Exciting News: GearSnoot is away this week; Will be back next week
Okay, so it’s not incredibly exciting news, but we thought we should mention that the staff is on holiday this week after working so hard to make the switch over to the new online format. Starting next Monday there should be a steady flow of all things pro audio. In the meantime, try not to kill yourself anticipating your next daily dose. Go outside, or have sexual relations with someone. See you soon!
Bomb Factory Studios closing its doors; Some Cry over End of Era, Vultures Pick at the Leftover Gear
Yet another bigtime studio in LA has closed down, this time it’s Bomb Factory Studios. Some great artists had recorded at that place, including Beck, Eels, Madonna, Air, Aimee Mann and the Dandy Warhols, among many others. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, or perhaps it’s just the result of a lease running out. Either way, it’s sad to see it close down.
Others, of course, are thrilled, because of the resulting free-for-all vintage gear sale. As far as we can tell there’s no official sale happening online anywhere. Their gear list was quite impressive, so if you’re interested in any of it, I’d try to get in touch with them before the Pirañas have their way with it all!
Red Microphones Is Giving Away Microphones; All You Have to do is Buy a Microphone
Kidding aside, this is admitedly an extremely good deal. Until the end of the year, Red Microphones is giving away a free Type B Microphone and an R8 capsule if you buy one of their Type A microphones along with a capsule. These are pretty groovy microphones, so I’d jump on it if you’re looking to expand your cabinet.
Customers can also purchase a Red Type B microphone and a capsule, and receive an R8 capsule for free. But come on, go for the glory and get the two microphones.
The Phoenix Audio Nicerizer 16: A Simple English Box that Makes Your Mixes Sound like Sex
So often you come across a thread in some internet forum where most of its contributors are blathering on about how pointless summing mixers are. In fact, the sentiment has been so concentrated, and my experiences with summing had been so unimpressive, I found myself uncharacteristically easy to convince. But that all changed when I received my Phoenix Audio Nicerizer 16.
I had tried a couple of summing boxes before it—the Dangerous 2-Bus, and Folcrum’s offering. Both did indeed change the sound, especially the Folcrum, since it allows us to use different pres to come up with different colours after the mixes are summed. However I must say, it all seemed like a lot of hassle for very subtle improvements; improvements that I felt could be acheived through the use of other analog and digital gear. But when I finally got the chance to hook the outputs of my DA-16x up to the Phoenix Nicerizer 16, what I heard changed my mind about summing forever.
Stop Mindless Over-Processing! Why Some Audio Engineers Missed Their Calling as Plastic Surgeons
Have you ever been to a Starbucks in the ritzy part of your city? You know the one; everybody walking around with dogs in their purses and bouncy breasts. Have you ever looked deeply into the faces of those poor souls, constantly mirror-checking and obviously addicted to plastic surgery? When you look closely, everything is revealed. Their mouths move independently of the muscles in their cheeks. Their eyes point forward, locked in place by layers of plasticky goo embedded around the sockets. And you leave the place in horror, wondering how the hell they could possibly believe that us common folk don’t see what they’ve done to themselves.
The same applies to a lot of mix engineers, especially those who find themselves just starting out. I know this not only because I can hear it in other people’s mixes, but because I too suffered from the sickness, early on. And who can blame us? In any well equipped studio we are faced with a plethora of shiny knobs and twisty things, levers and faders and toggles and indicators. Common instinct would tell us that making exceptionally good use of them will result in a better sounding mix. Unfortunately, all too often, such over-fiddling results in a glassy-eyed botoxed freak of nature, unable to cry because it’s sonic tear ducts have been glued together too tightly by a misguided practicioner.
And so the answer seems simple, right?…
Justin Meldal-Johnsen Drops in on Internet Dialogue; GearSnoot Writers Try to Keep Back Praise
Browsing through the Gearslutz.com forums as we so often like to do, we came across a forum thread discussing the virtues of Beck’s Sea Change, by far one of his most unique and brilliant sounding records. What made the dialogue extraordinary is that Beck’s longtime bass player, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, dropped in on the conversation and started answering questions about the experience of recording the album, as well as dropping some hints about production technique. We’re all big Beck fanboys over here so maybe this seems like bigger news to us than it does to you, but if any of you have a hankering to learn more about this Nigel Goderich produced recording, click here to read through the thread. And kudos to Justin for being such a man of the people.
Apple Takes Macbooks to Santa Rosa; Nobody Seems to Care
Apple quietly updated their line of Macbooks this week, so quietly that we have to wonder if it means anything at all. Our guts tell us that is does mean something, however, and even though processor speed only saw modest increases, these are the first Macbooks to use the fabled Santa Rosa chipset that made the last revision of the Macbook Pro so delicious. Speaking of the Macbook Pro, they also added a 2.6ghz Macbook Pro to their pro line-up. So maybe now is the time to go mobile, if you’ve been thinking about it. Of course, as soon as you buy one of these, they’ll come out with something significantly more powerful. I promise.
Redco’s Super Automatical Cable Building Machine Gets an Update
Redco Audio has updated their custom cable building application. I’ve used it before but it always kind of bugged me; it was clumsy whenever I wanted to change various characteristics of the cable. Now it seems to work much more intuitively, and they’ve added a few extra options for building more customized multi-channel snakes. Go ahead and click here to play with their snakes.
Purple Audio Announces 500 Series Gear… Time to Make Room in your Racks!
We love Purple Audio. We have a couple of their MC77 compressors, and nothing gives us more pleasure than running a bass or vocal through one of those things.
Now Purple have let their hair down with a collection of 500-series rack compatible models. Two preamps (The Biz, The Pants), a compressor (Action), an EQ (Odd), and a Headphone amp (Cans). All of them no doubt will carry the legendary tone that makes us routinely lick the meters on our MC77s.
Samplitude 10 Released For Anglophones; Meanwhile, Germans Beta-Test Samplitude 15.
Samplitude v10 has now been released in an English version. This includes the Audio Quantize feature that has been up to this point only spoken about in German. But the Germans had been quite excited about it. So now those of us who only know get to sound excited too.
From what we can tell, it’s available immediately. So get going, go scoop it up. Samplitude is one of the cool kids, at least in the Windows world!
Brauner releases new Brauner Phantom Classic Microphone, Solves World Hunger
The clever people at Brauner have released another microphone. According to their press release, it will once and for all solve the problem of needing uncompromising quality despite limited budgets.
“...the New Phantom Classic is being released to carry the tradition of the Phantom C into the future thus making the Brauner sound and performance more affordable to recordists with the highest expectations and perhaps limited budgets who have no room for compromised results.”
Thank God they released this, because I was about to splurge for their $9,000 VMA, and now I won’t have to.
Man sells Daking Console for a Reasonable Price; Snoots Everywhere put houses up for Sale
Occasionally we’ll post links to good deals on new or used equipment that we think are worthy of major mention. This is no exception. We were browsing the Gearslutz.com forums, as we so often do, and found a guy who is selling off his 32-channel Daking console. Daking is by far one of the unsung heroes of pro audio. I had the chance to hear a few tracks cut exclusively on one of these boards. What a glorious sound.
Click here to check it out, I’d say somebody is going to walk off with quite a deal!
Universal Audio Releases Two New UAD Plugins; DSP Card Still Not Powerful Enough to Run a Wristwatch
Universal Audio’s UAD -1 Powered Plug-ins are really the only plug-ins I’ve ever felt comfortable using on a commercial mix, but I use them sparingly. Most of the time I still find myself reaching for the knobs of a good outboard compressor or EQ, but once in a blue moon, I either get lazy or I get daring, and I pop on one of the UAD Neve plugins. I’ve never found much use for any of the other UAD plug-in offerings, except for the Space Echo one, which I think is pretty sweet. But last month, UA released a couple of plug-ins for their “precision” series that has my eyebrow pointing in fun directions.
Apogee Duet Ships; Home Recordists Everywhere Can’t Stop Fondling the Big Shiny Knob
Apogee’s sexy new 2-channel converter, Duet, has finally begun to appear at various doorsteps around the world. The anticipation has been high ever since the initial announcement in September, and the initial reaction from what we can tell seems overwhelmingly positive.
The box features two channels of 24/96 input and output. We were a little annoyed by a couple of things on the spec sheet…
Tell Me Lies: Demand is High for Half-Truths and Hyperbole in the Pro Audio Market.
There’s nothing like getting wrapped up in a really thrilling movie. I like the deep kind, like Star Wars, while my girlfriend is more fond of fluff pieces like Schindler’s List, or Citizen Kane.
Regardless, I love to be told a good story. It’s no wonder then that I, like a good portion of the pro audio community, also like being told hyperbolic fairy tales by manufacturers when it comes to the nature of their wares.
But as our mothers taught us, it’s all in good fun until somebody gets hurt. And it would seem people are now getting hurt. With more and more people buying up mid to high end audio equipment, too many are not doing their homework, and succumbing to the plague of hyperbolic and/or meaningless manufactulingo....
Audio Professional Weekly Becomes GearSnoot.com, Loses all Archives in Process
Welcome to GearSnoot.com, formerly Audio Professional Weekly. The transition to our new home went relatively smoothly, except for the embarassing loss of all of our archives. While I’m not willing to publically humiliate staff member Andrew Jenkins by mentioning his name in this article, I assure you the offender has been slapped into oblivion and must pay for his crime by fetching us coffee for the next seventeen consecutive weeks.
Other than that, we’re happy to be home. There’s something refreshing about a clean start. So read us every morning while the tubes in your LA2A warm up. GearSnoot.com is the new home of Pro Audio news and rumour mongering. Tell your friends!