Category Archives for "New Music Gear Monday"
Pedals, pedals everywhere. Guitar players have tons of them and are always buying more. The majority of new pedals are derivative of a few trailblazers that have come before however, and it’s hard to find something that’s truly new. It seems there was a new idea for a pedal right before our eyes all along […]
Continue readingIf you were involved in any part of the analog recording age you know that Lexicon was the king of reverbs and that one type or another of the company’s hardware products would be found in any studio. The top of the line product for the company was the 480L and it was the standard […]
Continue readingWorking with a mouse or trackball is second nature for some people, and torture for others. As a result, a number of different types of controllers have come to market recently, but most center around the fader, with other functions being secondary. The fact of the matter is that we use all those other functions […]
Continue readingAutopanners 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 […]
Continue readingSome 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 […]
Continue readingOne 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 […]
Continue readingUnless you’ve had many years of experience mixing, it’s pretty easy to be befuddled by a mix. Instruments or vocals that are too loud or quiet, harsh midrange, and low frequencies that are out of whack are just some of the continual problems that mixers continually battle against. The new Soundways Core Production Bundle goes […]
Continue readingWhen drum machines first came out in the 80s we loved the programmability but hated the sound limitations. It’s funny how things work, but today it’s those limitations that everyone remembers and wants to recapture. One way to do that is with Wave Alchemy’s Revolution, a virtual drum machine that emulates the authentic sound of […]
Continue readingIt 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 […]
Continue readingI’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, […]
Continue readingIf you’ve ever used the Bricasti M7 reverb, you know how spectacular it sounds, so much so that it’s spoiled many an engineer when it comes to using anything else. While there are some excellent sounding reverb plugins available, if you’re a fan of the hardware M7 then you know that they don’t quite cop the exact […]
Continue readingThere’s nothing like the ears and expertise of a mastering engineer to finish off a project, but when that’s just not in the budget, you have to do it yourself. It’s true that a ton of mastering tools are on the market, and many of them do the job very well, but none are as […]
Continue readingWhen it comes to portable recording, it’s hard to beat anything made by Sound Devices. The company has consistently made some of the highest quality recording gear that’s become a standard on any television or movie set. Now the company looks more towards musicians, podcasts and YouTubers with a penitent for quality with its new […]
Continue readingMultiband 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 […]
Continue readingDynamic processors are all the rage these days as well they should be. It’s a new approach to an old problem with a lot more control. Most dynamic processors are quite flexible and can be used on just about any kind of track, but the new Oeksound Soothe has a primary purpose, and that’s to […]
Continue reading