Gear Reviews

A good pop filter for cutting vocals is one of those easily overlooked tools in the studio. Often an afterthought, a good one makes a great mic even better -and an average mic sound okay. A crappy pop filter makes an amazing mic sound crappy. Why screw up your several-thousand-dollar microphone...

Dana Gumbiner and I both took on Logic Studio for this issue. Dana's opinion follows mine. -AH When Apple unveiled Logic Pro 8 (Tape Op #63), the high-performance audio engine that was the highlight of the previous version was still there, but the application bore the evidence of a major...

Akai Professional and Ableton have co-developed a new comprehensive MIDI performance controller for use with Live versions 7 or 8 (Tape Op #72). The APC40 introduces a new breed of USB-MIDI devices (joined now by the just-announced Novation Launchpad) specifically designed with a proprietary...

TASCAM has a new entry into the increasingly crowded handheld recorder market -the DR-100. This new unit has a number of clear advantages over TASCAM's less expensive (and slightly less bulky) DR-07 and DR-1. First impressions? This is a solid, tough-looking field recorder with metal casing...

Over the years, there have been a variety of tried-and-true compressor/limiter circuit types. For example, VCA was used in the classic dbx 160, FET in the UREI 1176, electro-optical in the Teletronix LA-2A, and, less common these days, diode-based, which had been employed in the 1970's by...

I don't think I've ever started a mic review by introducing the accessories first. But given the innovative design of the shockmount included with the sE4400a, I can't help but get that out of the way so I can then move on to telling you what a great buy the mic itself is. Most...

When people come to me to record, I always have guitars and amps that I know sound great mic'ed up and ready to go. Guitars have to have great tone, playability, solid intonation and -if I can achieve it -noiseless operation. Telecasters are one of my favorite guitars, yet can be torturous...

One might think that Cakewalk's latest hardware collaboration with Roland is the little brother of the V-Studio 700 (Tape Op #72). After all, it comes with a new, "light" version of Cakewalk's signature DAW -SONAR VS -and instead of the full complement of Cakewalk's...

Germany-based Vertigo Sound's first product to market is the VSC-2 Quad Discrete Compressor. The quad part relates to the four VCAs within the VSC-2 and not the number of channels it can process, as this is a dual-mono unit. Having two fully independent channels obviously makes it a candidate...