Winston Churchill is supposed have once said – ‘the more unions the better’ – presumably on a kind of divide and rule basis. And the audio world has pretty much followed his advice when it comes to multichannel audio standards. At SoundPRO most of the action of course was in the Dante camp – I was thrilled to see Glensound …
Beyerdynamic DT1990 – Review
Beyerdynamic have a long and distinguished history in studio microphones and headphones. The DT100, 770 and 990 headphones are ubiquitous enough to be considered industry standards and so any new product from beyerdynamic aimed at the studio user is bound to be of interest. And when that product is pitched into the burgeoning market for high end cans then a …
Soundplant Audio Player Review
The internet is 95% bollocks – literally as well as metaphorically but there are still gems of great price hidden in that wonderful 5%. I ran into one the other day – the intriguingly entitled Soundplant. Soundplant is the work of Marcel Blum, who is a musician, coder and curator, connoisseur and cataloguer and indeed purveyor of rare electronica. A …
Zoom F4 Recorder Review
Zoom set a tiger among the pro location pigeons when they released the F8 recorder. Eight mic inputs, iso recording of all 8 inputs and a mix (up to 96Khz) and time code, and all this location goodness for less than a grand ex vat. Following in the F8’s footsteps Zoom have released a control surface and the F4, baby …
ATC SCM 12 Pro and P1 Power Amp – Review
If you were making a check list for a modern compact near field monitor – what would be the givens? Well first it would be active, unlike the hifi market, studio monitoring has long since embraced the active route. Secondly small drive units, 100 or 125mm ( four or five inches in old money) for the mid/bass driver, and to …
DeHum – removing hum from recordings – Wavelab, Acoustica and DP9
50 Hz hum is an old friend to recording engineers or maybe 60Hz for our higher frequency neighbours and we often find ourselves trying to bolt the door on it during recording or trying to get rid of it in post. This week I’ve been sent some files with some hum problems and I thought I would pick up a …
624 and M64 – MOTU AVB TSN Interfaces – Review
In these trying times of austerity value for money has become not just important but almost all important in our purchasing decisions. So how might we judge two of the latest offerings from MOTU – the 624 and the M64 – against the vfm yardstick? I suggest that there are two main factors in our choice of computer audio interfaces …
MOTU Digital Performer 9 – DP9 diversity and DAWs
I recently jumped into the deep end of MOTU world and I’m writing this as a small down payment against reviews of MOTUs M64 and 624 AVB-TSN interfaces. But at that the same time I had a chance to look at MOTU’s venerable yet still controversial DAW Digital Performer 9. I say venerable because Digital Performer has been around a …
Audio Technica – AT AE2300 Dynamic Microphone – Review
As any fule knows – Made in Japan – Deep Purple’s magnum opus is one of the greatest rock records ever made. Strangely though at the time the title might even been ironic, Made in Japan was uncool. But now Made In Japan is something we recognise as an almost guaranteed good thing. Which makes me wonder why Audio Technica …
Allen & Heath DLive – C Class Compact
Allen and Heath have just announced a new range of compact mixers based on their heavy hitting DLive technology. The new C Class or Compact range promises to deliver the glory of DLive in both smaller and more affordable packages. Here’s what A&H are saying. dLive C Class is founded on XCVI, the same 96kHz FPGA core which drives Allen …