Sneak Peak: An Interview With Jon Hassell 

By Geary Yelton

Do you have a personal studio?
Hassell: No, not really. I just got conversant with [Digidesign] Pro Tools in the last year when I was working on this piece for a choral group in Norwich, England, in this beautiful cathedral. Peter will tell you the number of phone calls to him—what do I do here, what do I do there? That’s my first multitrack capability. ...

Solid State Logic Mynx Review (Bonus Material) 

By Eli Crews

Solid State Logic’s mic preamps are renowned for their clean, open sound, and the X-Rack Mic Amp module ($975) is no exception. It’s based on the same circuit found in SSL’s mighty 9000 K Series console. In addition to the features you’d expect in a high-end mic pre...

iZotope Ozone 4 (Mac/Win) Review (Bonus Material) 

By Michael Cooper

The spectrum analyzer in Ozone’s paragraphic equalizer module can show both peak and average spectra at once. You can take as many as eight snapshots of the spectra of one or more mixes, name the snapshots, and import and export them as files. ...

Review: Superior Drummer Toontrack (Bonus Material) 

By Emile D. Menasche

If you like the convenience of sampled drums but have never quite warmed up to their mechanical quality, you may find Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 intriguing. For starters, the software boasts about 20 GB of drum samples. ...

Review: SM Pro Audio V-Machine (Bonus Material) 

By Jason Blum

Installing plug-ins on the V-Machine is easy—if you’re trying to set up a plug-in that already has a corresponding VFX Info file. At the time of this writing, more than 50 VST plug-ins have VFX Info files ready to go, ...

Essential Reeding (Bonus Material) 

By Myles Boisen

It is common to encounter multiple reed instruments in jazz, classic R&B, reggae/ska, and classical ensembles. Sax quartets and other all-woodwind groupings provide additional levels of challenge for the engineer. ...

Digidesign Pro Tools 8 Review (Bonus Material) 

By Eli Crews

With each new release of its flagship software Pro Tools, Digidesign expands the plug-in bundle. ...

Digidesign Transfuser 1.0.1 Review 

By David Franz

Even Harmonic Gtak 1.02 (Mac/Win) Review 

By Marty Cutler

I’ve often declared that MIDI guitars are, at least potentially, more expressive controllers than keyboards. I still stand by my claim, but the sad truth is that deeper levels of expression require deeper programming skills involving the controller as well as the synth. My muse has been squelched countless times by attempts to wring more expression from various controller and synth combinations. I’ve often noted that hardware and software instruments ...

Movie-Music Maestro Tyler Bates (Bonus Material)  

By Mike Levine

In this portion of the interview, Tyler Bates discuses his gear and the way he’s expected to deliver mixes when he works on a movie. ...

Universal Audio UAD-2 Review (Bonus Material)  

By Eli Crews

While I was working on this review, version 5.2 of the UAD software came out, offering two brand-new plug-ins: the Harrison 32C Channel EQ and the Little Labs IBP Phase Alignment Tool. These are available for both the UAD-1 and UAD-2 platforms. ...

Industry Insider | Q&A: Kevin Teasley (Bonus Material) 

By Mike Levine

How many cues are there in a typical trailer?
The general form is that it will have three different acts, and an action trailer will have three different cues in it. ...

Watchmen Composer Tyler Bates Interviewed 

By Mike Levine

The following is an excerpt from EM's April cover story, an interview with Tyler Bates, who composed the music for the movie Watchmen (to be released on March 6th), along with such movies as 300, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Devil’s Rejects, and many more. ...

Kevin Teasley on Scoring Movie Trailers 

By Mike Levine

Kevin Teasley is a composer and the principal in the L.A. music company Distortion, which specializes in trailer music. He’s scored trailers for such movies as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Mummy 3, among many others....

Impact Soundworks Sitar Nation Review 

By Marty Cutler

Sitar Nation: Classical Instruments of India ($119) is easily the best collection of sampled sitars I’ve ever played. Given some of the sampled sitars we’ve all heard...

Steven Wilson Interview (Bonus Material) 

By Mike Levine

Here’s more of my interview with Steven Wilson about his solo CD, Insurgentes. ...

Roland Fantom-G6 Review (Bonus Material) 

By Jim Aikin

Roland’s Fantom-G workstation sports a new multitrack audio/MIDI sequencer with 128 tracks, including 24 tracks of audio, and a decent array of basic features. ...

Cakewalk Sonar 8 Producer Review (Bonus Material) 

By Allan Metts

In spite of the dozens of effects and instruments provided in Sonar, you’ll still spend most of your time recording and editing in the core Sonar application. Fortunately, Cakewalk continues to evolve this core functionality by adding usability enhancements and other features ...

Arturia Origin Review (Bonus Material) 

By Marty Cutler

You can explore the Origin’s presets for a very long time, but its intuitive modular design invites digging in and programming sounds yourself. Of course, you can simply deconstruct any of the presets, adding or deleting modules as needed...

SKB Stagefive PS-55 Review  

By Orren Merton

Rather than releasing another Velcro surface for attaching stompboxes, SKB took a “pro” approach with its model PS-55 Stagefive Professional Pedal Management system ($299). ...

Digital Soundworks Dramatic Percussion (Win) Review 

By Marty Cutler

Larger-than-life rhythm beds are popular devices for underscoring cinematic action, suspense, and drama. Although other packages devoted to rhythm beds may be flexible and sound impressive, the majority start with prerecorded loops and construction-kit formats; ...

Studio Devil Virtual Guitar Amp (Mac/Win) Review 

By Orren Merton

Studio Devil jumps into the ever-growing field of guitar-amplifier modelers with its Virtual Guitar Amplifier plug-in ($79). It features 64-bit floating-point processing and comes in VST, AU, and Pro Tools RTAS formats....

Review: DigiTech GSP1101 (Bonus Material) 

By Orren Merton

I tested the X-Edit 2.2 editor-librarian on my Mac Pro, and I was very impressed. I’m a big fan of computer editors for hardware, and X-Edit 2.2 is very well organized. Effects blocks are graphically represented in order ...

Take the Listening Test 

Take the listening test and see if you can find out what is the real guitar amp and what is the processed version....

Review: Solid State Logic Pro-Convert 5 (Bonus Material)  

By Brian Smithers

Even with all that Pro-Convert has to offer, project interchange can be difficult to get right. Rule number 1 is to test a conversion before you book a session ...