Updated February 2021. These recording and studio tips offer insights on acoustics, microphones, music production, gear, plug-ins, tones, mixing, and everything in between — for all your home studio and pro studio recording endeavors. Read the posts.
Time for our year-end round up of music equipment for your wish list that’ll offer outstanding value without breaking the piggy bank. We’ll take a look at music gear that includes an innovative router to help you make maximum use of your guitar pedals, a great USB microphone, an eight-track recorder, and a dock to help convert your iPad into a recording hub. To help me select this year’s picks, I consulted one of my own music tech gear gurus, Bob Furlong, Sales Engineer at Fort Wayne, IN-based Sweetwater Sound.
Read more…
More than ever, the NAMM show is becoming a mash up of the analog world – with its historic musical precedents made up of strings, reeds, mallets, speakers, mics and the best traditional music making elements – with the increasingly digital music world, where speed, portability, and innovation rule. When it comes to acoustic instruments and music making, there really are no new products, simply refinements and leaps ahead that improve existing tools and techniques. Read more…
Yesterday, I ran into a friend who suggested I check out a soft synth program from Spectrasonics called Omnisphere 1.5, and I caught the tail end of a demo by keyboardist Jordan Rudess that day, but just what the Omnisphere program could do was still a bit murky to me. So today, I trekked back to the Spectrasonics’ booth and got a full 20-minute demo from the company’s founder, Eric Persing. Rarely have I seen a company’s found having as much fun with his creation as Eric did. Read more…
Today was my first day at the 2011 Winter NAMM Convention, a gathering of more than 80,000 people involved in the music products industry. Everything from harmonicas to the latest recording hardware and software is on display from more than 1,300 companies, often demoed by the engineers and techs that invented them. This will be the first of three postings about what I discovered at this year’s show. Read more…
There are some astounding values placed on vintage instruments and recording equipment these days.
A 1958 Stratocaster in excellent condition, for example, may fetch as much as $25,000. Vintage recording devices from bygone years may also be valued at $10,000 or more for the most coveted items, such as rare German tube mics or broadcast limiters. For the vast majority of people, these prices put items like this out of consideration. Read more…