Category Archives for "Gear"
- in Gear , Microphones , Recording by Bobby Owsinski
9 Mics Compared On The Trombone
Many of you reading this may not be recording a trombone anytime soon, but I thought that this comparison of 9 different mics was interesting nonetheless. Paul The Trombonist played into a number of mics that varied greatly in price so you could hear the difference between them. There’s no conclusion on the video about […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Waves Brauer Motion Autopanner Plugin
Autopanners are pretty cool in that they can add motion to an element of a mix to make it more interesting. Most autopanners are pretty much a variation on the same theme however, going left to right at either a predetermined speed or dynamically induced by the program material. The new Waves Brauer Motion plugin […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Cloud Microphones Cloudlifter CL-Zi Mic Activator
Some microphones just don’t have enough output when you need it, causing you to crank up the preamp and the noise along with it. Cloud Microphones released a solution for this a few years ago with its Cloudlifter, and now it’s gone another step with its new Cloudlifter CL-Zi, which is finally shipping. The original […]
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How A $300,000 Speaker Is Made
I generally think that most high-end audio gear is pretty bogus (there are exceptions, of course), and that opinion comes from auditioning various equipment at hi-fi shows. Not the best place to listen, I agree, but in most cases things are so off that within the first 10 seconds of listening I know that there’s […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Softube Tape Plugin
One of the byproducts of recording on tape is the fact that it added some glue to the mix that engineers have found lacking in the digital world. As a result, tape saturation plugins have become standard in many mixer’s plugin lists, and they’re getting more and more sophisticated every day. The latest tape emulator […]
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What’s The Top DAW? It’s Not An Easy Answer
We live in a golden age of audio software. Just about any digital audio workstation that you buy is easy to use and has more power than almost any analog studio, and the plugins available are nothing short of spectacular. The only problem is that there are so many DAW packages available that it’s difficult […]
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New Music Gear Monday: PatchCAD Patchbay Labeling Software
It doesn’t matter how large or small your studio is, you have a mix of both analog and digital gear, and if you want to be able to access everything quickly and efficiently, then you need some sort of patchbay. Designing the signal flow and wiring of a patchbay takes some thought for sure, but […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Genelec The Ones Series Coaxial Monitors
I’ve been using coaxial monitors as part of my regular studio setup for a long time. As far as I’m concerned, there’s something about their “single-point source” nature that sounds right to me, and it’s something that other speakers with separated drivers just can’t seem to deliver, at least to my ears. Don’t get me wrong, […]
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Will We Be Using Graphene Speakers Soon?
Let’s face it, loudspeaker transducer technology hasn’t had a real breakthrough in over a hundred years. Every improvement (and there have been many) has been an evolution and not a revolution. That could change soon thanks to some groundbreaking research from the University of Exeter that uses graphene as a transducer. “What’s so groundbreaking about […]
Continue reading- in Gear , MI/Audio Business , Software by Bobby Owsinski
Avid Is Moving To The Cloud With Microsoft, But Is That A Good Thing?
If you’re a Pro Tools user you hold your breath with every announcement from Avid. The thought that comes most often is, “How much will it cost me this time?” The next question usually is, “Is this for the stockholders or for the users?” The latter question comes to mind first with Avid’s recent announcement about […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Drawmer S73 Intelligent Master Processor Plugin
Multiband compressors are some of the most useful tools you’ll find on a mix buss or for mastering, but many engineers don’t have the patience to set them up correctly. That’s where the new Drawmer S73 Intelligent Master Processor plugin comes in. It takes much of the setup out of the engineer’s hands thanks to a number of […]
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Inside The Roland Space Echo
Before the digital delay there was the tape echo machine and it was cheap enough that every band (and in some cases guitar players) had one. The problem was that most of the models available at the time weren’t exactly “studio-ready,” so they rarely made it into the average studio in the U.S. Then came the […]
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A Look At Building A High-End Turntable
There’s no question that vinyl is back with a bang, and as a result, so is the turntable business. In fact, most turntable manufacturers both big and small have experienced double digit sales growth in the last few years, a trend that looks like it won’t be stopping anytime soon. But what exactly goes into […]
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New Music Gear Monday: Eventide Fission Structural Effects Plugin
Most processor plugins these days fall into roughly the same categories (EQ, compression, effects, denoise and utilities), so when a plugin comes along that starts a new category it’s big news. The plugin I’m talking about is the the Eventide Fission, which uses what the company calls its new Structural Effects (that would be the name of […]
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You Can Own One Of These Iconic Consoles
If you love old recording desks, then you have a chance to buy not one, but 2 iconic consoles that have huge pedigrees with tons of hits. The first is the EMI TG12345 MK IV from Abbey Road Studios made famous for the recording of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, and albums by Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Kate Bush, […]
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