Tech Bench

Mac Pro 5,1 Hard Drive Upgrade

It is 8 years old, but my 2010 Mac Pro is still kicking some serious tail in terms of speed and power. Perhaps not in quite the same speed and style as some of the newer, more fancy systems out there… but it is a formidable beast for audio work nonetheless. It has been upgraded…

Continue Reading

Rode Blimp Modification

The Rode Blimp is a cheap and effective way of minimising wind noise outdoors, but it can come with one considerable downside depending on what microphone you are using with it. The metal ‘pistol’ microphone shockmount is approximately 200mm long, and the blimp overall is just shy of a whooping half a metre in length….

Continue Reading

Audio Bit Depth: Part 1

Audio Bit Depth. That old chestnut! It took me a while to really wrap my head around what it actually is. For a long time I seemed to grasp the almost cliché explanations like “It’s the dynamic range of audio”, or “one bit equals 6dB”, or the vague term “resolution”. While they aren’t entirely incorrect statements,…

Continue Reading

MXR 136 Dual Limiter

The MXR 136 Dual Limiter hit the market sometime around late 1980 (if my detective work is correct). Even some 25 years later it is still drifting along the under currents of forum banter and the second-hand market with a small degree of notoriety. Comments often include words of praise and sometimes even prophesy about future greatness…

Continue Reading

Sony DPS-V77 Impulse Responses

For many people the Sony DPS-V77 will be as close as they will get to the famed Sony DRE-2000. We had a DPS-V77 here at Little Devil Studios for a few weeks and took the opportunity to create an impulse response set for about 50 of the programs it contains. While we are incredibly happy…

Continue Reading

Sony DPS-V77 Effects Unit

Sony has quite a history in professional audio equipment. Way back in 1980 they announced the DRE-2000, a digital reverberation unit with wired remote control not unlike the Lexicon 224 or Quad Eight System 5 in appearance. It came standard with 16 bit digital audio conversion and dedicated digital I/O for use with digital systems, and offered…

Continue Reading

Sony Oxford OXF-R3 Digital Console

There remains a special place in my heart for Sony Professional Audio. It is perhaps partly driven by the MCI JH636 desk we are slowly refurbishing bit by bit for the studio, or maybe its the tenacity Sony once had for that unknown element within audio product development. The Sony Oxford OXF-R3 is one of the marvellous epiphanies…

Continue Reading

AKG BX15 Spring Reverb

In 1972, around the time the first digital reverb (EMT 144) hit the market, Austrian based acoustics experts AKG launched the BX range of spring reverberation hardware. The series kicked off with the BX20, a 100 pound refrigerator sized, wooden paneled stereo spring reverb unit that offered a variable 2 second to 4.5 second decay…

Continue Reading

Lexicon 224XL Impulse Response Library

During a day of downtime we spent a few hours recording a Lexicon 224XL Impulse Response Library with our hardware 224XL. They are handy to have around! We listened to the 224XL side by side the respective convolution reverb plugin and created some presets using a drum mix. Some a really, really close in sound….

Continue Reading

Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb

What do you get when your cross renowned physicist and engineer Dr. David Griesinger with the development of professional audio equipment? The Lexicon 224 digital reverb system of course! While it followed the release of the very first widely available EMT 250 digital reverb, the 224’s début in 1978 really redefined the synthesis of reverberation…

Continue Reading