Blue Mics Spark Cardioid Condenser Microphone List Price: $199.00 www.bluemic.com Blue Microphones has become famous for their quirky mic names, quality construction and chic design. (An interesting side note about the company: Blue is an acronym for Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics, though original founders Skipper Wise and Latvian engineer Martins Saulespurens sold the company in [...]

Samson Meteor Mic List Price: $149.99 www.samsontech.com Like a Swiss Army knife of desktop recording, the Samson Meteor Mic gives you everything you need to complete any task. Gone are the days of the pencil thin plastic computer mics. In are the days of multi-purpose, well constructed digital workhorses for recording a vocal, tracking a [...]

“It’s an unfinished job, looking for high quality audio. It never finishes.”-Rupert Neve Rupert Neve said it had been 15 years since he last addressed the Chicago engineering and recording society (EARS), who were gathered in the Rogers Park neighborhood at the state-of-the-art Mayne Stage. Unfortunately, this time, Neve, nearing the age of 85, was [...]

IK Multimedia iRig Mic, $59.99 Vocalive, free app for iOS www.ikmultimedia.com/irigmic Following in the footsteps of the guitar-oriented iRig hardware unit and iOS apps like AmpliTube and AmpliTube Fender, IK Multimedia has now introduced a similar hardware unit and apps that focus on vocals. The iRig Mic has similar functionality to iRig. It connects to [...]

Sennheiser HD-228 Mid-Size Portable Headphones LIST PRICE: $99.95 www.sennheiserusa.com Sennheiser’s HD headphone line spans three categories, from “Audiofile” and “Pro Music/DJ” to their “Mid-Size Portable” series. Earlier this year, we reviewed the HD-380 Pros, a pair from the middle bracket that are great for any level of studio work. In the same article on home [...]

This past summer, James Welch, an electronic musician and university student, left London to work for the music startup company SoundCloud in Berlin. One of the things Welch did while in Berlin was record voices on the street on his phone or a small tape recorder. He used the recordings as the foundation for a [...]

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