought, “Not another compressor plugin,” and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that at first I thought the same thing about Boz Digital Labs’ Manic Compressor. But this plugin has a number of tricks up its sleeve that most compressors don’t have, which makes […]
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If you’re a guitar player then you know the joys of playing with distortion. No two ways about it, it’s fun, but with more distortion comes more noise, especially in between notes. That’s no longer a concern if you use the new Plasma Pedal from Gamechanger Audio. It uses a brand new way to create […]
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Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and these 4 pictures tell you all you need to know about how audio recording has evolved over the years. There are really 4 eras to audio recording – the acoustic era, the electronic era, the magnetic era, and the digital era. Let’s look at some great […]
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Sound Devices is well known to location recordists for its super high quality preamps and recorders, but most people in the music side of the audio business are unfamiliar with the company. That’s because the company’s best known products have been primarily focused on the field recording market and lacked the features that musicians need […]
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I’m very fond of cruising and will take every chance I can to get back on the ocean. It’s a great place to work (although the internet connection can be a bit slow) and I find I get a lot done in a very relaxed manner. That’s why the idea of a recording studio on […]
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There are a ton of different EQ plugins to choose from and all have their unique character. That said, most mixers still find a need for a sound shaping tool that adds a bit more than the traditional boost and cut. Enter Wavesfactory’s Spectre multi-band enhancer plugin that incorporates a graphic-style equalizer with the introduction […]
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You might not be aware how much the type of wood used for building a speaker cabinet greatly contributes to its tone. Cabinets, like guitars, can be built out of just about any kind of wood. But just like guitars, only a few kinds of wood are used because of their sound or cost. In […]
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It’s surprising how much vocalists love the sound of their voice doubled, but manually matching a previous vocal can sometimes be a time consuming process. Through the years all sorts of gear has been created to attempt to automatically double a vocal (going all the way back to Abbey Road’s Automatic Double Tracker – ADT […]
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There are lots of channel strips on the market that work well for drums, but up until now there hasn’t been one that’s been specifically tuned by a drum manufacturer for drums. Audio software developer Audified has teamed with DW Drums to change that, and the result is the DW Drum Enhancer. The plugin incorporates EQ, […]
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