Tag: Studio Equipment

While the digital age of recording certainly has brought some huge advantages to producers and artists, one of the liabilities of the proliferation of virtual music technology is the transformation from knobs, faders and buttons to a mouse and click interface. Despite digital advancements, many artists and engineers still prefer the aesthetic and enchantment of working with physical interfaces to manipulate parameters. Here’s a $130 device that lets you get the best of both worlds.

As samples have become more prolific, more affordable and a lot better sounding, the MIDI controller has become one of the most important tools in the modern digital studio. With added features like professional grade knobs, faders and pads. The newest generation of MIDI controllers can also provide a boost to your mixing workflow as well as the fastest way to program samples. Here are three of the best 61-key controllers available right now.

Several producers and musicians have already discovered that you can save your money and still have a professional-sounding mix. Don’t believe us? Check out these three free mixing plugins you can download online right now. They’ve each been compared by artists to ones that cost hundreds of dollars.

Not all studios need a subwoofer for mixing. In fact, in some cases, adding a sub to your monitoring setup can make the response less accurate by falsely boosting the bass frequencies. Here a couple of things to look for if you’re interested in adding a sub to your studio.

According to a recent survey of Internet searches and social media conversations, the most popular DAW this past quarter wasn’t Pro Tools. It was FL Studio, the easy to use beat making software for PC. Here’s how other DAWs fared and what it could mean for the music production industry.

Solid state drives are one of the many technological breakthroughs that have made professional media production faster and more accessible. However, you may want to stick with a traditional drive for recording audio until the price of solid state drives drops.

The advent of the 500 series rack size has launched a whole new product line of high-end, modular pieces of gear. For the first time, many top manufacturers of analog hardware have been able to sell their components for less, often under $1000 dollars. 500 series preamps are a perfect example of how legendary quality can now be owned for a fraction of the cost. Here are three such preamps that give you top quality sound in a 500 series module.

Thought that the cassette tape was dead? Sony disagrees. They just released a new cassette tape that can store a record-breaking 180 terabytes of data on a single cartridge. For large archives of digital music, and video files, it may soon the most affordable storage on the market. But don’t expect to record with it anytime soon.

The Roland TR-808 drum machine has one of the most loved and recognizable sounds in popular music. Up until recently you had fork over a lot of cash to get your hands on one of the discontinued models that would provide you with its iconic sound. As an act of wonderful generosity, Trash Audio has released a library of free samples from the 808 that you can download online and drop into your mix in minutes.

One of the ways the music production world is most rapidly changing is through the proliferation of incredibly powerful and beautiful sample libraries. There’s no place this change is more felt than with orchestras, where even the most expensive sample libraries pale in cost comparison to that of recording with live musicians. Here are some more of the best orchestral sample libraries you should check out.