If you judge a piece of gear by how often you use it then Marenius’s DAC – S2 passes the test with flying colours. In use daily, I never tire of listening to the Marenius, almost certainly because of the insights it delivers into the audio material and the sheer amount of detail that it delivers. Right now I’ve returned …
Aphex 500 USB review
Sam and Dave, Morecombe and Wise, corned beef and cabbage. There are some combinations that just work. And others, Donnie and Marie, Little and Large, lager and lime, that make your heart sink. So now that Aphex have released their 500 USB rack combining 500 module flexibility with USB connectivity, the questions on everyone’s lips is, “Lennon and McCartney or …
DPA d:screet Necklace Mic Review
In the topsy turvy world of global capitalism you can never take anything for granted. Personal mics for instance, when I was a nipper Sony ruled the roost, the ECM was the hoover or the kodak of the market, synonymous with the very idea of a personal mic. So I spent many a happy hour fiddling with ECMs, clips and …
Wavelab 8.5 Review
‘How much is too much in the business of pro audio?’, I wondered as I meandered through a blog about audio apps for iOS the other day. Had I been drinking tea I might have resprayed my Benq on coming across the statement that one piece of software was priced ‘at a point that would only be of interest to …
Dynaudio BM Compact III + BM9s II Sub Review
Something is Rocking in the state of Denmark. Of course when Shakespeare wrote that all those of years ago he was probably mostly thinking of The Killing and Sofie Grabol’s fine knitwear collection, and who can blame him? But maybe the Bard had some thing more rock and roll in mind. I love a small monitor, I have Harbeth’s Ls …
LimitEar – Hearing Dose Pro – Sennheiser HDM Pro 25 Headphones
‘If it’s too loud, you’re too old.’ I think I first saw this rock and roll wisdom attributed to Ted Nugent. And with the passing of the years it now seems Ted was exactly wrong, and in so many ways. In turns out if it’s too quiet when your old, that’s because you listened too loud when your were young. …
AKG 414 ULS v Neumann KM184
Here is an audio clip which features Mic 1 and Mic 2. One of these is an AKG 414 ULS and the other a Neumann KM184. See what you think. [soundcloud params=”auto_play=false&show_comments=false”]http://soundcloud.com/alistair-mcghee/184-nows[/soundcloud] If you are having trouble hearing the switch between Mic 1 and Mic 2 click on the link (bottom right of clip player) that takes you to Soundcloud …
Neumann KM 184
For starters the Neumann KM184 – this is the first of two mics, we’ll call this one A. The mics are mounted on a Grace stereo bar without windshields, connected to a Nagra LB via Van Damme Classic cable. The Nagra LB is recording 24bits at 96KHz. [soundcloud params=”auto_play=false&show_comments=false”]http://soundcloud.com/alistair-mcghee/km184-a-nows-s001[/soundcloud] The files were loaded into Wavelab 8 topped and tailed and …
Bristol HiFi Show 2014
Orthodoxy is not something you associate with hifi. Yes there are fads, movements and vocal cliques advocating this or that technique or technology and sometimes they can shout pretty loud. But a virtually all pervading approach is rare. It seems in 2014 that loudspeakers should be only as wide as the widest driver and modern drivers all seem to have …
Allen & Heath ME-1 Personal mixing system review
There are some questions that have bothered philosophers for thousands of years, while others have a more recent origin. Like, `Can we have everything louder than everything else?’ And the answer is — yes, now onstage (or in studio) you can have exactly what you want mate, here’s your ME-1 personal mixer every thing can be just as loud as …