End Rant | No. 162
First Impressions
by Larry Crane
For 25 years, I have owned and run a commercial business, Jackpot! Recording Studio, in Portland, Oregon. During this time, I have developed a set of particular ideas of how to present my studio...
Columns
Sporadic and regular articles from our contributors.
Gear Geeking w/ Andy...
by Andy Hong
I've suffered through half a dozen home and studio moves over the past eight years. The moves have been challenging, to say the least, and two sources of frustration have been ISPs and wireless LANs....
One Size Doesn't Fit All
by Larry Crane
I do a fair amount of one-on-one remote "teaching," many times working with folks running small studios, as well as a wide range of home setups. It's always fun to face this educational challenge, as...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy...
by Andy Hong
As we all know, aging ears and sustained exposure to high SPL (sound pressure level) can lead to permanent hearing loss, chronic tinnitus, or both. I’m at the point in my music-making endeavors...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy...
by Andy Hong
In 2023, I sold my Boston studio to Brian Charles, whose Zippah Recording facility was destroyed in a 2021 fire. Brian shared Zippah for many years with longtime Tape Op contributor Pete Weiss [Tape...
One Degree
by John Baccigaluppi
I’ve been fairly obsessed with Promises, an album by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra that came out in 2021. Maybe "obsessed" is a strong word, but I put it on...
Do You Really Need to be "Doing It Like a Pro"?
by Larry Crane
My recording career did not begin in a professional studio. It began in high school, with a pile of cassette decks, cables, homemade oscillators, Casio keyboards, and cheap microphones strewn...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy...
by Andy Hong
I've written here before that I own dozens of cordless power tools from Bosch, Milwaukee, and Ryobi for the never-ending list of projects around the house, inside the garage, out on the dock, and of...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy...
by Andy Hong
I bet most Tape Op readers who own a soldering iron also have a digital multimeter (DMM), and they've learned at least the basics of diagnosing misbehaving instruments, amps, pedals, preamps,...
When is a Mix Done?
by Larry Crane
I sat down to try and write an End Rant describing how to know when a mix is done, and then I became stuck. Everyone’s experience with this can be different, so I dropped a line to some...
Are You Being Lazy?
by Larry Crane
Somewhere along the line, when working on any recording project, there are points where the "real work" needs to be done. Real work, to me, is the time where intense listening skills are brought...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy...
by Andy Hong
In 2022, I shared my opinions on several models of Bluetooth earbuds that I own [Tape Op #150, #151], with the conclusion that Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds with active noise cancellation (ANC) were my...
Gear Geeking w/ Andy...
by Andy Hong
After completing multiple home, studio, and office moves in the past couple years, I’ve been frustrated by the challenge of finding tools and supplies after packing them away – not just...