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Melodium 42Bn A French classic is reborn. As ribbon mics grew in popularity during the 21st Century, so prices for original RCA and Coles mics soared. Canny studio owners then turned their attention to less well‑known vintage models, and soon discovered the Melodium 42B. Developed by Charles Boutelleau and Émile Furn about 80 years ago, this imposing microphone enjoyed a long career in its native France. Over the last decade or so, word spread that the 42B was an affordable and good‑sound...

OS Acoustics DBS8 OS Acoustics have followed up their impressive DB7 with an even more capable twin‑woofer design. We put the new DBS8 to the test. Back in April 2018 I reviewed OS Acoustics’ debut monitor, the DB7, and very much admired it. The newly developed and launched DBS8 not only extends the OS Acoustics monitoring range upwards in terms of price and performance aspirations, but also offers a somewhat different electro‑acoustic design philosophy. Where the DB7 is a conventional...

Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore And evermore Taylor Swifts Lockdown Albums Aaron Dessner at Long Pond Studios.Photo: James Goodwin The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co‑written and produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner. Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise‑released folklore, a double‑length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to ...

IK Multimedia AmpliTube 5 We check out IK’s latest refresh of their popular amp and effects modelling suite. It is hard to believe that IK’s AmpliTube has been with us for almost two decades. When released, it was one of the first guitar/bass amp and effects‑modelling plug‑ins that aimed to emulate the entire recording chain. Of course, AmpliTube has evolved considerably since then, to take advantage of better algorithms and increases in computing power and to add more models and functi...

Inside Track: Taylor Swift willow Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Jonathan Low Jonathan Low at Long Pond Studios.Photo: Josh Goleman From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore. “I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’...

Buying A Vintage-inspired Microphone Most of us will only dream of owning a collection of vintage valve mics such as this!Photo: Hannes Bieger Everyone loves classic microphones, but few of us can afford them! We survey the hundreds of modern recreations on the market, and explain what to look for when you’re choosing one for your studio. Now that original Neumann and AKG valve microphones have become unaffordable, modern manufacturers have stepped in to fill the gap, offering clones and vint...

Ableton Live 11 Live 11 introduces new features, improves some old ones, and throws in some exciting new rack devices for good measure. As Ableton Live’s release version finally goes to 11 in its 20th year, what improvements, refinements and additions does it deliver? There’s no major visual overhaul as we saw in the upgrade from Live 9 to Live 10, and it’s hard to tell Live 11 visually from its predecessor unless you know where to look. But this visual similarity hides some significant s...

PMI breathe new life into a classic dynamic EQ design.

HD Instruments ZoneMatrix The Key Range tab, showing all eight Zones. The Scene‑changing buttons are always accessible. ZoneMatrix’s GUI takes up a lot of screen space, leaving only a small scrollable area for instruments in the rack. To display all instruments as normal, clicking the KSP button (here circled in red) will show or hide the ZoneMatrix GUI. ZoneMatrix transforms a single instance of Kontakt into a multi‑instrument performance environment. Back in those hedonistic pre‑pan...

The physics of loudspeakers have hardly changed in a century — but DSP and material science have come a long way, and the Pulsar takes full advantage.