Sound On Sound UK October 2020

Romance isn’t a concept often associated with music technology, but it definitely has a role to play. Only a true romantic could think about opening a high-end studio in today’s climate, yet new studios continue to be built. Nostalgia keeps us buying Minimoog clones and U47 copies, and what is nostalgia if not a romantic perspective on the past? One of the best things about our business, though, is that it’s not only artists and producers and engineers who are romantics. The manufacturers who keep our studios stocked with gear are romantics too, and they’re passionate about designing new and ever-better hardware and software. If you want proof of this, consider the role of the ‘flagship’ product. A synthesizer that fills a room and costs more than a house is unlikely to…

Hosted by NI’s Kontakt (full or free player versions), Quartarone Guitar Reveries is described as a cinematic electric guitar instrument that captures the avant-garde sound and personal sound palette of European composer and guitarist Claudio Quartarone. Split into Guitar, Pad and Keys sections with 50 presets per section, the instrument is, as its name suggests, based on sounds that originate from Claudio’s guitar, though these have been extensively ‘massaged’ to create a range of ambient, abstract and cinematic sounds, many of which belie their guitar-centric origins. The instrument works by mixing two sound sources, A and B, from a choice of 25 multi-velocity samples, each of which can be treated with individual effects before being sent to a master effects section. The sample set includes sustained sounds, tremolo guitar, muted…

California-based Josephson Engineering have been releasing high-quality ‘boutique’ microphones for over 30 years now. For review here we have their latest design, which could broadly be described as a stripped-back and more affordable version of their C715 large-diaphragm capacitor microphone. Despite being derived from that mic, the C705 has a number of changes from its more costly predecessor, and it’s obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into engineering this new design. The all-important centre-terminated capsule with its gold-sputtered diaphragm remains the same, although the C705 has a fixed cardioid pattern, and can’t be switched to omni like the C715 can. This capsule is unusual in having only a single membrane; nearly all large-diaphragm mics employ Braunmühl-Weber dual-diaphragm designs, even if they are cardioid-only. In the C715, the…

UK Sound is a sub-brand of BAE, a well-respected manufacturer of vintage-inspired analogue hardware, its aim being to offer access to the BAE sound for a price more within reach of the home-studio market. But they’ve not taken a bargain-basement approach. UK Sound gear is still hand-assembled in the USA and high-quality components adorn circuit boards that sit in solid, nicely finished metalwork. There are obviously some differences, notably the presence of some less expensive components, including the output transformers, but it is still all of decent quality. Some of the units clearly benefit from a modular approach to design, with circuitry and controls occupying only one half of the standardised 1U 19-inch rackmount chassis, and other models pair two such ‘modules’ in the same box. The UK Sound 1073, reviewed…

ShimmerVerb is the latest DAW plug-in to have been ported from Eventide’s H9 hardware platform. Essentially, it combines reverb with a dual pitch-shifter, delay and EQ, and it aims to replicate some of the more creative pitched-reverb techniques that were developed by studio engineers in the early 1980s, using combinations of hardware. While some shimmer reverb effects rely on pitch-shifting the reverb tail, this one places pitch-shifters in the feedback loop, resulting in a more complex sound. Authorised via an iLok account, ShimmerVerb can be used as Mono In/Out, Mono In/Stereo Out, or Stereo In/Out plug-in, and it supports all the common plug-in formats on Mac OS and Windows. At the heart of the plug-in is an algorithmic reverb, whose output goes directly to the plug-in’s output. However, this reverb output is…

Black Lion’s Eighteen is named for the 1831 op-amp, two of which lie at the heart of this new channel strip. Designed specifically for the Eighteen, this op-amp is based on the 1960s Melcor 1731 op-amp. The original designers of the Melcor 1731 ended up working for API during their formative years, and helped pave the way for the famous 2520 op-amp that’s still a cornerstone of API’s preamp and console designs. As you’d expect of Black Lion, though, their version features several tweaks. Each of these new ‘vintage’ op-amps can provide up to 35dB of gain, to give a maximum of 70dB, which is more than enough for most applications. Also contributing to the colour of this device are a passive Pultec EQP-1a-style EQ section, based on a Cinemag inductor,…