AUGUST 21, 2025 INTERVIEWS
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Gear Reviews
D-Box
Hey kid, wanna make a record? Lord knows how you're going to do it. At home on a laptop, in some studio doing basics, probably to a computer, but maybe you're using tape. Your session changes locations from here to there, maybe even daily as you bring the studio to the musicians. You head out and...
Gear Reviews
dfh EZdrummer
The $179 price for EZdrummer is well worth the investment if you are looking for a virtual drummer with great-sounding, multi-mic'ed, live drums. EZdrummer comes with two excellent sounding kits with a healthy number of variations of the sample sets (open vs. closed hats, rolled snares, rims, and...
Gear Reviews
GearBox Plug-in Gold Bundle
This is a plug-in bundle with a hardware front-end which doubles as a copy-protect dongle. As a plug-in suite for Mac OS X or WinXP, GearBox Gold is a home run! But, if you only want to use the plug-ins with your existing DAW, the TonePort DI hardware (Tape Op #51) may seem superfluous to you. Line...
Gear Reviews
Germanium Compressor
The Chandler Germanium Compressor is yet another amazing piece from designer Wade Goeke, and "Chandler Germanium" continues to be synonymous with innovation. The Germanium Compressor is unlike any compressor I've ever used and is arguably his best design yet. It will probably be the beginning of...
Gear Reviews
Green Glue
I wish I had known about this stuff years ago. It would have saved me time and money. It's a construction adhesive that turns regular drywall into one of the best sound-control building materials you can buy. Green Glue, as the name implies, is used to make a sandwich of two sheets of building...
Gear Reviews
High Speed Microphone Preamp
Jim Williams has been making his Audio Upgrades High Speed Microphone Preamp since 1994, but largely on the down low-no advertising, no reviews, just a page on his audioupgrades.com website. The first thing you notice about the two-channel preamp is how simple it is. It's one rackspace of...
Gear Reviews
K6 phantom-powered ribbon mic
Karma is one of the newer microphone companies out there. They specialize in mics with unique sounds and designs at very affordable prices. We've been working with Karma on the beta versions of the K6 phantom-powered ribbon mic for over a year. After a few revisions, Karma is ready to present the...
Gear Reviews
M 88 dynamic mic
The M 88 is an easy microphone to overlook. It lacks the instantly-recognizable visual profile of its closest competitors, the Electro-Voice RE20/PL20 and the Shure SM7, and it cannot rival the RE20 in studio ubiquity (which falls only slightly short of the notorious SM57 and D 112). Tape Op...
Gear Reviews
Portico 5014 Stereo Field Editor
Readers who are familiar with my reviews know that I do a lot of sum-difference processing. In other words, I convert stereo Left/Right signals to Mid/Side, process the M/S, and reconvert back to L/R. (Or sometimes I start with M/S, process, then convert to L/R.) My Sony DMX-R100 digital console...
Gear Reviews
SCM20SL monitors
Quick question... What is the most important piece of equipment in your studio? The obvious answer is you and your ears. Back in the day, the quality of the monitoring is what separated good rooms from great rooms. These days there are more studio monitor choices available than ever before, and...
Gear Reviews
Sonar 6 Producer Edition w/ Rapture & Dimension Pro
In my music production work, I employ huge audio and MIDI track counts, oodles of plug-ins, and heaps of audio editing. I might use 50 tracks for vocals alone, and another 40 for guitars. For example, the songs "Your Touch" and "No One Like You" by Universal Recording artist Luminous (a...
Gear Reviews
Sub6 Be active subwoofer
In Tape Op #60, I gave a glowing review of the Focal Solo6 Be studio monitors, and now I turn to the Sub6 Be, a mighty subwoofer especially designed for use with Focal's 6-range speakers. The Sub6 arrived about a week after the Solo6s, so I'd had time to acclimate to the bass response of the Solo6s...
Gear Reviews
TLM 49 large-diaphragm condenser mic
When a representative from Neumann sent me this mic months ago, I was told that it was a killer vocal mic. So I did what I think many Tape Op geeks would have done; I tried it on everything else but vocal. First up, electric guitar. I wanted to re-amp some tracks for the band Shepherdess (members...
Gear Reviews
XLogic Alpha Channel
If you primarily record to DAW and you're in need of a high-quality recording channel, take a look at SSL's XLogic Alpha Channel. It streets for $1695, which is $50 less than the Rupert Neve Portico 5032 (Tape Op #58) and quite a bit cheaper than channel strips from other high-end manufacturers....