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Erica Synths Black Sequencer Erica’s Black Sequencer combines ambitious functionality with some of the best knobs money can buy. The Black Sequencer has been a long time coming. You get the impression that Erica Synths had some challenges to get over while wanting to release the most extraordinary sequencer they could possibly manage. I’ve had one from since about a month before the official release. From that time to now, a month after release, I have had numerous firmware updates from...

Audiobro Modern Scoring Strings Audiobro faces the future with an all‑new divisi strings collection. If you search ‘best orchestral sample libraries’ on the Internet it’s a racing certainty that Audiobro’s LA Scoring Strings (LASS) will score highly in the rankings. The brainchild of composer Andrew Kerestzes, LASS has consistently been rated as a leading product since its release in 2009, a significant achievement considering the advances made by orchestral sampling in recent year...

United Plugins QuickBass QuickBass offers a user‑friendly way to tailor bass guitar sounds to fit your mix. As its name implies, QuickBass is designed to let you tailor your DI’d bass guitar sounds quickly and effectively. Essentially, what we have here is a channel strip that’s optimised for bass guitar. It offers EQ, simple yet flexible compression, saturation and doubling. It supports the usual plug‑in formats on Mac and Windows operating systems at up to (in fact, beyond!) 192kHz...

Yamaha DTX6 Yamaha’s new DTX6 range is a force to be reckoned with. Historically, Yamaha and Roland have shared the crown in the field of electronic drums, but the more recent introduction of Alesis into the frame and a relative paucity of new offerings from Yamaha has seen the latter fall beneath the radar somewhat, with only the entry‑level DTX402 range and DTX Multi12 in their current catalogue. The fantastic EAD10 (reviewed in SOS April 2018) did, perhaps, give us reason to believe Ya...

Our mix guru shares his tips for keeping clients happy.

GForce Software OB-E Can GForce capture the character of the legendary Oberheim 8‑Voice in software? Back in 2003, the GForce Oddity was the first ‘modelled’ soft synth I reviewed. In addition to a sound that was closer to the original ARP than I had expected, things such as the ability to run multiple instances, velocity and aftertouch sensitivity, MIDI automation and, of course, the lack of crackly faders, meant that I was impressed. The following year, the ImpOSCar arrived, follow...

Why Your Ears Are Lying To You How To Interpret What They’re Telling You By Gavin Herlihy Our ears are the most important tool we have, but they’re surprisingly unreliable. We explain how to interpret what they’re telling you. Use your ears. That’s the advice drummed into us since day one of our musical lives. But what if your ears aren’t always to be trusted? The human hearing system is the most powerful machine in each and every one of our studios. It’s a microphone with th...

RAK Studios engineer Isabel Gracefield undergoes our questioning.

Emily Lazar Photo: Charlie Gross With a record three Album of the Year nominations at this year’s Grammy Awards, mastering engineer Emily Lazar is at the forefront of her profession. “I guess you could say I was born to be a mastering engineer,” laughs Emily Lazar. “I grew up in a very musical house. My mom was a guitar teacher and she taught from home, so I had that great opportunity of sitting in on all of her lessons. And then my dad was very interested in finding cool record...

Classic Tracks: The Bangles ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ Producer: David Kahne The Bangles. Left to right: Vicki Peterson, Susanna Hoffs, Debbi Peterson, Michael Steele.Photo: Lester Cohen ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ was a huge hit for the Bangles, but it all started with a demo mix‑up and some very unusual percussion. One of the biggest hits of the ’80s (and a staple of rock radio ever since), the Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ was instantly everywhere upon its initial rele...