Sound On Sound UK November 2020

“MAGAZINES THRIVE ONLY BECAUSE PEOPLE READ THEM, AND SOUND ON SOUND HAS ALWAYS BEEN A TRUSTED SOURCE OF INFORMATION, ADVICE AND ENTERTAINMENT.” A lot can happen in 35 years. Start the clock in 1914 and it’s a period that encompasses both World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Welfare State, the growth of radio and the birth of television. Count from 1960 and you cover the entire careers of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Nirvana, not to mention minor details like the moon landings, the building of the Berlin Wall and its eventual collapse. The 35 years since the launch of Sound On Sound have been equally turbulent, as Chris Korff’s timeline in this issue demonstrates. The magazine has had to weather many storms. SOS is and has always been independently published, without…

Digital technology has progressed at speed over the last few years, so the fact that Prism Sound’s ADA-8XR has remained unsurpassed as the company’s flagship multichannel A-D/D-A converter for nearly 20 years is remarkable. But in early September, Prism invited SOS to their offices in Cambridgeshire to get a sneak preview of the new top dog: the Prism Sound Dream ADA-128, which should just have been announced as you read this. Named for its remarkable ability to provide up to 128 channels of premium Prism conversion in a single 2U rack, the ADA-128 is a modular device that can be configured to a wide range of needs thanks to its ability to host a number of different expansion cards. Slot Machine The card slots fall into two categories. The first four slots are…

As a Cubase user who happens to own an iPad, I’m also a fan of Steinberg’s Cubase iC Pro app that provides a touchscreen remote control experience for Cubase running on my OS X desktop system. Of course, iC Pro is not the only iOS app that can provide remote control of your DAW/ sequencer and Metagrid is another excellent choice. The app has recently been upgraded to v.1.6 and, since I last tried it, has also added Windows support to the existing OS X support. So, if you have a suitable iPad (iOS 10.0 or later is required) and want to put it to good use in the studio, is Metagrid worth a punt? Very Meta In order to use the app, you have to download the appropriate free ‘server’ software…

The HeadLine Guitar Switching System came to be because professional guitarists approached DACS asking for a quick and easy way to compare and reconfigure their boutique amps and cabinets without manually swapping the cables. It comprises two rackmountable boxes, which connect via a CAT5 or 6 cable, and DACS say they’ve tested cables of up to 20m. The Selector unit should be installed within easy reach of your listening/playing position, and the Relay Switcher is intended to live nearer the amps and cabs. With your guitar and up to eight amps and four cabinets connected, you press the Selector’s buttons to set the amp/cab combination, and you can route an amp’s output to two cabs simultaneously. Both units have a tuner output, which could also be used as a non-switchable feed…

While large-diaphragm microphones tend to be the most glamorous, small-diaphragm models are often better-suited to recording acoustic instruments, and they are also easier to set up as X-Y stereo pairs. Common applications in the smaller studio include drum overheads and other acoustic instruments such as acoustic guitars. Designed in the US by PreSonus but manufactured in the Far East to keep costs down, the two mics in the PM-2 kit are closely matched, small-diaphragm capacitor microphones, each employing a 0.75-inch, centre-terminated, gold-sputtered 6mm mylar diaphragm. Although there are currently no alternative capsules offered to fit these microphones, the cardioid ones provided are removable. These screw onto the end of the matte-silver ‘stick’-type bodies. The mics are fairly light and won’t make your mic stand droop. As is common with this type of…

When Universal Audio’s range of Thunderbolt audio interfaces received a major overhaul in late 2018, one product escaped unscathed. The bus-powered Arrow survived not because it was the smallest and most easily overlooked of UA’s interfaces, but because it was only a few months old at that point. But now that the Apollo X range has been firmly established, UA are rounding up the stragglers, and thus the Arrow has been superseded by the Apollo Solo. Except for its now bearing a smart grey livery rather than the Arrow’s black, the Apollo Solo is identical to its predecessor, and in fact UA’s firmware updater thinks it’s addressing an Arrow. Its two mic/line inputs are compatible with UA’s Unison modelling technology, and it sports a single pair of line outputs on quarter-inch…