Category Archives for "New Music Gear Monday"
It’s fair to say that any time SSL comes out with a new control surface, there will be a lot of interest. When it’s affordable almost everyone in the industry picks their head up a bit, and there’s good reason to with the new UF8 DAW controller. If you feel the need to push faders […]
Continue readingOne of the secrets of the great engineers is how they set up their compressors, especially the attack and release parameters. The idea is to get the compressor to breathe with the tempo of the track, but there’s a lot of leeway in the setup since it’s normally all done by ear. The days of […]
Continue readingSamples and loops have become a part of everyday production, but a common complaint is “How can I make this sound like a human played it.” This is especially true for drum samples, which are now front and center in many home studio productions. Besides getting a real human to play for you, the next […]
Continue readingParallel compression is a trick that everyone loves once they try it. The problem is that it takes a little time to set up if you use the classic technique of a separate buss and return with various processors on the insert. Thankfully we’ve been seeing blend controls on many new compressors which almost gets […]
Continue readingOne of the reasons why mixers prefer to use aux sends and return channels is the ability to send effects into one another. This gives your overall effects sound a thickness that you just can’t get from a single standalone effects plugin. Until now, thanks to the release of the Waves CLA Epic delay and […]
Continue readingThere are a lot of channel strips plugins available but I’d venture to say that none of them are like Korneff Audio’s Amplified Instrument Processor (AIP for short). It borders on the one-of-a-kind and is quickly becoming one of my personal favorites. Let me tell you why. The Standard Modules Let’s face it, what differentiates […]
Continue readingDid you ever get to the end of a mix and just felt like it needed to be a little brighter? That’s usually when the chasing your tail part begins, where you keep trying EQs only to find that you’re making things harsh sounding instead of just a little brighter. That won’t happen again if […]
Continue readingThere’s nothing like an old vintage equalizer. New digital plugins are surgical and can do things that no analog unit can duplicate, but you just can’t beat the sweetness of those old analog pieces. It seems like the older they are and the fewer features they have, the more we seem to like them as […]
Continue readingMagnetic recording has been around for a lot longer than you think. Before tape, recording was done on thin magnetic steel wires, an idea that goes back as far as 1898. The technology really came into its own during WWII when the military used it extensively, and its use peaked between 1946 and 1954, after […]
Continue readingMulti-band compressors are falling into disuse these days thanks to the rise of dynamic EQs, but there’s always room for a combination processor with a new approach. The RJ Studios MB3X mastering compressor plugin is a combination of a multi-band compressor combined with simple EQ and a peak limiter in one package that could be […]
Continue readingSubharmonic generators have been around for years, going way back to the original hardware – the dbx 120A. The problem with this and many plugins that followed is that they generated a sub signal that was out-of-phase so that it sometimes felt detached from the original signal. Modern subharmonic plugins are much better at this, […]
Continue readingIf you’ve ever longed for an area in your home or apartment where you can sing your brains out without bothering the family or neighbors or them bothering you, then you might already be familiar with the very cool IsoVox portable Vocal Booth. Even if you’re not in the market for a vocal booth, the […]
Continue readingThere’s nothing like a good delay on most instruments and it’s even better when it sounds like old-fashioned tape. The very first portable echo delay unit was created in 1958 by Charlie Watkins and called the Copicat delay, and as you’d expect, it was an instant hit. Featured in countless albums from the 60s and 70s […]
Continue readingOne of the things I’m most frequently asked is how to get reverb to blend into the mix. One of the problems that beginning mixers have is that there’s usually either too much reverb or not enough. What mixers have done forever to alleviate this is to tailor the reverb to the track with their […]
Continue readingWe all have a lot of plugins, usually far more than we can use, so when a new one comes out it has to be especially interesting to get our attention. What if there was one compressor plugin that literally gave you everything you ever could need? Interesting enough for ya? A.O.M’s Nu Compressor might […]
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