Last year we had our 2010 studio headphone shoot out consisting of 5 of the most popular brands of closed back circumaural studio headphones. To our surprise Shure won taking out brands that have been in the headphone game a lot longer and costing more (I ended up buying a pair for myself). So I was excited to find out they have released a new flagship model the SRH940 I decided to see how it stacked up against last years winner.

The Sonnox SuprEsser is a fully featured de-Esser and Dynamic EQ. Part of what makes it so attractive besides its transparent sound is the vast amount of visual feedback allowing you to quickly lock in on the exact offending frequencies. I took it for a test drive.

Dont forget to enter our competition to win a TC Electronic Impact Twin!

This week a review and give away!
We will be taking a close look at the Impact Twin firewire audio interface made by TC Electronic.

You can find Prism Sound converters in most of the big name professional mastering and recording studios here in London so its fair to say I was pretty excited when the courier delivered to me Prim’s premium quality firewire audio interface the Orpheus. Not wanting to make life too easy for it I put it up against Bryston’s DBA-1 to see if the Digital to Analog conversion was as good as everybody says.

Sonnox’s Inflator is an interesting mix of perceived loudness enhancement without compression via what I suspect is tricky harmonic excitement mixed with emulated valve over drive. The ability to increase perceived loudness with out damaging transients is an exciting prospect for any mastering engineer so I was keen to try it out. This week we explore what its capable of as a creative tool in production on a single channel and in mastering over a complete mix.

The original Jupiter 8 was an 8 voice polyphonic analog subtractive synthesizer released by Roland in 1981 responsible many classic 80′s tracks. Arturia have had a crack at recreating this iconic synth in plugin format. I was going to playing some samples but wanted to get you a bit closer so we are going to quickly walk through the original interface and the extras goodies Arturia have added. Sorry there aren’t more audio examples but this episode was already way too long!

Disclaimer: This is no way a complete walk through, please dont get upset because I missed out X function. I know I missed out X function.

Interested to hear what you guys prefer in a review a detailed walk through like this, or more audio examples & over view approach?

The BMC-2 is a monitor controller and DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) with a headphone output rolled up into one neat desktop unit. I decided to test it out against the standard DAC in an edirol UA-101 interface and the considerably more expensive DAC in the Prism Orpheus to see what it could do.

The Finger is an effects plugin that is specifically designed for live performance by Tim Exile himself. Built on Native Instruments Reaktor I was keen to get stuck in to it.

Continuing on with part 2/2 of our review of the Primacoustic London 12a I decided to take some acoustic measurements to find out how much of a difference the panels actually made.

It was time to upgrade my home made acoustic solution to something a bit more profesional, so I gave the guys at Primacoustic a call and arranged a London 12 kit to be sent out to me. This week week I am going to walk you through the install first hand. Next week we are going to measure the acoustics before and after the install to see what was really going on in my room.

I have been playing with the Novation ZeRO SL MkII for awhile and it is a very capable controller. Its rare that a controller allows me to do something new but ZeRO SL has done just this. Thanks to the LCD screen and Automap 3 for the first time I mastered a complete track in the box with my monitor turned off. While admittedly the first time round I wasn’t as fast as with a mouse but I think eliminating the distraction of visual feedback forced me to focus more intensely on the audio at hand.

The TC Electronics Level Pilot is a balanced passive volume control that sits between your audio interface and monitors. But why would you need this when your interface already has a volume control?

Also I got the new final cut this week, not happy / sorry about the doggie edits.

Amplitube 3 by IK Multimedia is a guitar and bass cabinet simulator I have had for awhile now. But what would a guy who cant play guitar out of a paper bag want with a guitar rig plugin? Well turns out you don’t need to rock an axe to find a lot of useful applications for this bad boy. In this review / tutorial I will walk you through the interface and give you demos of my application. You guys have asked for more audio samples in previous reviews so this time I will let you have a good listen for yourself, demonstrating 1000 presets (almost).

The first guitar loop used in the tutorial part is from Loopmasters Rock hip hop guitar and bass

The drum and bass samples are all from Loopmasters (sweet) Ray Keith orignial drum and bass vol 1 pack

In the final episode in our Studio Monitor series I will be reviewing my new PMC TB2S-AII also we will finally be giving away the Primacoustic prize to some lucky human. You will probably notice a fair few edits this week as I ranted on way too much while recording.

@djpetermorgan asks “In your monitor series, will you be talking about the foam pads you can buy to put under your monitors and what they do?” First a bit of theory on the problems that come from not decoupling your studio monitors from your desk. Then we will be talking about a few of the different things you can stick under your monitors including foam acoustic isolation pads, speaker spikes or cones, speaker stands and finally the Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer. Weighing in at double the price of a standard foam isolation pad what makes it so special?

Also I forgot to mention in the video that speakers stands vibrate and cause noise too (even when spiked) but as they aren’t a large flat surface its less disruptive. But still worth decoupling your monitors from your stands.

Do expensive cables make any difference at all? Or is all sales bs? Ive heard allot of different opinions on this subject ranging from “you cant tell the difference Monster cable and a coat hanger” to people who insist on £2000 cable for their speaker connections, claiming it makes a big difference. We went to Urban Chain studios with Mike, John, Charlie and myself to test the following cables:
£7.13 Junior special – Home made from crappy bell wire  (£7 for the connectors)
£20 Van Damme
£55 Chord cream
£100 Monster cable
All cables are 4 meters long with Neutrik XLR connectors. We tested the cables with both our ears and our eyes and do you think we could find a difference?

Wave form screen grabs:

Gate metal wave forms

Square 1000hz 0dBFS

Square 100Hz 0dBFS

UPDATE: Thanks to Charile here are ALL the .wav files from our test.

Just by chance I had access to two different brands of monitors both using ribon tweeters that are very simuarly spec’d. Seemed like a perfect oppertunity for a shoot out! The Adam Audio A5X are equipeed with the new XART tweeter claiming to reach an impressive and possibly pointless 50khz. The Samson Rubicon R5a are my old monitors I initally brought just for DJ mixing, but when I  extended my stay in the UK they ended up sticking around longer then initaly planed.

In response to the popular Novation Launchpad Akai have released the APC20 weighing in at the same price point but with faders clearly the APC20 is going to have the advantage right?

Remember kids this is your last chance to win the KJ Sawka sample pack so check out thedspproject.com/samples to enter!

Is the APC20 doomed to live in its bigger brothers shadow or can it fend for itself?
Find out this week as I share my initial feelings on Akai Professionals latest Ableton Live controller. This is a first impressions review with more hands on videos to come (sorry no man on machine action this week).

Also on a side note thanks to Peter Morgan of The DJ Podcast for having me on for an interview.

NOTE: My apologies the sound is crap, I know, sorry about that.

I was lucky enough to be joined by John of Urban Chain Studios as we tested the following selection of closed back circumaural studio headphones:

Sony 7509 HD
Beyerdynamic DT100
Audio Technica ATH-M50
AKG K271 MKII
SHURE SRH840

The champion wasn’t the most expensive and it did take us by surprise.

(Warning this episode is a long one so be prepared for 30mins of headphone natter)

The LPK25 or “Laptop Performance Keyboard” is a very portable 25 key USB midi keyboard with built in arpeggiator. Even though the keys arnt full sized I still found it very usable for working out quick melodies and bass lines. Here I go into detail with the arp option to show you it actually gives you quite a few options and even better it can sync to you DAW’s midi clock.

If your interested in the 8-bit sounds in this episode check out the awesome free 8bit plugin: Magical 8bit Plug

The MINIAK is Akai professionals new virtual analog performance synthesizer. It looks great and has a few tricks up it sleeve but is it a winner?

The Korg nanoKONTROL is a lot of control at low price but does the low price come at a cost? How do you make the most of it with Ableton Live? Find out in this video review as requested by Miguel.

Check out nativeKontrol for more info on nanoLive II

Does the Novation Launchpad offer anything my APC40 doesn’t? Find out in this video! The review is based upon my initial impressions of playing with the Launchpad at the official release event.