Sound On Sound UK July 2022

“Modular synths offer endless scope for sound manipulation, but at Superbooth, you’ll rarely see anyone actually playing one.” I write this column with two recent events in mind. One is the sad passing of legendary synthesist and composer Vangelis. The other is Superbooth 2022 which, thanks to Covid, was the first trade show SOS has attended in more than two years. One of Vangelis’s achievements was to help establish the synthesizer as a musical instrument in its own right. In his hands, the mighty CS80 could be as expressive as a conventional orchestra. And, looking back at those black-and-white photos of the great man in the studio, I sometimes wonder how much progress we’ve made since those days. Today’s synths are more powerful and affordable than ever, but are we doing any…

When AKG’s Vienna factory closed in 2017, it seemed 60 years of innovation in microphone manufacture had run its course. Martin Siedl, however, had other ideas, and established a new business to harness the expertise of AKG’s design team. Austrian Audio are a forward-looking company with an engineering-led approach, seeking to retain what was good about old designs whilst exploiting modern developments in materials, manufacturing and measurement. One of the company’s initial goals was to create a large-diaphragm capsule with the sonic qualities of AKG’s revered ‘brass ring’ CK12, but without its notorious production difficulties and inconsistency. This they achieved with the CKR12, which made its debut in the OC818 multi-pattern microphone; the fixed-cardioid OC18, meanwhile, uses a single-sided variant of the same capsule, designated the CKR6. The OC18 is already a…

Signum Audio’s Skye Dynamics is a three-stage processor intended primarily to sound “clean and transparent”. Of course, since every DAW ships with a usable set of dynamics processors, if a third-party plug-in is to be worth buying, it really must offer something that they don’t. So what is it that Skye brings to the table? Most of the action takes place in a single screen, whose default view is dominated by an X/Y plot and, either side, bar meters. A tabbed section beneath hosts controls for three processors: an expander, a compressor and a limiter. The tabbed pages put equivalent controls for each processor in the same place, and that’s obviously helpful when it comes to ease of use. A small pin matrix pane caters for channel routing/linking. The main graph displays…

Suppose you want a tiny, lightweight, portable ASIO-driven audio interface for recording voice and guitar. In that case, the AudioBox Go from PreSonus could be the one to slip into your jacket pocket. It’s cheap and made of plastic but has grown-up audio connections that make it simple to plug in and start recording. It’s so small that you have to stick the rubber feet over the top of printed text on the underside. The feet are worth it though; they give it a slightly more ‘pro’ vibe and stop it sliding off your desk. The front panel has gain knobs for both channels, a mix knob for balancing direct and software monitoring and a nice big Main knob to control the output volume to your speakers. A full-sized headphone jack…

Among Novation’s highly regarded MIDI controller keyboard range are the successful and popular Launchkey models that provide integrated support for Ableton Live. Novation have now taken the Launchkey concept and adapted it to offer similar targeted integration with FL Studio. There are two new keyboards in the range — the FLkey Mini and FLkey 37 — with physical layouts very similar to the Launchkey Mini and Launchkey 37. Both are compact and would suit a mobile rig but, equally, the larger of the two is a suitable contender for a compact personal studio space. So, if you are an existing (or potential) FL Studio user, are Novation providing the ideal choice for your MIDI controller keyboard needs? Little & Littler For the purposes of this review, I had access to the FLkey…

Since their first release in 2011, Warm Audio have gone from a ‘man in a garage’ operation to an established name in the pro audio world, producing microphones and other studio kit. As a studio owner and regular reviewer of their gear for SOS, It’s been fascinating to observe their development from industry feather-rufflers to a major brand. It took them a while to win over a self-confessed gear snob like me, but the last few Warm Audio microphones I’ve reviewed have been nothing short of excellent. Not only do they get impressively close to the sound of their inspirations, but they’re high-quality studio mics in their own right. In my last Warm review, I wondered whether they might be close to running out of fantasy mics to mimic, but…